Five Stars

I cannot believe I failed to pre-order this book. I follow Ms. Wilson on Twitter and knew the book was coming out this week. I’ve been very excited to read it because I know she is a great storyteller and writer. I figured it would be insightful and entertaining, and even though my to-be-read pile is absurd at the moment, I bought this yesterday and started reading it immediately.

It did not disappoint.

Ms. Wilson is an extraordinarily talented storyteller. In this collection of essays, she shares many deeply personal stories about her time not just as a child actor (which is how many people likely know about her) but as an adolescent and young adult. Her stories are relatable even to people who haven’t experienced the exact same challenges she has – such as losing her mother as a young girl, or going through puberty after being a well-known child actor.

I found myself giggling quite a bit, and also tearing up a few times. I also got very excited about the essays that talked about show choir, because choir factored very heavily in my high school days. But I think what is sticking with me most is how sincere and kind the writing is. Ms. Wilson doesn’t use sarcasm at all. As someone who is overly sarcastic and intentionally (and unintentionally) snarky, it’s lovely to read such engaging writing that doesn’t need to rely on any of that.

I could write more, but honestly I’d rather just enjoy what I got out of each of these essays, and simply say that I hope you’ll read this book and experience the joy of it for yourself, in your own way.

Five Stars

This is a book. With pictures of cats. In France.

It’s a gift book; there is a much larger version that I must get my hands on. Normally I wouldn’t review a book like this, but come on!

It has:

1. Pictures of cats

2. In France

3. Coupled with quotes about how awesome cats are, from French intellectuals and artists.

I also learned something – did you know that in Paris cat owners are fined if their cats are found on the street? Explains why I don’t really recall seeing any cats wandering about when I’ve been in Paris.

I’ll be rereading this more than probably any other book. It makes me smile, it makes me want to snuggle my own cats more, and damn it, it makes me want to go back to France.

Two Stars

I usually reserve two stars for really bad books (the coveted 1 star remains, I believe, only awarded to that Cinderella mess from a couple years back). But this year when I look back on the books I’ve rated as three stars, they are all better than this one. So keep that in mind.

I picked this up because the Pajiba review of the film that came out earlier this year was pretty good. I’ve just gone back and re-read the review and it looks like the filmmakers took the names and premise from the book but changed pretty much everything else. Probably for the best.

In case you don’t know the premise, here it is: there’s a real-time live action game show that involves individuals signing up to complete recorded dares for prizes. Vee, tired of being outshined by her best friend, decides to sign up.

But let’s back up. The book starts out with a prologue that – spoiler alert – is never resolved. I mean, we figure out (sort of) what happens, but still. Not great writing.

Anyway, you don’t know the prologue never gets resolved until the end of the book. So yay for that. But the next glaring problem is that a 17-year-old in Washington state would be able to sign up for this game without parental permission. Moving past that, the naiveté of the main character is sort of mind boggling. I suppose it’s necessary for the plot, but I’m not sure.

It all takes place in Seattle over the course of I think three days, so the action is compact. The dares increase in difficulty / awkwardness / danger, until the ‘grand finale’ dare, which is so ridiculous. Like, I get that some young people make poor decisions, but come on.

Also, there’s this weird storyline about how maybe the main character tried to kill herself at some point, which doesn’t really totally get resolved.

Then the book ends, there’s an epilogue sort of (which again doesn’t address the prologue at all – it’s like it never happened), and then it’s over. I read it in a day, and I’m not mad I read it, it just wasn’t good.

Four Stars

I voted for this for the CBR book club, because it’s been on my to-read list for a couple of years and I knew this would be the motivation I needed. And I’m so glad it was selected, because this was really a great book.

I didn’t entirely know what to expect, but I think the chapter early on (was it the second one) really set the tone. He talks about the worst thing about being poor wasn’t being hungry; it was not being able to take the dog to the vet when he was sick. That was just a big slap in the face of reality, and let me know that this wasn’t going to be a generic young adult book (not that I was expecting generic from Mr. Alexie).

The book follows Junior, a Spokane Indian who is motivated by a teacher to get a better education by attending the white high school 20 miles outside the reservation. The book somehow manages to address poverty, racism, opportunity, motivation, success, fear, alcoholism, and relationships with equal parts humor and depth. The book sounds like it could be the inner thoughts of a 14-year-old boy, and I mean that in the best way possible.

Really the only issue I took with it was the liberal use of the gay slur that starts with the letter f. I get that he’s trying to give us insight into how adolescent boys talk, but it was so jarring and I thought wasn’t necessary.

Three Stars

4 November 2015; Marie Kondo, Author and Organising Consultant, Marie Kondo, on the Society Stage during Day 2 of the 2015 Web Summit in the RDS, Dublin, Ireland. Picture credit: Diarmuid Greene / SPORTSFILE / Web Summit

Remember last year, when everyone you know – and everyone they know – was reading The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up? I was one of those people. My husband and I really pared down out belongings at a serendipitous time; not a month later we received notice that we had to move, so it was much easier to pack our two-bedroom apartment up with 11 days’ notice after having taken over two carloads of belongings to Goodwill.

We continue to tidy following this method, for the most part, but we’ve moved into a new house, which came with many more places for stuff to accumulate. When I saw this sort-of-sequel was being released, I figured I’d want to read it. And I *think* I’m glad I did. But I’m not sure.

My hesitation is that I’m not entirely sure this book is necessary. It does have some good tips, and some cute illustrations (the little bunny in the pictures is adorable). But I think that a lot of this could have been worked into the original book. I totally get it; she struck gold, and her publishers likely wanted to capitalize on that. They got me, and as we go for another round of making sure we’re really sticking with only keeping things that ‘spark joy,’ this will probably come in handy.

One star

Yikes on bikes. I wish I had read the first books with a critical eye. I don’t have much of an excuse – I was in my 20s when I read them. And when I originally reviewed this book, I praised it up and down.

But hindsight, my friends. The author is anti-trans and aggressively harming trans people through her public statements and advocacy. And her original work has all sorts of problems with racism and anti-Semitism.

I honestly cannot remember anything about this book/play seven years later, but I know I cannot look at anything she has done in a positive light any longer.

Four Stars

I think Good Reads is a great site for many reasons; one of which is that it lets me know when authors I have read (and enjoyed) are releasing a new book. I purchased Ms. Moriarty’s latest tome (seriously, it’s over 400 pages and has pretty small print) on Tuesday after receiving such an alert, started it Wednesday, and stayed up way too late finishing it last night.

I enjoy Ms. Moriarty’s books a lot. She has, for the most part, a formula (I say most part because I *think* What Alice Forgot strayed from it a bit). There are three or more parties. A Thing Has Happened, but we don’t know what, so we go back and forth in time. And there are twists, and you probably won’t figure them out, but they are never (at least in the four books of Ms. Moriarty’s that I have read) absurd. If you were to reread the books with all the information, they still make sense. It’s awesome.

The only reason I’m not giving this book five stars is because I really feel that it could have been shorter up front. It took way longer – or at least it FELT way longer – to get into. I still enjoyed the first hundred pages or so, but my goodness, every chapter felt like it ended with some variation on the “everything changed after that day” sentence. Like, I get it. Everything DID change. But my goodness, please show, don’t tell. It felt a bit like when Ryan Seacrest would say “and the winner … will be revealed right after the break.” Except you’d come from break, and he’d immediately do it again. And again. For like 15 minutes.

That said, for me this is still a four-star book, and one that I would recommend to anyone interested in a fun, clever read. I really appreciated the dynamics around how friends with children interact with friends who don’t have children – the mutual judgement, the lack of understanding of each other’s lives. I think Ms. Moriarty captured a lot of that quite well.