Everyday I Write the Book

June/July Online Book Club: "Silver Sparrow" by Tayari Jones

I am excited to announce the June/July EDIWTB online book club. The selection is Silver Sparrow by Tayari Jones. Here is what Politics & Prose has to say about Silver Sparrow (Jones is reading there tonight, but sadly I can't go):

In her third novel, [Tayari Jones] chronicles the two families of a bigamist. James’s daughters are born four months apart and despite his best efforts to prevent it, meet and become friends. While they share a biological father, their material and emotional circumstances are strikingly different, and Jones skillfully contrasts their distinct coming-of-age stories.

Color Online says, "The strength of this story lies in the complexity and ease in which the relationships are drawn. Jones has a beautiful way with words... This is one of my favorite books of 2011."

Thank you to Algonquin for facilitating this online book club. If you'd like to participate, please send an email before Friday, June 3 to [email protected] with this in the body:

name

address

address

email address

I will pick a book club date once the books go out from Algonquin. Many thanks again to Algonquin!

"Songs Without Words" by Ann Packer

I am back from BEA! It was a great time in NY. I had two fun days of walking the floor, learning about new books, meeting some authors, and catching up with book bloggers. I made it to half of the Book Blogger Convention on Friday, and particularly enjoyed a session on working with publishers. Best of all - I got to spend a lot of time with my BEA roomie, Nicole from Linus' Blanket. We seem to have an endless supply of book-related topics to discuss.

The books I am most excited about getting at BEA: the new Tom Perrotta book The Leftovers (I told him that if anyone could get me into dystopian fiction, it's him); Girls in White Dresses, which I heard author Jennifer Close read from on Thursday, and... if I dare admit this... the audiobook I picked up of the Sweet Valley Confidential ten-years-later novel, which is supposed to be pretty dumb but which I simply cannot wait to devour.

I picked up many others - I will include a fuller list when my boxes arrive from New York.

I just finished Ann Packer's Songs Without Words. I read her The Dive from Clausen's Pier many years ago (pre-blogging), and picked up this one at Politics & Prose over Christmas. (Hi FTC! Yep, another book I paid good hard cash for.) It is billed as a story about two friends - Sarabeth and Liz - whose relationship is put to the test when Liz, who is used to being Sarabeth's caretaker, finds that she needs Sarabeth's support when her teenage daughter Lauren attempts suicide. Sarabeth, whose own mother took her life when Sarabeth was 16, finds herself unable to give Liz the support she needs, and their relationship is severely strained. 

Songs Without Words is really more of a chronicle of how Lauren's suicide attempt affects everyone in her family, as well as Sarabeth. Packer is an extremely detailed writer, and the book is full of the minutiae of Lauren's family's lives. I generally enjoy detailed stories, but Packer goes to an extreme here. Not that much actually happens in the book. Aside from Lauren's actions, I kept expecting drama to ensue in each chapter - something that would reward me for all of the careful reading - but it really didn't happen. Lauren slowly gets better, and Liz and Sarabeth slowly work their way toward reconciliation. There is a lot of depression in the book, and Packer does a good job of conveying the helpless meandering and defeat that often accompanies the condition. The book ends on a hopeful note, but again, there is no great payoff. 

I mostly listened to this book on audio, except for the last quarter or so, which I read. I did enjoy the process of reading the book. But I have to say that looking back now that I am done, I am not sure it was worth the effort of listening and reading. The payoff, as noted above, is just too small. 

The narrator on the audio version had an irritating habit of overannunciating words, like "kiTCH-hen", which was annoying after a while. I think she also reads pretty slowly, as I would listen for a good chunk of time and find that it had only covered a few pages. (I just discovered that she's a pretty popular audio narrator - Cassandra Campbell - who also narrated the audio version of The Help).

Overall, I can't really recommend Songs Without Words too strongly. I enjoyed the process of reading it but ultimately found it unsatisfying. Would love to hear any other opinions!

BEA, BlogWorld and Book Blogger Con

I won't be posting for the rest of the week... I am off to BEA and BlogWorld tomorrow, and then will be at the Book Blogger Con on Friday. I can't wait! What a fun week. And then I am off to my college reunion in Providence. Way too many great things are happening in too short of a time!

Hope to see many of you at BEA! I will report back when I get home.

"Bossypants" by Tina Fey

BEA week is here! I am headed to NY on Wednesday for 2 days of BEA and one day of Book Blogger Conference this Friday. Can't wait! I am also speaking about social media on Thursday at BlogWorld, which is in the same building as BEA. If you're going to be at BEA, please let me know! I am looking forward to seeing old friends and meeting new ones at BEA. Oh yeah, and the books too.

So I am concluding that I really prefer fiction. I bought Tina Fey's Bossypants as an impulse buy last month when I was in San Francisco. If it took me this long to get through a non-fiction book by a very entertaining woman who's my age and talks about being a working mom while dishing about 30 Rock and SNL, then clearly I have a thing about non-fiction. It just doesn't grab me the way fiction does. I need a plot.

But I did finish Bossypants. It's basically a collection of essays about Tina Fey's life, from her childhood and education to her time at Second City, SNL, and 30 Rock.It's not really a memoir, because it's not that thorough, and it's only loosely chronological. There's a lot less in here about parenthood and being a working mom to her daughter Alice than I expected. There is more, though, about working for Lorne Michaels and impersonating Sarah Palin on SNL, which I enjoyed. Fey's writing style is funny and self-deprecating, which is definitely her schtick. I wonder sometimes whether she's really like that in real life, or if she's been so successful in creating that persona that she has stuck with it in her book.

I laughed out loud a lot in this book. Here is my favorite passage. She's talking about being at a photo shoot for a magazine cover, and the kind of music they play in the background:

Sometimes they ask if you want to hook up your iPodfor background music. Do not do this. It's a trap. They will put it on shuffle, and no matter how much Beastie Boys or Velvet Underground you have on there, the following four tracks will play in a row: "We'd Like To Thank You Herbert Hoover" from Annie, "Hold On" by Wilson Philips, "That's What Friends Are For," Various Artists, and "We'd Like To Thank You Herbert Hoover" from Annie.

Hee.

There are a lot of funny parts like that. Even so, I never really  got totally into Bossypants the way I do with a good novel with a compelling plot. I think that's a sign.

OK, back to fiction. Hope to see a lot of you at BEA this week!

(Hi FTC! Bought this one with my own money, and even paid full price! I know, I can't believe it either.)

Parentables Post on Summer Reading for Kids

I have a post up at TLC's Parentables today about how to keep kids reading over the summer. Would love to hear your tips!

"29" by Adena Halpern

Thanks to everyone who came to my rescue on Friday with light reading suggestions. I appreciate your comments! I did pick up 29 by Adena Halpern, and just finished it. It was a quick read, even for me. I think I am now ready for something heavier again.

29 is about Ellie Jerome, a 75 year-old widow living in Philadelphia who admits on the first page of the book that she is jealous of her beloved 25 year-old granddaughter Lucy. She is envious of Lucy's youthful looks and handsome boyfriend, of course, but mostly she is envious of Lucy's freedom to live her life for herself, rather than for a husband or based on society's expectations of her. Ellie was of a generation where one didn't necessarily marry one's soul mate. You did what was expected of you and you didn't question it. Now, at age 75, Ellie wishes that she could go back to being 29, just for one day, so that she could experience the freedom that Lucy enjoys.

And that is just what happens.

After wishing to be 29 for a day, Ellie wakes up in her 29 year-old body. She is beautiful and young and single, and as the day unfolds, hijinks ensue. Ellie's middle aged daughter Barbara and her best friend Frida are frantically worried about what could have happened to her, while her granddaughter Lucy figures out what happened and spends a glorious day with her grandmother, helping her live out her fantasies.

29 is a very light read - I kept comparing it to cotton candy as I was breezing through it. It's a sweet book, but very predictable and full of coincidences that, layered on top of what is already an impossible premise, make it almost silly at times. I liked the poignant moments where Ellie thought back on how she had lived - the wife and mother she'd been - and what she wished she had done differently. But much of the book felt like a Hollywood screenplay and followed a familiar formula. I read the Q&A with Halpern at the end of the book, and learned that she has undergraduate and graduate degrees in screenwriting, which makes a lot of sense. Also, I think the book is being made into a movie - no surprise there either.

29 was a good palate cleanser to get me in the mood for a serious book again. It's a quick, fun, though imperfect read. I recommend it if the premise sounds tempting to you, but don't expect too much substance.

Hello FTC! How was your weekend? Glad to hear it! Oh, you might want to know that I got this copy of 29 from the publisher, I think. I can't seem to find the email trail that led to it arriving at my house, but I am pretty sure it was a review copy. And my review wasn't all rosy. So there.

In A Book Rut - Need Something Light!

I am stalled.

I hate this feeling. I love when I am deeply involved in a book and can't wait to get home to read it, or to have a few extra minutes in a waiting room or during my kids' ballet class so that I can finish just a few more pages. Right now, however, I am stalled.

I just finished a very depressing book - A Thousand Splendid Suns - so I am in need of something light. Desperately. Wench, which I started a few weeks ago and like quite a bit, is too heavy. I am reading Bossypants but not loving it. Perhaps because it's non-fiction, I just can't get into it. It's funny and light, but it's entirely forgettable. So this weekend, I am vowing to start something and lose myself in it so that I can get back on track. I was averaging 4-5 books a month this year, but that pace has slowed considerably in the past week, due to this darn rut.

Books I am considering: 29 by Adena Halpern, I Think I Love You by Alison Pearson. Anyone got a light, fiction recommendation for me?

"A Thousand Splendid Suns" by Khaled Hosseini

I read a lot of depressing books. But I think I just finished the most depressing book I've ever read (with the possible exception of Sophie's Choice, which I read many, many years ago): A Thousand Splendid Suns, the companion to Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner. This was one disturbing book.

A Thousand Splendid Suns, like The Kite Runner, takes place in Afghanistan. This time, though, Hosseini tells Afghanistan's story through the eyes of women, ending in the mid 2000s. The women are Mariam, born illegimately to a maid and her rich employer, and Laila, a more privileged girl born in Kabul whose life takes a dramatic turn at age 14 and ends up entwined with Mariam's. Hosseini takes on motherhood, love, marriage, abusem, oppression, sacrifice, and freedom in telling Mariam and Laila's stories.

Like The Kite Runner, Hosseini injects danger - or the possibility of it - into every page of A Thousand Splendid Suns. Terrible things happen, over and over again. Afghanistan's bloody and tragic history, from the Soviet occupation to the Taliban, forms the backdrop for the unimaginable devastation, fear and loss that his characters experience. I don't think that Hosseini is necessarily a writer of great literature - he leaves little to the imagination, and can be repetitive in this themes - but he is undeniably an expert storyteller. I commend him for making a complicated situation very easy to follow.

This book has haunted me since I finished it. My god, am I lucky to be a woman living in the United States right now. We have so many liberties that we take for granted, no matter how convinced we are of our fundamental right to enjoy them.

I listened to A Thousand Splendid Suns mostly on audio, with the exception of the last three chapters. I liked the audio version a lot - there's a female narrator with a foreign accent that sounds like it is probably faithful to Hosseini's mother tongue (though I wouldn't know if it weren't) and the story is easy to follow on audio.

If you haven't already read A Thousand Splendid Suns, then proceed with caution. Be prepared for an intense, though ultimately quite rewarding, read.

Hi there, FTC. You want to know if I got a free book in order to write this review? Nope. Audiobook was from the library and I found the hardcover at a used book sale.

Ruckus Media iPad Apps: "John Henry" and "Andrew Answers"

I have taken an uncharacteristic and unexpected break from EDIWTB this past week. Just too much going on this week - my twins' birthday is this weekend, I spoke at a social media conference yesterday, and I've been busy with work too. Posting has fallen by the wayside, as has reading. I am plowing through A Thousand Splendid Suns on audio (wow, what a disturbing book) yet haven't really picked up Bossypants all week. (I really need to stick to fiction.)

But I have some great kids' iPad apps to talk about today. Ruckus Media sent me a few apps that my 7 year-old daughters just adored: John Henry and Andrew Answers.

John Henry is a retelling of the classic folk tale, narrated by Denzel Washington and with music from B.B. King. My daughters were totally captivated by it and have watched it a few times. It turns out that there is a performance of John Henry for kids at a local theater, which we are seeing this weekend, mostly due to their enthusiasm about this app. The illustrations are lovely, and the whole experience feels like a moving picture book (as opposed to a cartoon). There is an option for kids to record their own voices telling the story, which we haven't tried yet, but which sounds like a lot of fun. The music is also great - one of my daughters likes to play the app just to hear the music.

My daughters also loved Andrew Answers, by Alan Katz, a story about a smart boy whose choices of spelling words keep getting him into trouble. When asked to spell a word starting with "N" for example, he says, "No.", an answer that is technically accurate but makes his teachers angry. This misunderstood speller finds himself in increasingly higher-stakes situations, culminating in a visit to the Oval Office. It's a cute story that's great for starting spellers too.

I was impressed with the quality of these Ruckus Media kids' apps and highly recommend them! They are each $3.99, less than the cost of a quality kids' picture book.