"Yes Please": Poignant and Real

I never thought much about Amy Poehler on SNL.  It wasn't that I didn't think she was funny, but I never really gave her much thought.  At the time she was a cast member along with her "comedy wife" Tina Fey, I was living in Philadelphia without cable.  We only got two channels on our t.v. and we didn't get NBC.

I fell in love with Tina Fey after I had been prompted by friends and family members alike to watch 30 Rock.  My husband and I binge watched all the seasons.  When Poehler's Parks and Recreation came out, I was in another phase.  I was pregnant with my daughter Story and not all that interested in jerky camera movements and characters glancing at the camera to get laughs.  I started to really pay attention to Amy Poehler when she co-hosted the Golden Globes with Tina Fey and they (as Amy Poehler would say) "crushed." So many people told me that I had to watch Parks and Recreation, but even though I had cable at that point in my life, I still didn't have the time to watch another comedy.

After reading "Yes Please", I am a fan of Amy's going so far as to begin binge watching Parks and Recreation (after one weekend I am already through the first 3 seasons!).  Although the New York Times gave "Yes Please" a scathing review, I would like to respectfully disagree.  The reviewer said that Amy doesn't know how to write, cuts on her looks too much, and apologizes for how boring her book is.  I'm not sure if I read the same book, but I saw this book as a humble gift by a very talented writer, comedian and actress whose blue collar beginnings did not stop her from becoming the revered and lauded phenom that she is today.

Does she explain how agonizing it is to write a book? Yes, because anyone who has ever written a book knows that it is hard.  Does she delve into her relationship with her appearance? Yes, because any woman (and man with the exception of the dude who wrote the mean review) would understand what growing up with asymmetrical, not classically beautiful features means.  It doesn't mean that she thinks she is ugly, it just means that she is highly aware of the fact that she is neither drop dead model gorgeous or homely.  She's somewhere in between.  Does she sometimes opt out of the comedic in this memoir / autobiography account of her life and instead go for a more universal take on humanity and the hard work that it takes to become a star? Yes, and that is because she's being honest and real and at times really funny as she is being honest and real.

There are so many aspects of this book to love including cameos from famous friends and adoring family members, funny stories about what it's really like to work on SNL, the earth shattering devastation of divorce, the Improv scene in New York and Chicago, what it's like to work on Parks and Recreation, what it's like to be in love with your kids, and how sometimes you need to step way outside of your comfort zone to find comfort like when she went to Haiti and spent time working in an orphanage there.

Amy's book really showed me that she is a real person who loves to laugh, live, make others laugh, and be a powerful and bossy woman without making excuses, but apologizing when necessary. She loves many of the people who helped get her to where she is today, and in turn she has dedicated her life to help others succeed in comedy.  I laughed (when she was explaining her drug use), I cried (when she recounted her trip to the Haitian orphanage), I was touched by her love for her boys (when she talked about their personalities and chasing the moon, I smiled the whole chapter), I was never bored while reading this (how could you be with so many insightful and funny anecdotes?), and it made me a fan of someone who I didn't really pay that much attention to before.

That sounds like a pretty great book to me.

"The Little Paris Book Shop": A Bit Too Much Of Everything

I love Paris.

I love books.

I love love.

Because of the three statements above, I should have loved "The Little Paris Bookshop" by Nina George.

And I did love parts of it, but something about it didn't feel right.  To me, it was a bit like gorging on deep dark chocolate truffles with creamy centers.  It feels so good, and dark and smooth in the beginning, but then after you eat too many, your tummy hurts.

Too much of a good thing?

Many people who love this book will disagree with me heartily, and I get it, because when I started reading the story of Jean Perdu (which means lost in French, by the way), the owner of a floating Literary Apothecary where he prescribes books for what ails people even if he can't seem to cure himself from his 20 years of love solitude after his lover left him, I too thought I would be entranced for the entire book.

The elements are all there.  Jean begins to awaken from his 20 year living depravation when a new woman, Catherine, moves across the hall from him in his building which is already chock full of a crazy cast of characters.  She stirs something inside of him and then uncovers a letter from his lover that was tucked away in a drawer in a table he gives her.  He hid it there 20 years before in order to escape the awful words he knew he would find - that his lover (who he doesn't even name in the beginning) wants to end things.

But, that isn't the case at all.  Manon's letter reveals, to Jean's horror, that she was dying from cancer and her wish is for him to join her in the South of France to say goodbye. He realizes he is 20 years too late, and that he spent the last 20 years in an emotional solitude for false reasons.

In his emotional spiral, Jean decides to unmoor his floating apothecary and take off on a journey to find the truth about Manon or to beg forgiveness for his stupidity and pride, or to find himself.  His neighbor, Max Jordan who is an author whose 1st book success has paralyzed his ability to write, journeys with him to find a new story.

Along the journey they have two others board their book and cat vessel - a chef and an eccentric bookseller.

At times, George's writing is beautiful, but it always seemed off to me.  The love scenes that Jean remembers are too much as is the intensity of their "big love" for each other.  It's not that I don't believe in "big love" or that I don't think love can unhinge people, it's just that there was too much unhinging and not enough hinging?  Maybe that's the best explanation I can give for not loving a book that seems just like the kind of book I would love.

Even in the end of the journey where I know I should have been tearing up and feeling vast amounts of emotion, I felt blank.

It did at times remind me of two other books that I have read: The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry due to the journey towards some sort of closure with a woman from the past and the discoveries along the journey.  It also reminded me of The Storied Life of AJ Frikery due to the eccentric nature of the bookseller and his love of books with the added bonus of a love story.

Speaking of bonuses - this book also had quite a few references to other books and food, and in the very back of the book, George was kind enough to include a list of all the books mentioned and their healing nature, as well as recipes for some classic French dishes.

I love a good love story, especially one set in Paris, especially one that also involves the adoration of books and their ability to heal, and I love good French food. I wish I could just put my finger on why this book hasn't become my favorite of the summer.

My only explanation is that it was a bit too much of everything.

"In the Unlikely Event:" Fasten Your Seatbelts

I grew up on Judy Blume books.

I'm sure most women in their early 40s would make the same claim.  Judy Blume opened my eyes to the trials of adolescence from bullying, to menstruating, to having a bratty younger sibling, to masturbation, to wanting bigger breasts, to the turbulent world of first sexual relationships.  Underlying all of her books for me was honesty and realness.

She tells life like it is which is why her books have been the subject of countless bannings and calls for censorship from school libraries.  Seeing an elementary school girl with the book "Forever" tucked under her arm branded her a harlot, one to be watched by her teachers.

In her first adult book since 1998's "Summer Sisters" Blume draws from her childhood growing up in Elizabeth, New Jersey which was branded "Plane Crash City" in the winter of 1952 when three planes inexplicably crashed there in an 8 week span.  Blume was an 8th grader at Hamilton when these tragedies unfolded.  She returned to those tragedies to craft the fictional lives of a chorus of characters who all suffer in different ways due to the crashes.

At the center of this novel is Miri Ammerman, a 9th grade Jewish girl, whose single mom, Rusty, her Uncle Henry and her grandmother live together harmoniously until the planes begin to crash.  As she deals with her best friend's mental illness, her first heartbreaking love with orphan Mason, and her mother's first real boyfriend, as well as her father appearing in her life again, she also must deal with the betrayal of safety she feels when planes fall from the sky - not once, not twice, but three times in one winter.

She writes a poem about the crashes that she reads at a reunion years later: "Life goes on, as our parents promised that winter / Life goes on if you're one of the lucky ones / But we're still part of a secret club / One we'd never willingly join / With members who have nothing in common / except  time and a place / We'll always be connected by that winter / Anyone who tells you different is lying."

Miri's Uncle Henry writes about the crashes for the local paper and becomes a kind of local hero as does her boyfriend, Mason, who fearlessly pulls people from the 3rd crash and saved lives.

The power in this novel full of so many characters that at times I felt dizzy from the quick chapters and multitudes of perspectives, comes from Miri's and the other young characters who come of age in the early 1950s.  Even without planes falling out of the sky, adolescence can be hard, but with the added tragedies that many speculated were the work of communists or aliens, the looming pressures of adulthood seem insurmountable.

Blume's history as a life changing YA author shows when she delicately crafts the love story between Mason and Miri.  Their first dance together that didn't need conversation, their first gentle kiss, their heartbreaking conclusion and even their rediscovery of each other were written with sensitivity and love.  In the same way, Blume shows how the crashes unraveled Miri's best friend and her best friend's seemingly perfect family.  Everyone in this novel suffers the crashes in different ways - either as immediate victim or post traumatic casualties.  They are all connected.

For me "The Umbrella of Death" as the winter of 1952 in Elizabeth, New Jersey was referred to, took on larger significance.  It's the tragedies of life that often define us - how we heal from heartbreak, how we recover from illnesses both mental and physical, how we move on from the dissolution of our families or the loss of best friends or potential lovers.  It's that turbulence that Blume shows with heart and humility and what has made her such a phenomenon and such a defining part of the young adults' lives.  She knows how to give us a flight worth remembering - that we need to fasten our seat belts for, and that we need to wonder if there will be a safe landing or a horrible, tragic crash.  Regardless, we know that life will go on, even in the face of tragedy that no one should need to suffer through.

"The Chaperone": A Glimpse at One of the First Real Movie Stars

I put off reading "The Chaperone" by Laura Moriarty for the whole summer.  I'm not sure why it went to the bottom of my summer "to read" pile.  I love historical fiction, and I wanted something that wasn't WW2 historical fiction.  "The Chaperone" sheds historical light on the conflicting roles of women in the 1920s - those who hung on to tradition, and those who were paving the way for the future of women's liberation by fictionalizing the actual trip that a young Louise Brooks took to New York City with a chaperone before she became an international movie sensation.

The relationship between a 15 year old Louise Brooks and Cora Carlisle, the housewife who volunteers to be her chaperone to New York City where Louise will dance with the premier group Denishawn. Cora and Louise make an odd pair.  Louise exhibits every trait that is synonymous with the loose morals of flappers.  She is young but sexually promiscuous, she enjoys getting drunk, she loves to defy the rules, and she refuses to act with decorum and grace even going as far to wear short skirts with her stockings rolled and showing too much skin.  To Louise, her disapproving chaperone, Cora, could not be more of a drag.  Cora expects Louise to be a lady by traditional standards which to Louise means to not have fun.  The two venture to New York City together, but their experiences there are both liberating in different ways.  

Cora's on a secret mission to find out about her past.  She grew up in a orphanage in New York City only to be one of the many orphans who were forced to relocate via orphan trains.  She fared well in her childhood when a nice family took her in and seemed to hit the jack pot when a handsome lawyer asked her to marry him.  But her curiosity about her origins leads her back to her orphanage for answers.

Louise by contrast wants to be a star and can already feel the way people, especially men, respond to her gravitational pull.  Her startling beauty with her Dutch boy bob and luminescent skin stopped men in their tracks even when she was only 15 years old.  Even the legendary Denishawn troupe recognized her star quality.  She cares nothing about the past or her origins but can't wait for the future. 

I loved the first half of this book which really did illuminate the roles of women in the 1920s.  Even in fashionable and forward thinking New York City there seemed to be a divide between the old and new ways of thinking.  Women like Brooks pushed the boundaries that made it possible for women to be whatever they wanted to be, but women like Cora were stuck in the change.  They wanted more freedom, but didn't know how to go about it and Cora shows this as she undergoes her own awakening in New York City which then carries over to her life when she returns to Wichita from her two month journey as a chaperone.  

The power of this story really resides in the first half of the book that centers on the chaperone trip.  Cora's story surprisingly has more energy than Louise's.  After Cora returns to life in Wichita a changed and emboldened woman, the book lost momentum for me.  The years spanned on too long, and I wanted the same historical insights that the chaperone trip brought to light.  The mentions of Louise's career seemed an afterthought in the 2nd part of the book, and Cora's life, although interesting, wasn't enough to hold my rapt attention until the end.  

I liked this book, but not as much as Moriarty's first book "The Center of Everything" or even her second book "The Rest of Her Life".  I did, however, make a concerted effort when I was finished reading to research more about the life and times of Louise Brooks who I found to be a fascinating character in this book.  I almost wish that I was still in the classroom teaching "The Great Gatsby," so I could use some of the information I learned about women during the 1920s to help my students better understand the great divide of morality that was occurring.  

Because I wanted to learn more and because Moriarty captured me in the first half of the book, I am glad that I read this book - even if it was at the bottom of my summer pile. 

"The Last Letter From Your Lover": Anticipating 'Me After You' by Jojo Moyes

Ahhhhh love . . . .

Who doesn't appreciate a great love story full of unrequited passion, missed opportunities, realizations about life, and the possibility of a happy ending after so much suffering?

I'll tell you who loves them.  This girl.

I needed to read something by Jojo Moyes as I anticipate the release of After You (the sequel to her bestselling Me Before You) in late September.  As the last days of carefree summer vacation wane, I wanted to get lost in a romance with substance - something that wouldn't feel like cotton candy and make my teeth hurt, but something more like a flourless dark chocolate torte from a high end restaurant.

And, you know what? Jojo Moyes delivered yet another gorgeous landscape of romance in her 2010 novel "The Last Letter From Your Lover." Both love stories in this book are heart wrenching in different ways - human, flawed, tragic and believable.

The main love story focuses on Jennifer Stirling and her chance meeting with a playboy reporter while she is vacationing in the south of France in 1960.  They are immediately drawn to each other, and although she doesn't want an affair and he doesn't want to tear her from her life which she claims is not unhappy - their chemistry can't be denied.  Sound cliche? It didn't feel like it while I was reading it.  Moyes never fails to give her characters so much depth that the reader can understand why they make the choices that they make even if they seem immoral.

Adultery is wrong, right? What about if your husband is dull, verbally abusive, absent, and also bribing victims of asbestos to not rat out his company? And what if your lover "cracks himself open" in letters that ache with tenderness and raw emotion.  Maybe you don't believe in soul mates or true love, but reading about it on warm summer breezy nights makes me believe.

The secondary love story centers on 32 year old Ellie, a determined feature writer who is in the midst of a torrid love affair with a married novelist.  She makes excuses for her affair and even after she befriends Rory who just happens to be into her and he's funny, single and awesome to be around, she can't quite seem to break the habit of the married guy.

Why can one affair be okay but another can't? Is adultery ever okay? What about when children are involved?

I loved when Rory attacked Ellie for her choices and said, "Every act has a consequence, Ellie.  In my view the world divides into people who can see that, and make a decision accordingly, and those who just go for what feels good at the time." Maybe humans are just blind to the consequences of their actions.  We don't have foresight, and that may be our biggest weakness when it comes to love.

I enjoyed my escape into another Jojo Moyes love novel, and if you are in the mood for a romantic escape this love story might be just what you need as the cicadas sing their end of summer song.

"The Good Girl": A 'Gone Girl'-esque Thriller Worth the Ride"

After I picked my jaw up off the floor when I finished "The Good Girl" by Mary Kubica, I realized that I was going to miss the characters.

It's a thriller which isn't always my favorite genre, and it's also about the abduction of a young woman and the events that lead up to the abduction as well as the events that come after the abduction similar to the very popular "Gone Girl." Just like "Gone Girl," it's plot driven with many surprising twists and turns.  There are psychological realizations as the story unfolds, and clues that lead the reader to believe one thing, when often the opposite occurs.

The difference between this and many of the other thrillers like the wildly popular "Gone Girl" and  "The Girl on the Train" is that I actually found myself caring about each of the characters in this book.  With the all the cray cray characters in other thrillers, I end up not really caring what happens to them, and often race to the end just to finish instead of savoring the journey of the thrill ride. Kubica sets up a story worth caring about with family dysfunction, a surprising love story, and deeply flawed but likable and relatable people at the center of the plot.

The story revolves around Mia, the youngest daughter of a high profile Chicago Judge who is abducted by Colin Thatcher. Colin has disdain for this woman of privilege even though he takes pity on her. Although she comes from a wealthy family, Mia, unlike her older sister, is not a daddy's girl and more often reveals herself as a huge disappointment to her father so much so that she is barely scraping by as an art teacher.  The reader gets her mother Eve's perspective, the abductor's perspective, and Gabe's perspective (the detective who tirelessly searches for Mia).  It is only at the very end of the book that we hear from Mia, and it's a twist that I wasn't expecting (hence having to pick my jaw up off the floor when I finished the novel).

So much happens in the span of the book as the characters reveal themselves.  While they spend days and months together in a secluded cabin in Grand Marais, they begin to disclose the stories of their lives. We learn about Colin's troubled past and his touching relationship with his mom.  He's a criminal, but I actually cared about him based his backstory and his actions with Mia. And as Mia opens up, we see her as "the good girl" - the quiet forgotten daughter, who didn't become a lawyer or fascinate her father.  She liked to have tea in secret with her mother and she would stay hidden during hide and seek sometimes for hours until someone found her.

Even Eve, whose weak nature allowed her husband to stomp on Mia's spirit, redeemed herself during the span of the novel.  Through her recollections of the past and the realizations after her daughter's abduction, she woke up to the abuse that both she and her daughter suffered under the judge's tyranny.

The brilliance for me in this novel is that Kubica chose to structure it with not only alternating narrator perspectives, but also with alternating time perspectives.  We learn clues to what happened to Mia by knowing what comes after the abduction, but it's in the before chapters that the tension mounts.  So smart.

There isn't much that I didn't like about Kubica's debut novel, and I am already looking forward to reading her 2nd book, "Pretty Baby" which was just released on July 28th, 2015 and has already received great reviews.

If you want a thriller that won't make you wish ill on the characters or think that the characters are getting exactly what they deserved, Mary Kubica's "The Good Girl" is the perfect book to take with you on your last breath of summer beach trips - or maybe even take it with you to your secluded cabin up north which as Kubica knows is the perfect place to hide away from the world.

"The Sky is Everywhere": Fall in Love With Jandy Nelson's Ability to Capture First Love

"Years ago, I crashed in Gram's garden and Big asked me what I was doing.  I told him I was looking up at the sky.  He said, 'That's a misconception, Lennie, the sky is everywhere, it begins at your feet." 

I love when I finish a book and I can't stop smiling.

Or thinking about it.

Or  I'm awestruck of the author who created such lovely sentences and such lovely characters who are passionate, intricate, and people who I'd like to know.

I feel lucky that I've now read both of Jandy Nelson's YA books.  I'll Give You The Sun was a miracle, and now that I've read The Sky is Everywhere, I realize that Jandy Nelson is even more gifted and amazing than I thought.

Although I read "The Sky is Everywhere" in huge helpings and raced to the end, I didn't really want it to end because that means that Lennie with her beautiful hair and Joe Fontaine with his beautiful eyelashes would no longer be a big part of my day.  I wouldn't get the chance to feel their love story unfold.

The novel tells the story of 17 year old Lennie Walker whose sister, Bailey, died suddenly and Lennie who always allowed her sister to overshadow her suddenly realizes she needs to be her own person and doesn't really know who she is.  She starts to lust after boys, and begins to really question why her mother hasn't contacted her in 16 years, and she alienates the people who matter to her most.

And then she meets the new boy in band, Joe Fontaine, who just happens to be a music prodigy, highly romantic, and from Paris.

SCORE.

Even more, he really seems to get her, he helps her to tap into her musical genius, and he's okay with the fact that her family is kind of crazy.

BUT . . . Lennie has a slight issue.  Her sister's boyfriend, Toby keeps showing up to find comfort from his loss.  His grief over Bailey's death equals her own and when they get together it's like they are trying to piece Bailey back together by their electric grief. Although Lennie knows that it's wrong to kiss Toby and put her hands all over him, something about his presence comforts her.  He's the only one who understands how much she misses her sister and the only one who understands how hard it is to live in a world without Bailey.

From the poems that Lennie leaves pretty much everywhere she goes to write her story into the air, to Gram's seductive roses, to Big's affinity to marry every woman in town, to Joe Fontaine's beautiful older brothers, to the way Lennie has read Wuthering Heights 23 times, Jandy Nelson created quirky but believable characters.  These are the kinds of people we wish we could be - talented, gorgeously creative, beautiful, deeply expressive, unapologetically passionate,  but most of all they are believable.

I believed the love story between Joe and Lennie.

I believed the shared grief between Lennie and Toby.

I believed Gram's eccentricities and her obsession with painting green women.

Everything about this YA book works and it was lovely to read and be sucked into the storyline for a few days.  I only hope that Jandy Nelson hurries up and writes another magical creation soon.

I'm ready for more.