Review: Literacy and Longing in LA

Literacy and Longing in LA by Jennifer Kaufman and Karen Mack
2 1/2 stars

Summary (from Publisher's Weekly): Dora, at 35, is a twice-divorced former young reporter on the rise at the L.A. Times. . . Dora's depressed, and she only leaves the house to stalk [2nd ex] Palmer and buy more books. At the bookstore, she meets elegantly scraggly comp lit Ph.D. Fred, and they begin an unlikely courtship. Dora is soon surprised by Fred's invitation to meet his mother, Bea, whom Dora likes instantly, all the more so when she learns Bea is also raising Harper, the six-year-old daughter of Fred's troubled sister. The bond between Bea and Dora gives Dora something she never had with her own, alcoholic mother, and helps her make decisions that bring her life back into focus.

My thoughts: I wanted to like this book more than I did. On paper, it was perfect for me - iblioholism and chick lit! And I didn't hate it, it did have some good bits. But I just couldn't really get into Dora. She deals with her depression by going on "book binges"- retreating to her bathtub with a stack of books and a bottle of wine for a weekend or longer. It sounds wonderful to me and, apart from the wine, a very non-harmful way to cope. If I could bring myself to take books into the bath, I'd give it a try. But her family and friends think it's terrible and they all seem to focus on books as the bad part, rather than Dora's obvious borderline-alcoholism and actual depression.

Throughout the book, Dora often seems to blame reading for her state of mind. I was amused by her zealous conversion to "popular" literature like Tom Clancy and Danielle Steel, finally realizing that not every book has to be a weighty tome. It seems like she's turned a corner, but a later scene where she realizes that reading hasn't been helping her deal with reality (which I'd say was her fault, rather than books themselves) will horrify any book-lover.

And yet, I had to check backwards in the book to see why she was depressed - oh yeah, the divorce and quitting her job. She struck me as a spoiled woman who was stuck in a rut (she lives in a great apartment and lives on a - dwindling - trust fund) rather than someone who was really in pain. She's also a literary snob and an appearance snob (in one scene she's quite shocked by how her sister Virginia, who has a baby, doesn't weigh 80 pounds and dress like a model, like everyone else in LA).

Harper and Bea were delightful - I'd have wanted to adopt them, too. They bring warmth and reality into Dora's life and, with the help of her sister, she's able to discover that she actually wants to be much more conventional (that is, bourgeois) than she realized. Fred is a complete snot and often a heartless jerk - he basically serves to show Dora that Palmer is actually a really great guy. The fact that Palmer seems to have had no problem flirting with Dora and then dumping his live-in, almost-fiancee lowered his great-guy status a bit for me, but it was in the name of a happy ending, so okay.

The "Book List" at the end was very strange. I fully expected to have a bibliography in such a bookish book, but this lists every author, artist, poet or songwriter mentioned, starting with the very first quotation before the title page. It seemed really weird to me that, having already included the citation for the poem by Ted Kooser (including mentioning that he's the Poet Laureate) they then feel the need to put "Ted Kooser, poet" in their list. They even include Mother Teresa, "nun/author"! And will it come as a shock to me that Cinderella is a "children's tale"? There's no extra information, just the title and author of a book or a person's name and their vocation. I can't figure out if it was supposed to be tongue-in-cheek, if they think we're all really stupid or if they just thought it would be fun to make a list.

Final grumble (which isn't really their fault and it's part of the story) - apparently Dr. Seuss wasn't very fond of children, which Dora finds out when she takes Bea and Harper on a trip to his hometown. I didn't need to know that. :(

Review: Inkheart

Inkheart by Cornelia Funke

Summary: One night when she is very small, Meggie's father Mo reads aloud from a book called Inkheart and their lives are never the same. Years later, Meggie and Mo find themselves in the middle of an adventure straight out of a storybook - literally. Villains escaped that night and Meggie's mother disappeared. Now only Meggie can change the course of the story and bring about a happy ending.

My thoughts: I really, really liked the premise of this book - reading characters out of a story. Who hasn't wanted to see their favourites in the flesh? I liked Meggie and the other characters, I wanted to know what would happen, I enjoyed the quotes at the start of each chapter and liked that Meggie enjoyed classic books. The only thing was that at 560 pages, it seemed realllly long to me for a kids' book (yeah, I know, enormous Harry Potters, etc...). I found myself wishing it would end and feeling that it could've been condensed. There seemed to be a lot of to-ing and fro-ing that I could've done without. But it was a big hit with young readers, so I have to say that the kids are better readers than I am to not feel tired partway through. Still, it's a very imaginative and intelligent book - perhaps my brain just wasn't up for it this month.

(There were quite a few quotes from non-children's book The Princess Bride and a few times I found myself wishing I was reading it instead. Apparently I need to dig my copy out of storage and immerse myself in Westley and Buttercup.)

Review: So Many Books, So Little Time

So Many Books, So Little Time by Sara Nelson

This is a hot topic in the book blogosphere right now, thanks to the Something About Me Challenge and the Bibliography Challenge. If you want to hear any more about it from little ol' me, read on...

First off, I have to say that I reacted to Nelson like a character in a book, rather than the author. So I'm just going with that - I do know she's a real person who has the right to read and write and think whatever she likes.

- Overall, I liked the book well enough - I got through it quickly and was kept pretty interested. It was interesting to see how the books were affecting her, what thoughts they brought to her mind or how they related to what was happening in her life. But it didn't really seem like a chronicle of a "year of passionate reading." Several of our Something About Me-ers mentioned the passion in the "passionate reading" didn't come through and I agree. Becky summed it up really well: "...if it had been called "Thoughts on the Books I've Read This Year" instead I would have thought it delivered just fine."

- I also agree with About Me-er Alisonwonderland who says she didn't feel very engaged with Nelson - "a couple of times i found myself thinking that many of the book bloggers i know could have written this book at least as well, if not better." (Note - I do not include myself in that category!)

- Quite a few times Nelson reminded me of that Booking Through Thursday question about being a "Goldilocks reader" - she couldn't get into the book if things weren't just right. For someone who is a "passionate" reader, she seemed awfully picky. I didn't understand her Rule #1 that "location, location, location" applies to books as much as real estate. To me, if you really want to read a book, I don't think it matters which living room/state/weather zone you're sitting in. In one of her first entries, she ended up reading the only English book in the house - a biography of a Russian author whose family owned the place - during one vacation because she couldn't get into the one book she'd brought along because she felt it didn't match the Russia-like setting of the ski lodge. I found that really extreme and almost a kind of self-punishment for bringing the "wrong" book with her.

- Nelson claims (quite a few times) that she's not much of a re-reader: "And life is short, why waste time on something you already know, when you can discover something exciting and new?" This is how I feel; I have a few very beloved books and some that I've read a couple of times, but most of my books go right back to the library and that's the end of them, though I thank them for their company. But for someone who claims not to be much of a re-reader, she does it a lot in just one year of reading - I lost count, but I think there were at least 8 books that she'd read before. I think she needs to just admit she's a re-reader - it's not like there's anything wrong with it, it's good to have beloved books. And if you own as many books as she does in her cherry-shelved library, it seems odd you wouldn't re-read them. (But then, I'm not much for owning books, but I think I'm in the minority there.)

- She's a bit of a snob - in one of the appendices, she mentions trying out a Mary Higgins Clark mass market paperback and has to justify it by saying she was on a plane and didn't really remember much about it. I don't know anything about Mary Higgins Clark, but the disdain for mass market paperbacks and a hugely popular author irked me.

- She puts her planned reading list for the year in one of the appendices and no wonder she barely read any of them (2, I think)! They were almost all things she clearly didn't enjoy reading - poetry, short stories, and nonfiction (all of which she admits to not particularly enjoying) and a bunch of classics she hadn't gotten to yet. With a list like that, she was bound to "fail" (in the sense of not reading what she planned to read, I don't think she really did fail). I think we all have lists of "worthy" titles we'd like to get to, but to think you're going to do them all in a year seems like a lot of pressure.

- I was totally with her on this statement: "I have to read and read and read, all the while knowing that the more aggressively I pursue my passion, the sooner it will end and then I will be bereft." I've put off finishing books I'm loving so that I can keep that bereft feeling at bay a while longer.

- I do agree with her Rule #2 - timing. There are certainly books that you can't get into because you're too young, there's too much going on in your life and you're distracted, they're too close to something you can't face right now, or they're heavy and you need fluffy or they're fluffy and you want solid.

- I'm definitely a "double-booker, " too. I pretty much always have one book in my bag for the commute and errands and one by my bed, and fairly often another one somewhere in the house. She mentions being careful they're separate enough to not get them mixed up in your head. This happened to me earlier this year - I was reading 2 historical novels set in the Maritimes for 2 different book clubs. I picked up one and couldn't figure out where the narrator's many siblings and drunk father had got to and why they were dirt poor and lived in the city all of a sudden. (Not to mention that the narrator was now a boy instead of a girl!)

- I agreed with her about not really liking "publishing phenomena" - the books that are currently the talk of the town. It's nicer to either discover them first before you hear too much about them or to read them many years after the hype has died down.

- Not liking Mitch Albom and his touchy-feely pseudo-spiritual drivel (though I had to read The 5 People You Meet in Heaven for book club and she tried Tuesdays with Morrie after a friend suggested it.)

- I loved The Crimson Petal and the White and Slammerkin, too!

- One thing that I found quite funny - she really got into A Million Little Pieces and actually found it helpful to her marriage. I wonder how she felt when she discovered it was a sham? (Maybe the message still stayed the same, which was all that mattered.)

Bibliography challenge

My stars, another one! Historia brings us the Bibliography Challenge. Read 3 books about books between Oct 1 - December 31. Since cross-overs are allowed and the Something About Me ladies have chosen so many bookish books, I can do that!

Here are my three:
1. Polysyllabic Spree by Nick Hornby
2. So Many Books, So Little Time by Sara Nelson
3. Inkheart by Cornelia Funke

Here are some extras/alternates:
1. Sixpence House: lost in a town of books by Paul Collins
2. Literacy and Longing in LA by Jennifer Kaufman and Karen Mack