Setting the Bar

I See You Everywhere by Julia Glass tells the story of two sisters and their ever so complicated relationships. Louisa is the older, more serious and more studious of the two sisters. She wants what everyone conventionally wants - a career, a marriage, 2.5 children and a home in the suburbs, but she can’t ever seem to get it. Her sister, Clement, is the wilder version - she is commitment phobic in relation to her sister, she changes jobs very often and doesn’t care if she has children or not. The book covers 25 years in their relationship, beginning 1980.

Most of the reviewers didn’t particularly enjoy this book but I found that I did. I really liked the diarized style and alternating chapters, although sometimes it was hard to follow who was talk about what when. I loved her style of writing and it was very accessible. I think that I really enjoyed this novel because my sister and I are like the sisters in this novel, albeit minus the competition for men’s attention. I could relate to the antagonism that Louisa and Clem have and I thought that Julia Glass really got that aspect of the relationship down pat.

Get this one out of the library.

Book 6/100.

My husband is convinced that my penchant for Woody Allen films is because I’m from New York and because Woody Allen’s humor is so much based upon his experiences as a neurotic Jew in New York. I’ve known my share of neurotic New York Jews in my time, which may also be why his films are close to my heart.

This movie is Woody Allen’s attempt to go all Greek comedy/tragedy on his fans.  I loved it!  Allen stars as Lenny Weinrib. Lenny is married to Amanda Sloan, played by Helena Bonham Carter, and Amanda is an ambitious art dealer who longs to own an art gallery and who will stop at nothing in attaining that goal. Amanda also longs to have a child and convinces a reluctant Lenny to adopt a baby boy. Lenny becomes obsessed with finding their son’s biological mother. This movie is about his pursuit of that goal and his relationship with the biological mother of his child - a porn-star and high pitched stripper and wanna-be actress played by Mira Sorvino.

I really enjoyed this movie - it was Woody Allen humor combined with a sensitivity that, quite frankly, surprised me (because I usually don’t associated sensitivity with Woody Allen!).  I liked how Allen’s character tries so hard to help the biological mother of his child and, in doing so, is forced to acknowledge that his own marriage is failing and is forced to begin to work on that.  I thought that Mira Sorvino was absolutely wonderful and that her win of the Oscar for her role was well-deserved. I wished that Helena Bonham Carter, a magnificent actress in her own right, had been given more time to get into her character and develop it - I actually, on some level, connected with her character more and really wanted to see more of her, her struggles and her development as a person because she had her own struggles; her character, in some sense, was much more fascinating to me, than the others.

All in all, though, I loved this movie and would recommend it to anyone.

This is a collection of five fairy tales composed by J.K. Rowling herself, complete with commentary by Professor Albus Dumbledore himself.  Each tale contains some nugget of wisdom: true friendship, how love can redeem and help us all, and that true magic, like Santa Clause or the tooth fairy, exists in everyone’s heart.

If you are a Harry Potter fan, then this book must be added to your collection. I adored the stories and the commentary that was included.  The stories were touching and beautiful, even in their simplicity. They were very similar to Aesop’s tales and the Grimm fairy tales or the fairy tales written by Hans Christian Anderson.  The tales are wholesome and convey morals that are clearly important to our everyday lives: do unto others as you would have others do unto you, the Dark Arts being regulated or barred outright and the benefit of working together to solve intricate and complicated problems (all of which certain lame duck Presidents would be better to learn).

This is a beautiful book that should be added to everyone’s collection.

Book 5/100

The main character and narrator of The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson is everything that I would expect a contemporary narrator to be - he’s cynical and extremely smart. In his pre-accident days, he was a porn star and was beautiful - he made a lot of money doing that. When we first meet him, he is driving a car very quickly down a dark, windy road, drunk, high and doing shots of whiskey as he’s going along. He becomes distracted by what looks like a storm of arrows and crashes the car. The car rolls and spins down into a ravine and bursts into flame, burning the majority of the narrator’s body.

He is rescued and hospitalized. As he recovers, slowly but surely, he meets Marianne Engthal - a beautiful, sexy, talented sculptress that is also a patient at the same hospital, and who insists that the were lovers in medieval Germany. During Marianne’s telling of their love story during medieval times, he was badly burned during a skirmish in which his mercenary troop fought with another band of mercenaries and she, as a nun, was made responsible for his care. As he recovers in the hospital, and later in her beautiful home, he gains stregnth from the love stories that she tells him.

I loved this book - it was such a masterful first piece - I couldn’t put it down. Andrew Davidson creates a character that is utterly self-interested, makes no excuses for being self interested and then being only interested in Marianne.  I actually didn’t mind the cynicism and selfishness - unlike Holden Caulfield, to some, in The Catcher in the Rye, this character doesn’t whine or bemoan his fate. However, he grows during the course of the novel in such amazing ways. You can see his soul reawaken and begin to flourish as the novel goes on and his recovery progresses.

The story itself is also touching - it’s a love story between Marianne and the narrator that goes back centuries but also between the other characters that Marianne introduces us to. Such a wonderful novel…go out and get it now.

Book 4/100

The first Jennifer Weiner book that I read was Good In Bed and I proceeded to read each and every book thereafter. Yes, I have a penchant for chick lit books, at least certain books by certain authors and Jennifer Weiner is one of those authors. So, when I saw that Jennifer had a new book out starring the character, Candace, that I had fallen in love with in Good in Bed I immediately requested it from the library.

This novel takes place thirteen years after Good in Bed did and features Cannie, happily married, trying to deal with her rebellious thirteen year old daughter Joy. Cannie is also trying to juggling a writing career with being a mom to Joy, who has to wear hearing aids,  and trying to find a surrogate mother to carry the embryo that her husband and she have created. As Joy’s bat mitzvah approaches, the rebelliousness also seems to crescendo, with Joy stealing credit cards, buying expensive designer dresses and flying to Los Angeles, all on the stolen credit cards, in an attempt to meet her maternal grandfather.

Jennifer Weiner’s signature, simple style re-appears in this book. Generally, I would say that a book in this style makes it straightforward and easy to follow, but she alternates chapters between Cannie’s viewpoint and Joy’s viewpoint. While Joy has some wonderful, funny insight into Cannie’s overprotectiveness, the switching between viewpoints is jerky and oftentimes, it’s really difficult to determine who is talking, as each person uses the first person voice and Jennifer doesn’t always mention the other character until, at least, halfway down the first page. I felt like there were way too many coincidences that allowed all of the characters to be successful and for the novel to be concluded in a neat bow. Cannie hadn’t learned anything in 13 years - she’s still neurotic and obsessive about her weight and she’s channeling her insecurities into her overprotectiveness of Joy. The twists, especially in the final chapters of the book, were just plain wrong and made me SO mad, that I almost stopped reading, mere chapters to the end of the book.

This is a really light read but nothing to break your back getting.

Book 3/100

Lately, I have been feeling nostalgic, so I’ve been going through movies that I used to watch A LOT when I was younger and The Neverending Story was one of these.  This movie stars Noah Hathaway as Atreyu and Barret Oliver as Bastion. Bastion is about twelve years old and has recently lost his mother. He is also a mediocre student that is constantly bullied. Both Bastion and his father are still trying to deal with the loss of the mother. One day, on his way to school, Bastion sneaks into a bookstore in order to avoid the bullies. While there, he picks up a book with a nice symbol on it called the Neverending Story, which he takes to school with him and reads in the attic, instead of going to class.

The story is about an imaginary world, called Fantasia, that is governed by a child emperess, has all sorts of imaginary creatures of every shape and size and which is being attacked by “The Nothing.” The Emperess has selected a mighty warrior - Atreyu - to search for the cure. So Atreyu sets out, exploring all of Fantasia in an effort to find the cure. Bastion follows all of Atreyu’s actions by reading the book and is actually a part of the story.

I thoroughly enjoyed this movie - it was cute, fun and probably ahead of its time with regards to special effects when it came out. I really enjoyed how true it remained to the book that it was based on. This was a pretty good family movie.

There has been a lot in the news and the mainstream media about the Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints, especially in the light of Warren Jeffs’ conviction in November of 2007 for conspiracy to commit statutory rape. I elected to read Escape by Carolyn Jessop, who was instrumental in helping to convict Warren Jeffs at trial.  I had a morbid curiosity about what life on the inside was really and truly like, especially since the Latter Day Saints, known popularly as Mormons, had pretty much shunned the FLDS.

In April of 2003, seventeen years after marrying into a polygamous family, Carolyn Jessop left her husband, his plethora of children and his five other wives with her eight children, one of whom was severely handicapped and required constant medication and attention. She became the first woman to get full legal custody in a contested lawsuit involving the FLDS. In this memoir, Carolyn Jessop recounts her early life in the sect in Arizona and Texas and the horrid experiences that she had in a plural family. She also recounts how she has managed to escape a sect where people are not allowed to breath, seemingly, without permission with someone, either a husband or the leader of the sect, saying that it is all right to do so.

The story could have led to so much more of a wonderful book than it did. The writing was awful and was exceptionally elementary.  It was painful in most parts. I felt like a twelve year old could have done a much better job in writing this book and when Ms. Jessop spoke about how smart she was and how educated and what good grades that she got, I snorted in disbelief because it was awful. It was just plain awful. 

Definitely one that you can pass.

Book number 2/100

My sister lent me Chasing Harry Winston by Lauren Weisberger and read by Lily Rabe to listen to while I am driving. I was really happy that she lent it to me and that I did not waste my money on this garbage.

This novel follows three friends over the course of a year. Emmie is about to turn thirty and is very family focussed. She totally wants to be married and bearing children; however her boyfriend of five years - you know, the one that she was destined to marry and have kids with - has dumped her for a personal trainer ten years their junior, thereby ruining her dreams of family and marriage by thirty. Her friends - the other two women in the trio - insist that her gig as a chef and the world travel that it affords her enable her to have global hookups galore and this will totally cure her of the breakup woes. Adriana is the local sexpot and also a gorgeous Brazilian model type, whose parents have been footing the bill for everything from her car and insanely expensive penthouse apartment to her clothing and vacations. The trio thinks that monogamy will solve all of Adriana’s problems, hands down. Leigh, the third woman in the trio, has the seemingly perfect life. She has a job as a literary editor and is about to get married to the perfect guy. But is her life really perfect? She’s not so sure after she meets her newest client - prize winning author Jesse Chapman.

There is no plot and absolutely negative character development in this novel. The women are shallow, selfish and vapid and quite frankly, really difficult to relate to. No one really feels like they do right? And no one really has supermodel parents paying for their penthouse apartments for them right, let alone have magazine writing gigs falling into their laps without them having to do so much as say one sentence to a publisher right? It was completely unreasonable and an unrealistic story. Also, there wasn’t any transition anywhere. At one point, when the CD’s changed and the story picked up again, I had to pop the CD out to make sure that I had put them in my CD-changer in my car in the right order because the chapters and sections were so disjointed and disconnected. It’s as if Weisberger put down the manuscript and picked it up again six months later, only to forget where she had left off.  I was also really turned off by the fact that the women only defined themselves by their relationships with men - I guess that is why they didn’t have any other girlfriends besides themselves because they were just so shallow and two dimensional.  It made me want to vomit completely and often.

So, to whoever is Ms. Weisberger’s editor: please do not let her get away with such absolute CRAP anymore.  Do your job, kick it back and tell her to throw it in the trash where it belongs. Tell her that she needs to shape up or ship out. 

This is a book that you can pass on.

So, I have Netflix On Demand wand was able to hook it up to the TiVo so that it streams onto my television and Wild Hogs was one of the movies that was recent and which had piqued my interest a little bit and it was short. So, I decided to watch it.  It stars Tim Allen, John Travolta, Martin Lawrence and William Macy. 

Four middle aged men are going through their mid-life crisis in this comedy. The four set off for a road trip to the West Coast on their bikes, in their leather and as a club: The Wild Hogs, in the hopes of experiencing change of life. They experience various ranges of tests that are supposed to challenge them from swimming naked in a watering hole frequented by families to having a face off with a real motorcycle gang - the Del Fuegos - after burning down their hole in the wall bar.

Quite frankly, not even Maris Tomei (who is beautiful in addition to be a really great actress) can save this fluffly piece of nothing.  It tries so hard to be funny that it fails miserably.  I longed for it to be done and the end couldn’t come fast enough - looking back on it, it’s 90 minutes that I will never get back. Not much happens to these men that causes them to grow up or change in any way, shape or form.  While Tim Allen or Martin Lawrence are ok in these roles and can totally ham it up, Travolta was awful.  William Macy, who normally chooses ok roles, was just out of his element here - he was trying too hard and hoping that hanging out with the likes of his co-stars would help him. 

Pass this one along.

People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks is the fictional account of an historical book that really and truly exists - the Sarajevo Haggadah. This Haggadah was written in fourteenth century Spain and is the oldest Sephardic Haggadah. It is known that it survived hundreds of purges over the years, from the Spanish Inquisition through Nazism during the 1930’s and 1940’s, through the war in the Balkans during the nineties. According to history, people of all traditions risked their lives and their families’ lives in order to ensure its safety and its continued life.

The book begins on a night in 1996, when it is extremely late and Dr. Hanna Heath, an Australian by birth, receives a phone call. Dr. Heath restores ancients manuscripts. She is informed that the Sarajevo Haggadah, which had disappeared in 1992, had resurfaced and the United Nations wants her to take a look at it and issue a report on its condition. Hanna eagerly agrees and discovers tiny clues - a pink stain, a white hair and other things - that lead her to discover where it originated.

Geraldine Brooks jumps in between time periods during this novel.  She alternates between relatively recent times (1996) and prior historical periods, including Nazi Europe during World War II, Venice and Spain. During each section, she introduces a cast of characters that are astounding in their depth and in their growth. As the book progresses, we are slowly and tantalizingly drawn into the book’s rich history and are teased towards who created this magnificent work of art. Geraldine Brooks did a masterful job of writing the book - the prose is rich and descriptive. As she was describing things, it was as if I was immersed in the world that she was describing, feeling the emotions that her characters were feeling and experiencing the life that they were experiencing.  It was phenomenal. It was also evident that she had carefully, diligently and lovingly researched her subject.

All in all it was a wonderful book that I would recommend to anyone.

Book number: 1 of 100