Review: Dave Barry's Book of Bad Songs

Dave Barry's Book of Bad Songs by Dave Barry
4 stars


Reasons for reading: For keeping me laughing since I was a kid, I'm celebrating Dave's July 3, 1947 birthday this month for Celebrate the Author

From the publisher: "When funny man Dave Barry asked readers about their least favorite tunes, he though he was penning just another installment of his weekly syndicated humor column. But the witty writer was flabbergasted by the response. "I have never written a column that got a bigger response than the one announcing the Bad song survey," Barry wrote. "More than ten thousand readers voted, and the cards are still coming in."

Based on the results from Dave Barry's monumental reader survey, Dave Barry's book of bad Songs is a compilation of some of the worst songs ever written, including such special categories as Teen Death songs, songs That People Always Get Wrong, songs women Hate, and, of course, Weenie Music."


Warning at the beginning of the book: "Do not read this book. It will put bad songs into your brain."


My thoughts: It's classic Dave Barry - hilarious, snarky, and written in his odd signature style. It only gets 4 stars simply because it was so short! The synopsis covers the basics - after a discussion of the bad song survey (including the scary rabidness of Neil Diamond and Barry Manilow fans), it's broken up into the different "genres." I'm glad I haven't heard most of the "Songs Women Really Hate" - I probably would have smashed the stereo!

It's kind of funny, some of the songs I wouldn't really have classified as bad, until I saw the lyrics written down. I then realized just how bad a song can be. I'd also never realized how many songs rely almost solely on the use of "na" and "wo" to flesh them out.

The worst song honour was hotly contested, but it went to MacArthur Park. People are confused by and don't care about that cake left out in the rain. There's also a lot of discussion of A Horse With No Name, and I agree with the book (and, from a quick Google, some stand-up comedians) - name the damn horse, you're in the desert with nothing to do!

Review: The Chili Queen

The Chili Queen by Sandra Dallas
3.5 stars


Reasons for reading: Sounded good and won the Spur Award; Western for the Genre Challenge and Profession title for the What's in a Name? Challenge


Description: "Life may have been hard on Addie French, but when she meets friendless Emma Roby on a train, all her protective instincts emerge. Emma's brother is seeing her off to Nalgitas to marry a man she has never met. And Emma seems like a lost soul to Addie-someone who needs Addie's savvy and wary eye. It isn't often that Addie is drawn to anyone as a friend, but Emma seems different somehow. When Emma's prospective fails to show up at the train depot, Addie breaks all her principles to shelter the girl at her brothel, The Chili Queen. But once Emma enters Addie's life, the secrets that unfold and schemes that are hatched cause both women to question everything they thought they knew."


First line: "As the train pulled into the shabby station at Palestine, Kansas, the pinch-faced farmers and their wives in their rusty black-wool best lined up along the tracks like the teeth of a rake."

My thoughts: I don't think I'd ever read a Western before, so this was a new experience. I thought it was really cool to read a Western written by a woman - I always associate them with old guys like Louis L'Amour and Zane Grey.

The book is told in four parts, one for each main character - Addie French, madam of The Chili Queen; Ned Partner, bank robber; Emma Roby, a mail-order bride; and Welcome, a former slave turned cook at the whorehouse. It's the 1880's and most of the action takes place in New Mexico. I liked this device - it was an interesting way to reveal more information about the characters and what had really happened. Because things aren't always as they seem in this story, which makes for a few twists.

The tone of the story is a bit confusing - it's mostly quite light ("zesty" as one reviewer described it) but it also contains one of the most horrible descriptions of rape and murder I've ever read, as well as a few other grisly scenes. While they helped to shed light on the characters' past lives, it was a bit jarring to come upon these terrible things in what seemed like it was going to be rather a bank-robbing romp.

The verdict: Despite the tone issue, I think I'd read another book by Sandra Dallas (isn't that the perfect Western-author name?). Yee-haw!

Review: Secret Keepers

Secret Keepers by Mindy Friddle
3.75 stars

Reasons for reading: I loved Friddle's first book, The Garden Angel; this is my second book for the Southern Challenge, y'all!

Summary: "At age seventy-two, Emma Hanley plans to escape small-town Palmetto, South Carolina, and travel the globe. But when her fickle husband dies in undignified circumstances, Emma finds herself juggling the needs of her adult children. Her once free-spirited daughter Dora turns to compulsive shopping and a controlling husband to forget her wayward past. Her son Bobby still lives with her, afflicted with an illness that robbed him of his childhood promise. When Dora’s old flame Jake Cary returns to Palmetto with a broken heart and a gift for gardening, the town becomes filled with mysterious, potent botanicals and memories long forgotten. Soon enough, Jake and his ragtag group of helpers begin to unearth the secrets that have divided the Hanleys for decades."

First line: "The town had moved the Confederate Monument from the square to the gates of Springforth Cemetery some twenty years after the War of Northern Aggression, and General Robert E. Lee - who stood atop the mossy marble with a scowl - had never quite recovered."

My thoughts: Both The Garden Angel and this book deal with mental illness (agorophobia and schizophrenia), magical inanimate objects (a house and flowers), and a death bringing on family problems and reconciliations (sometimes). I preferred the enchanted house to the enchanted flowers, but I do like the idea of the "secret keeper" flowers that smell like your absolute favourite scent in the world - it revealed a lot about the characters. I can't think what I would encounter in one of them!

I seem to be reading quite a few books set in the 80's this year - it seems a bit of a trend in "historical fiction." I am old, my childhood has become historical fiction! This is the second one in which the Vietnam War played a large role, which surprises me. I hadn't really realized it was still affecting people's lives well into the 80's, although of course it makes sense. Being Canadian, I guess it was just never a factor in the life of anyone I knew.

I think those references and the rather annoyingly cryptic pronouncements of schizophrenic Bobby made me like this book a bit less than The Garden Angel. But it's still an enjoyable book. Apart from the Vietnam stuff, I did like Jake and his ragtag band of gardeners, the Blooming Idiots. Dora's ultra-religious husband (who makes the family attend a church set up in what was once a mall) was awful and I liked her teenage son's efforts to escape his rigid control by - how rebellious - visiting his grandmother!

This book is set in my beloved South Carolina and the Southern-ness comes through well, especially in the hot weather and lush vegetation, as well as Emma Hanley coming from a fallen aristocratic family whose ancestral home is now inhabited by bums.

Things are wrapped up nicely at the end, with happy endings (and beginnings) for everyone who deserves them.

Themed Reading Challenge Wrap-Up

Finished, hooray! My theme was books about sisters. I have to say, not as interesting as my theme last year, which was vampires. I just didn't seem to have enough books with a cool theme in my to-read list this time. Still, thanks to Wendy for hosting it again, it's a great idea - I just need to pick a better theme next year!

1. Sugar Daddy by Lisa Kleypas
2. The House at Riverton by Kate Morton
3. Bewitching Season by Marissa Doyle
4. The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox by Maggie O'Farrell

Given that I have no siblings, I was probably missing a big chunk of what you need to appreciate books about sisters! But it was still interesting to read about their relationships - some made me wish I had a sister, some made me glad I don't!

The House at Riverton was my favourite, followed by The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox.

Review: Sundays at Tiffany's

Sundays at Tiffany's by James Patterson and Gabrielle Charbonnet
2 stars

Reasons for reading: Turned out the book I'd taken on a trip was one I'd already read (darn British titles being changed in North America!), so I picked this up at the drugstore based on my Holly Golightly-like love for Tiffany's; it ended up accidentally being my 2nd James Patterson book so is now on my Seconds Challenge list

Barnes & Noble Summary: "Jane grew up very rich and very lonely. Her mother was much too busy with her Broadway theater company to be close to her nervous, introspective daughter. In fact, Jane had only one true friend, and he was imaginary. For years, "Michael" nurtured her in her solitude, amusing and comforting her with jokes and camaraderie. Decades later, Jane is still lonely and, though she is a successful playwright, still chained to her mother. Then one day, as if magically, Michael reappears. And this time he's real… "

My thoughts: This was an little odd book. Mr. Thriller Patterson teaming up with a children's author? Strange. I was intrigued by the premise, it's a cute idea - an imaginary friend coming back into one's life as an adult. But it's never really explained why Michael comes back, why Jane remembered him when all other kids forget, what exactly he is and why he's suddenly human... I guess the answer is supposed to be that they're soul-mates and it's all about the power of love, which is a theme I'm in favour of, but the whole thing was just a bit too lightweight for me.

The verdict: Romance and soul-mates, yay! New York theatre people, yay! Afternoons spent at Tiffany's and then hot fudge sundaes at a swanky hotel, yay! But overall...meh.

Celebrating Maurice Sendak

For Celebrate the Author this month, I'm celebrating Maurice Sendak, who certainly deserves it! He was born June 10, 1928. I get many compilments on my "Where the Wild Things Are" t-shirt. And I had the pleasure of re-reading WTWTA it to my 3-year-old niece this month, and it was lovely - she was captivated. Best children's book ever. And I have such fond memories of singing the songs from Really Rosie when I was a kid - I wanted to put it on as a play!

Maurice Sendak = awesome.

But I had to pick a book I hadn't read of Sendak's, which was a challenge. I found Brundibar - a picture book version of "a Czech opera for children that was performed fifty-five times by the children of Terezin, the Nazi concentration camp." I didn't know that until just now, when I looked it up, although the Jews in the pictures are wearing prominent yellow stars on their coats and there are Nazi-looking uniforms in the town, so I knew it had something to do with that period.

Here's the story: "When Aninku and Pepicek discover one morning that their mother is sick, they rush to town for milk to make her better. Their attempt to earn money by singing is thwarted by a bullying, bellowing hurdy-gurdy grinder, Brundibar, who tyrannizes the town square and chases all other street musicians away. Befriended by three intelligent talking animals and three hundred helpful schoolkids, brother and sister sing for the money to buy the milk, defeat the bully, and triumphantly return home."

It's a bit of a weird picture book, I have to say, but I was pleased by the triumphant ending. The artwork is classic Sendak - the kids look like his kids and the baker in town is straight out of In the Night Kitchen. It would be a good read aloud for 7 or 8 year-0lds, especially the part about bullying. And it would definitely be good to pair with units on Anne Frank for older elementary school kids.

Review: The Help

The Help by Kathryn Stockett
4.5 stars


Reasons for reading: Maggie's endorsement at Maggie Reads; first book for the Southern Reading Challenge 2009

Description: "Twenty-two-year-old Skeeter has just returned home after graduating from Ole Miss. She may have a degree, but it is 1962, Mississippi, and her mother will not be happy till Skeeter has a ring on her finger. Skeeter would normally find solace with her beloved maid Constantine, the woman who raised her, but Constantine has disappeared and no one will tell Skeeter where she has gone.

Aibileen is a black maid, a wise, regal woman raising her seventeenth white child. Something has shifted inside her after the loss of her own son, who died while his bosses looked the other way. She is devoted to the little girl she looks after, though she knows both their hearts may be broken.

Minny, Aibileen's best friend, is short, fat, and perhaps the sassiest woman in Mississippi. She can cook like nobody's business, but she can't mind her tongue, so she's lost yet another job. Minny finally finds a position working for someone too new to town to know her reputation. But her new boss has secrets of her own.

Seemingly as different from one another as can be, these women will nonetheless come together for a clandestine project that will put them all at risk. And why? Because they are suffocating within the lines that define their town and their times. And sometimes lines are made to be crossed."

My thoughts: I really enjoyed the 3 narrators - sometimes that device can be annoying, but Aibileen, Skeeter, and Minny's voices were all very different and all well done. Also, dialect is sometimes annoying to see written down, but Aibileen and Minny's suited them well and weren't written in an awkward way. There's so much in this book - hatred, love, affection, sadness, hope, humour, warmth... It's a really interesting portrait of a time when change was starting to come.

I found the disconnect in the white Southerners' minds quite astonishing- how can black women be good enough to raise white women's children, cook their food, and clean their houses, but they can't use the same toilet or cutlery? They can't shop at the white grocery store unless they're shopping for their employers, yet aren't they just as black in their uniform as out of it? They think of black people as dirty, yet have no problem with them feeding, bathing, and holding their children? The way people can justify things like in their minds that is incredible.

I also liked that Stockett showed the affection between black women and the children they look after and sometimes even the older women whose lives they're much more involved in than those ladies would like to admit. Some employers are actually very kind, some are cruel, some are just stupid.

I don't want to give much away, but there are parts that made me laugh, made me want to cheer, made me angry, and made me sad. It's a great read.

The verdict: I agree with the author that these are some of the best lines in the book and I think they sum it up well: "We are just two people. Not that much separates us. Not nearly as much as I'd thought."