The SIlver Linings Playbook Review

I saw The Silver Linings Playbook a couple months ago, right before the Oscars, and enjoyed it immensely, so when I saw amazon offering the book for under $5, I picked it up, thinking it would be an entertaining read, which it was.

For those of you who saw the movie, the book is fairly similar. For those who didn't (first off you definitely should), The Silver Linings Playbook follows the story of Pat Peeples (not Solitano like the movie), a 34 year old NJ resident who is released from a mental health facility at the start of the book. In both the novel and the movie, the audience is unaware why he was committed in the first place but we know he has agreed to have some time apart from his wife, Nikki (referred to as "apart time" in the book) and that he desperately wants to win her back, although it is unknown what happened to drive them apart early on.

Pat moves back home with his parents. His father, Patrick, is obsessed with the Eagles. His emotions and relationships with his family are centered almost completely around whether the team wins or loses. Robert De Niro did a fantastic job portraying the father in the movie, but in the book, he's a distant figure who barely acknowledges Pat's existence. His mother is deeply unhappy and overly mothers the adult Pat, buying him clothes and babying him. Pat also sees an Indian therapist named Cliff (a huge Eagles fan himself who is part of a group of 50-something Indian fans who refer to themselves as the Asian Invasion and who go to all home games). He's on quite a bit of medication and no longer works (he used to be a history teacher).

Pat spends most of his days working out. He wants to be a better man for Nikki so he spends hours upon hours exercising. He also tries to catch up with the Eagles but he does not realize how long he has been gone for (four years) so he struggles to learn the new players and connect with his father and brother, the latter of whom buys him a Hank Baskett (yes, former Playboy bunny Kendra's husband) jersey. His father has been banned from games (clearly violent outbursts run in the family) but his brother, Jake, has season tickets and takes Pat to some games. He also starts reading classic novels that his wife teaches in her English class, from Catcher in the Rye to Huck Finn. Pat has come to believe that his life is a movie and that God will guarantee him a happy ending. Books without happy endings depress him further (although the movie has a far funnier scene where he throws a book out the window that he doesn't life).

He also reconnects with some old friends: Ronnie and his wife, Veronica. One night, they invite Pat over for dinner where he meets Tiffany, Veronica's younger sister, a depressed widow whose husband was a policeman before being killed in a drunk driving incident. Tiffany has dealt with her grief by becoming a bit of a nymphomaniac. She tries to proposition Pat, but he rebuffs her, explaining that he is married. Nevertheless, she begins to pursue him in a sense by following him when he goes for his 10 mile runs every day.

Eventually he learns that she has been scouting him to be her partner in a dance competition. The whole dance thing is very different from the movie - it isn't the culmination of the plot, nor is their victory part of a bet between Pat's father and one of his friends. In the movie, his training can be done as an actual montage, but in the book he tries to recreate a montage through writing, which is pretty funny.

I'm missing a lot here but I found the book to be pretty enjoyable. Not as directly funny as the movie but still an entertaining read. Pat seems more... special, I guess. Or maybe just drugged? This is hard to describe without being insulting. It seems like he's recovering from a brain injury, especially when he starts skipping his meds and he still narrates in a certain way. You'd think that an educated former teacher would seem more literate. His style of "speaking" was a bit off putting at times but the story is good enough that you can't help but cheer him on even as he finally figures out what happened between him and his wife. There is better closure at the end of the book than the movie in terms of his relationship with Nikki. Tiffany stays in the picture as well. Of course I kept picturing the actors when I was thinking about the characters, but that's ok. I'm not even a sports fan but I found all the Eagles love heartwarming (like the same way I feel when I watch Fever Pitch, one of my all time favorite movies. I couldn't care less about baseball but I just love that movie and appreciate the obsessive love that Jimmy Fallen has for the Red Sox) especially as you see Pat find his own little family unit among the Eagles fans.

The Silver Linings Playbook is definitely worth a read, especially if you also liked the movie!

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Reconstructing Amelia Review

"And off we go into this year's Gone Girl..." With that one line from Entertainment Weekly's review of Reconstructing Amelia, I immediately knew I'd be hooked and have to read this book. If you've read my reviews since Gone Girl, you might know that I've been looking for a book with a similar feel some  one of Gillian Flynn's novels. Reconstructing Amelia almost hit the spot - at least it got closer than anything else I've read recently. 

Young single mother Kate is a workaholic lawyer whose daughter Amelia Baron has killed herself by jumping off the roof of her exclusive, Brooklyn private school, Grace Hall - all because she supposedly plagiarized a paper on Virginia Woolf. This is shocking for anyone who knew pretty, brainy Amelia - never one of the popular girls, but a relatively happy, if slightly lonely sophomore.

Not long after the funeral Kate received an anonymous text message reading "Amelia didn't jump," which sets off her investigation into her daughter's death. Like Gone Girl, Amelia and Kate take turns narrating chapters - Kate from the present as she searches for clues into how/why Amelia died and Amelia from the months leading up to her death as she is tapped to join a secret society of girls and falls in love for the first time, all of which happened without her mother's knowledge. Interspersed in the book are excerpts from Amelia's texts, her facebook posts, Kate's diary entries and emails dating back to 1997, when Amelia was conceived, and Gossip Girl-eque school blog called gRaCeFULLY. Obviously bullying plays a large role in the twists and turns of Amelia's final weeks. Kate, who is racked with guilt over her long hours working, throws herself into the case, trying desperately to reconstruct the last months of Amelia's life and illuminate the truth behind her daughter's death. 

At first I wanted to call this book Gone Girl light. Or Gone Girl meets a combination of Gossip Girl and Pretty Little Liars (which I am not ashamed to reveal that I have become a bit obsessed with recently. For a show on ABC Family that seems incredibly dumb, it's actually an entertaining, soapy, gothic story that I kinda love). There seemed to be more at stake with Gone Girl. After all, in that book Amy, the main character was missing. With Amelia already being dead, what could really happen in this book? The incredibly fucked up twists within Gone Girl wouldn't work here because Amelia wasn't missing, wasn't pulling a fast one on anyway; she was really, truly dead. I wasn't expecting much more than a standard whodunit. However, there were so many twists and turns in this book revealing not only how Amelia really died but also what she had been up to before her death, who her father is and how much the school was willing to cover up. 

I guessed some of the twists but was mostly pretty surprised by what happened (the author also threw in some red herrings that made me second guess my original suspicions). I read the last 20% at the gym today and spent an extra twenty minutes there, forgetting to let my husband know where I was because I was so totally engrossed.

So do yourselves a favor: if you loved Gone Girl, pick this up. If you haven't read either, get cracking. This was an awesome book! 

NY Daily News Review

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Some Kind of Fairy Tale Review

My husband just asked me where I found this book. I can't remember, but I had previously sent the sample to my kindle and when I was looking for something to read, the title jumped out at me.

Some King of Fairy Tale is the story of Tara Martin, who disappeared from her little English town twenty years ago. Since then, her family has moved on. Her parents still live in the house where she grew up, her brother is now a farrier with a wife and four children and her ex-boyfriend, Richie (who is now estranged from the family and was a suspect in her disappearance), is still playing music and doing drugs.

But then, on Christmas Day, twenty years after she disappeared, a young woman, barely looking older than 16 (the age Tara was when she disappeared) shows up at the Martin's house and claims to be Tara. She looks like Tara did at 16 but has barely aged. Her reappearance throws the family into absolute chaos. Her brother, Peter, in particular is enraged by the story she tells, although her return does make him finally reach out to Richie, his childhood best friend.

Tara claims that after a fight with Richie, she was alone in the Outwoods when a man approached her on a white horse. They spoke together for a bit and then he invited her to accompany him to his home. At 16, Tara was discontent with her life and reeling from the end of her relationship with Richie, so she decided to go with the man. They rode through a strange landscape that she ceased to recognize as her familiar home and ended up in a house where other, loosely moral people lived. She soon realized that there was no phone, no technology and no way to leave. The man explained to her that she could not cross back into her home for six more months when the stars and planets aligned correctly. Tara would not call these people fairies, but it's clear that they are some version of magical folk who crossed a boundary into her land and took her home with them.

No one really buys Tara's story, which unfolds over the course of the book, even after she agrees to therapy with an older, eccentric man named Vivian Underwood. There are multiple perspectives in the novel, which also moves between past and present and includes the musings of her therapist, who attempts to diagnose her as some sort of amnesiac who is blocking out the time after some sort of traumatic even occurred. While as a reader, you experience Tara's story as told to other people, she rarely has her own POV chapters. You never really know what she is actually thinking, only how people react to her story and to her.

The ending of the book is ambiguous. Tara makes a decision about how she will live the rest of her life but the audience is never fully clear as to what happened. Was her story true? Was she suffering some sort of delusion? Her return definitely altered the future of people around her but there was no definite resolution to the question of where she had been, which I thought worked well. The novel emphasized the importance of family and friendships and the characters around Tara certainly evolved for the better.  I thought it was an interesting, enjoyable read, and I will definitely check out some of the author's other books!

Salon Review

Washington Post Review

Blog Review

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The Great Gatsby Review

I feel a little silly reviewing The Great Gatsby. It's one of the great American novels that most people have to read at some point in their lives. I've been really excited for the new Baz Lurhmann version of the movie for a long time now and when I came across two copies in my attic a couple weeks ago (mine and Geoff's, both from high school), I decided to reread it for the first time since 1998.

I don't actually remember reading this book originally although I know the plot well from the original Robert Redford movie. But I did write a term paper on Fitzgerald, so a lot of my notes were in the book for the paper. I don't know if I read it just for that paper or in class but a lot of the notations were really intelligent comments that I think must have come from class discussions and teacher notes (and not just from my brain).

Anyway, it was cool revisiting high school with reading those notes, which gave me a bit more insight into the book than I might have originally had. But, reading the book for fun instead of for school was nice. This time around, I let myself get sucked into the plot and characters without focusing on all the symbolism, etc, even if my 17 year old annotations did give me a deeper view of the story.

To those who don't know, The Great Gatsby takes place in the 1920s in New York, mostly in the city and the fictional Long Island towns of East Egg and West Egg. East Egg was where the old money people lived, while the nouveau riche live in West Egg. Nick Carraway, a WWI veteran and Yale graduate, rents a small house in West Egg for the summer of 1922. He works in New York City, spending his days riding the train back and forth.

In East Egg, his distant cousin Daisy lives with her domineering husband, Tom Buchanan, who went to school with Nick. He spends some time with them, finding Daisy to be delightfully flighty and learning about Tom's affair with Myrtle, the wife of a garage owner who is living a double life with a Manhattan apartment and Tom. Nick also meets Jordan, a professional female golfer who is a friend of Daisy's. 

Nick observes great, glittering parties at the giant mansion next door to his, to which he is eventually invited. There he runs into Jordan and tons of other celebrities and other newly wealthy people. His host, Jay Gatsby, has a bit of a shady background but seems to be a decent guy who befriends Nick. Eventually he tells his story to Nick. He was in love with Daisy before serving in WWI himself but when he was delayed in returning home from Europe, she married Tom. But Gatsby never stopped thinking about her, even buying a home that looked across the harbor from her dock and throwing elaborate parties in the hopes that she would one day find herself there. Nick, of course, becomes the conduit between Gatsby and Daisy, throwing her existence into chaos. Tom is a pretty awful husband but Daisy, despite a flirtation with Gatsby, is hardly capable of throwing her whole life away and leaving him. 

The Great Gatsby is a slim little book but packed with such tension. The summer gets hotter and hotter (as a New Yorker, I so get that) as the flirtation between Daisy and Gatsby heats up. Everything comes to a head one night in New York City, a night that ends in a dramatic tragedy that destroys Gatsby's life. 

If you've never read The Great Gatsby, do yourself a favor and pick it up. Like I said, it's short, but beautifully written. I actually didn't know that six versions of the film had been made, although the most famous is the 1974 one with Robert Redford and Mia Farrow. I'm hoping the Baz Lurhmann version will draw people to the book. It's an easy read but there's definitely a reason why it's considered a great American novel. I truly loved rereading it and now I'm intrigued to read some of Fitzgerald's other works, as well as this new fictional novel about his wife, Zelda Fitzgerald, that just came out. 

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Swapping Lives Review

After Heart Shaped Box, I needed something super easy and light. And I'm on spring break, so it was the perfect time for a girlie book. I'm picky about "chick lit", whatever that might mean. I want something light and fun but not stupid. I prefer Jennifer Weiner books above all else with Sophie Kinsella as a close second. Weiner's books are smarter and deeper but Kinsella's are just super fun. I'm so excited for the release of her newest book, Wedding Night, in a few weeks.

Anyway, in college at the height of the chick lit explosion I'd read two of Jane Green's books, Jemina J and Mr. Maybe. I loved Jemina J and actually read it a bunch of times but Mr. Maybe was a bit too cheesy. I just came across both while putting together books for a donation from my attic. So I was familiar with Jane Green. I also LOVED The Holiday, the Kate Winslet/Cameron Diaz movie. Like seriously loved. As cheesy and improbable as it was, I just adored the idea of switching lives... or maybe just Kate Winslet's gorgeous little cottage in the snowy countryside of England. So obviously a Jane Green book about women switching lives really appealed to me.

Swapping Lives follows two women: Vicky Townsley and Amber Wilson. Vicky is the features editor of Poise! magazine (I kept hoping Jenna Rink would show up) in London. She is 35, single and lives alone in an adorable flat. She is jealous of her brother and sister-in-law and their country house and adorable children. She wants that married life for herself but judging by the two romances she has in the novel, she clearly does not have very good taste in men. On the other side of the Atlantic, Amber is also 35, happily married to Richard, fabulously wealthy, living in a McMansion in Connecticut and busy being a "Desperate Housewife" (clearly this book came out when the show was on). Amber is a disengaged mother of two young children who spends all of her time trying to on up the other wealthy, suburban moms at their League meetings, which are supposed to be about charity but of course end up being about who is better than who or who has better stuff (clothes, etc.) than the other women.

Vicky ends up accidentally inspiring her boss Janelle to create the Swapping Lives contest and after meeting with a few different English women, Amber is chosen (her husband mistakenly bought her the British magazine one day). It takes about 60% of the book before the swap actually happens during the time the phrases "the grass is greener" and "keeping up with the Joneses" are mentioned a few too many times. To the reader the answer is obvious: Amber is dissatisfied with her life. She wants more purpose like a job, which is why she thrives at working at the magazine in Vicky's place. Vicky, on the other hand, needs to meet a really nice man instead of the douches she keeps dating. See problem solved!

The book was very cute and an easy read - predictable but still fun. It's a good beach/vacation read, on par with Sophie Kinsella. I might turn to Jane Green down the line for another breezy novel when I'm in the mood.

GRIPES: There were a few elements of the book that were a bit annoying. First off, there were two characters named Deborah, one a friend of Vicky's and one Amber's best friend. Why was that necessary? It was just confusing, especially since Amber's friend was English. I kept thinking that the timing was different that I thought and that Vicky's friend Deborah moved to the US. Unnecessary! (SPOILERS AHEAD): At the end of the book, Vicky learns that Amber's husband Richard was laid off six months ago, which is a little nuts since he kept lying about being at work all that time. And sometimes claimed he had late meetings. What was he doing in all that time?! Also when Amber learns about this, she supports Richard in finding a small business to run, one where she will also be able to work. They pick a small working orchard/farm near Albany. Was there every any mention that either of these two could run a farm? Do they know anything about caring for animals or tending to an orchard? I mean it's a romantic idea but really? Neither of them seemed remotely concerned about their new lifestyle change. But I guess that's what I get for reading chick lit!

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Heart Shaped Box Review

From Wikipedia: The distinction between horror and terror is a standard literary and psychological concept applied especially to Gothic literature and film. Terror is usually described as the feeling of dread and anticipation that precedes the horrifying experience. By contrast, horror is the feeling of revulsion that usually occurs after something frightening is seen, heard, or otherwise experienced. It is the feeling one gets after coming to an awful realization or experiencing a deeply unpleasant occurrence. In other words, horror is more related to being shocked or scared (being horrified), while terror is more related to being anxious or fearful. Horror has also been defined as a combination of terror and revulsion.

I always prefer terror over horror. I don't like my books to make me nauseous. Same with movies. I prefer horror movies of the 1970s like The Omen or Halloween, where there's no gore and the plot is nerve racking over horrifying. I did love American Horror Story this season but last season not as much for some reason, but I still didn't watch the gory scene. My husband loves Saw which I made it through about 45 minutes of before starting to cry. I made him go buy me ice cream and watch Enchanted so I could get over how much I didn't like it.

As a kid I was really into John Bellairs' books. My mom once told me that she figured since I liked creepy books as kids (lots of Agatha Christie too) that I would eventually read Stephen King. But I've never got there. I know enough about the books to realize that gore isn't my thing. That being said, King's son Joe Hill has gotten a lot of praise for his writing. So as I'm still on a quest to find something like Gone Girl, when Heart Shaped Box and Horns went on sale for under $3 on the kindle, I grabbed them.

Heart Shaped Box follows Jude Coyne, an aging rock star with a penchant for collecting dark items like a snuff film. He lives in an old farm house with his two dogs and his girlfriend, MaryBeth, who he calls Georgia. Like all his former girlfriends, she is half his age, goth, and referred to only by the state she is from. Jude's assistant Danny receives an email for an auction item - a dead man's suit, supposedly haunted by a woman's stepfather. This dead man, Craddock, was a hypnotist and a spiritualist. Jude knows none of this yet. He buys the suit on a whim. It arrives in a heart shaped box and not long after the haunting begins. The house grows cold, Danny gets freaked out and leaves, the dogs are constantly barking and Jude begins to see the old man's ghost. The ghost can possess the radio, TV and email - sending long, rambling, televangelist type rants to Jude about riding with him on the "night road". According to Craddock, Jude will end up dead, as will any one who attempts to help him or offer him comfort, which of course Georgia tries to.

Tied into all of this is the apparent suicide of Florida, the last girl Jude dated. Craddock was her stepfather and when he was dying he and his other stepdaughter, Jessica, did something to make Craddock haunt Jude until his death. Their reasoning doesn't get revealed until closer to the end, but let's just say that Florida's character was far stronger than Jude (or the reader) suspected earlier in the book.

Jude and Georgia take a road trip to Florida, stopping along the way in Georgia to see MaryBeth's grandmother and eventually end up in Louisiana, where Jude is still haunted by his dying, abusive father. Jude isn't necessarily a likable character at first. He's kind of a dick actually, but this is partly a story about redemption and learning to both love and be loved. The ghost just wants him dead, but Jude tries to be a better, kinder person over the course of the book. I won't reveal whether it works or not - just read it.

The story itself was quite good, but it's a testament to Joe Hill's writing that I was revolted by certain details - fingers getting blown off by guns, an infected thumb that never heals and just gets worse and worse as the novel goes on, etc. I could have lived without that stuff. But then again, Hill created a memorable story and a memorable character with Jude, who learns to deal with the consequences of his careless life.

I think it takes a specific type of reader to be into Stephen King and I would say that same for Joe Hill. Interestingly, I learned today that there is another son, Owen King who just published a novel called Double Feature, which has more to do with fathers and sons and less about horror. I just might check that one out eventually.

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The Uglies Review

Hey everyone, this is my 100th post. I first started this blog on New Year's Eve of 2011 and have been faithfully reviewing every book I've read ever since. Sometimes I've grumbled a bit about doing it and have wished I never started because seriously, what have I gotten myself into? How long will I have to do this? Will I ever just read a book and not have to write something about it after? But I've been pleasantly surprised to see that people have read all of my posts. Sometimes a lot of people. I don't know who is out there reading, but thanks. And a special thanks go to family and friends and facebook acquaintances who casually mention that they read my blog or browse through posts when they are looking for a new book to read or that they love reading what I write. That's why I've kept this up. I honestly don't know if I'll do this for forever but for now, I'll continue. And I hope I keep reviewing books that people find interesting and that I can pass on good recommendations.

So anyway, after the disaster that was Defending Jacob, I was so unsettled and annoyed that I was a little stuck on what to read next. I browsed through all the books on my kindle but I was in the mood for something specific: nothing historical. No horror or thrillers. I'm even getting a little sick of the dystopian genre, so I discarded Delirium, which people are loving. Actually what I REALLY wanted to read was the newest Sophie Kinsella book. Why is it not out yet?

Anyway, I ended up going dystopia after all with The Uglies. One of my students was reading it for my dystopian lit class and it sounded a little like Libba Bray's Beauty Queens. Unfortunately it wasn't as entertaining.

The Uglies follows a post-disaster US where the "Rusties" (our generation) were so wasteful and awful that a new civilization developed. The country is divided up into small, self-sustaining, environmentally friendly cities. Since looks were constantly fought about in the Rusty world, in this new society, every teen at the age of 16 undergoes an insane operation to make them stunningly beautiful - but pretty much everyone fits into the same sort of mold so there are no differences between people; everyone is gorgeous. The Uglies are younger teens (12-16) who undergo the typical pains of adolescence. Most Uglies are dying to be Pretties, so they can go live in New Pretty Town (doesn't this sound like Barbie's world?!) and party all the time. Pretties tend to be self-involved teens who care about nothing but pleasure - drinking, parties, etc.

Tally Youngblood is one of the last Uglies from her age group as she has a late birthday. She spends the summer waiting for her operation, even sneaking out to New Pretty Town to meet up with her former best friend Peris, who has become Pretty and wants her to behave herself so she can meet up with him post-operation. She observes that most Pretties seem to exhibit a personality change after the operation but that is typically attributed to "growing up".

Tally is befriended by Shay, another Ugly who shares the same birthday. However, Shay isn't looking forward to the operation. She has made contact with a group of Uglies who live in the mountains (a place called the Smoke) and wants to flee there with Tally rather than be surgically altered. Tally really isn't crazy about that idea. After all, she's only ever wanted to be Pretty.

However, due to circumstances beyond her control, Tally is denied her operation until she helps Special Circumstances, a group of specially altered Pretties find the Smoke. She sets off to find the rebel Uglies against her will but of course once she is out there, she starts to see beyond the Pretty surgery. She learns the value of hard work and falls for a guy named David. All of that happens in about two chapters (maybe a bit more, but it was still very fast) but apparently it changed her whole outlook. When she accidentally brings Special Circumstances to the Smoke, she and David set out to free their friends.

I was turned off by the phrase "Pretties" here. It just seemed to vapid and ridiculous - but that's the point. The Pretties are supposed to be pretty but also mindless and stupid. I think there was a little too much time spent on world building and too little time spent on plot. I'm not sure if I'll read the other books in the series - at least not yet. I need a serious break from dystopia but two of my eighth graders loved the series and highly recommended it - although explained that it was more of a girl's book than anything else. I would definitely agree with that. It's ok but definitely not very action packed or exciting. Or remotely intelligent like The Giver series. It's just another YA dystopian novel. But if that's what you're into right now, it's an easy read.

Author Website

Uglies Book Trailer

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