Firefly Lane

This is a chick-lit book all the way.  Don't even pick it up if you expect anything different.  Now with that being said, I really enjoyed it for what it was.  The book covers the thirty-year friendship of two women, Tully and Kate.  The friendship begins in high school and the book covers the ups and downs of the friendship as well as the intertwined personal lives of the women. I knew it would be sappy and clichéd, but I still got a little teary-eyed towards the end. Did I also roll my eyes at some of the characters and their actions?  Of course.  Did I think some of the plot twists were a little too convenient? A little. However, there is something about the women's friendship and feelings that the author got right.  For that reason alone, I kept reading.  Anyone who has a complex relationship with someone will recognize certain aspects of that relationship in this book. It reads a bit like a Jodi Picoult novel without a major hot button topic as the centralized theme. I would put this in the category of summer read because it reads quickly and smoothly.  Although the story takes a sad downturn, I still felt satisfied at the end because there was some type of resolution. 

How To Be Black

I have walked by this book probably about five times in the library over the past few weeks.  I never looked at the cover or inside jacket.  I only saw the spine and thought “After The Warmth of Other Suns, I don’t think I’m ready for another deep book”.  I really thought it was a historically researched book.  Yes, I judged a book by its cover (well, spine).  Anyway, I then saw that the author will be here in a few weeks for the Philadelphia Book Festival.  I finally took the time to read the blurb about the book.  Once I found out it was supposed to be funny, I was all over it and picked it up from the library the next day.  I got sucked in by the comedic veracity and finished the book in less than 24hours.

I laughed until I had tears in my eyes while reading some portions of this book.  The title says it all.  This book will give you pointers, tips, and suggestions for what you need to do as a black person in America depending on your situation in life.  It is a satirical guide with pearls of truth. The truth is always hidden in a joke.  What really impressed me about the book is the universality of it.  You might think it’s only for black folks to read, but everyone could gain some comical insight from reading this book.  Even if you’re not black you still will recognize many of the situations discussed.  Hopefully you will also see the humor in it and not get worked up.   It’s SATIRE!  I mean, really, this guy wrote for The Onion so that should tell you what you’re getting yourself into.  Relax your shoulders and just go with it. 

The chapters carry tongue-in-cheek titles such as “Can You Swim?”and “When Did You First Realize You Were Black?”  Within each chapter, Thurston hits the nail on the head about the situations that face us on a daily basis. Finding the humor in situations and using them to spark conversation is a starting point for many people when they discuss stereotypes and race.  In the end, Thurston shows us that there really is no protocol for being black in America.  We have varied individual experiences just like everyone else.  I really enjoyed this book for its humor and for its honesty.  I don’t want to be that person, but I may just have to actually buy the book and stand in line to have him sign it at the book festival!



**Postscript April 18th, 2013**

I am that person. His event at the Free Library of Philadelphia was amazing and I was more than happy to buy the book and have it signed.  I was definitely on the cusp of becoming a fangirl.  

Passing Love

This book surprised me.  It took me a few chapters to become interested, but once I was interested, I enjoyed the unfolding of the story.  This is the type of book that should be read in a cafe while sipping tea or coffee and, if you smoke, it would be appropriate to have a cigarette (not that I'm advocating smoking, just saying if you already do smoke go ahead and have one or two ciggies...then call the quit hotline after you finish reading the book).  The reason I say that a cigarette and coffee would go well with this book is that it takes place in Paris and Paris is definitely a place for coffee and cigarettes.

The chapters alternate between the jazz age in postwar Paris (late 1940s-1950s) and the present day.  During the postwar era the story focuses on Ruby Mae, a young woman filled with wanderlust, who has run off to Paris with a musician, both carrying aspirations of stardom and a desire to leave the Jim Crow South behind.  The present day chapters focus on Nicole-Marie Handy who has run off to Paris to keep a promise to a recently deceased friend.  Early on, during her trip, she finds a photo of her father in an antique shop and is determined to learn more about how it got there.  The two stories don't seem connected at the start of the novel, which I think contributed to my slow interest.  Once the stories started overlapping, though, I was very interested and voraciously read the rest of the book.

After finishing the book, I can honestly say I wouldn't change the way the author built up to the "twist" in the story. This is one of those stories in which the voyage was enjoyable.  As I've mentioned before, I'm a bit of a Francophile and really enjoy reading about Paris. I wish I read this prior to my trip, because this book had a lot of interesting information about "Black" Paris in the jazz age.  I really appreciate a book by an African-American author that tells a story we don't often see in African-American novels.  Our stories are so varied, but the works published can seem so limited in plot.  Complex family relationships as well as romantic relationships were explored in Passing Love without being crass or over-simplified. This was refreshing.

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

When my book club met to discuss This is How You Lose Her, many of the members recommended that if I hadn't read Oscar Wao that I should.  They were all swooning over it and said they loved it much better than TIHYLH. So I picked it up at the library recently and just completed it.  I really did enjoy the story.  There are a few stylistic elements that I'm not a fan of (i.e. long tortuous paragraphs of footnotes[1] that detract from the flow of the story) but overall I had a good time reading it.  I didn't absolutely love it, but it is a strong book. Along with being a story about a lovestruck nerd who seems doomed to remain a virgin, I think it was also a phenomenal lesson on the history of politics in the Dominican Republic (if you're interested). Diaz will give you plenty to chew on from that aspect, mostly in the form of long footnotes I mentioned earlier.  The story is not so much about Oscar as it is about the perceived family curse. Diaz goes all the way back to Oscar's grandfather to describe how the family is a magnet for bad luck.  His grandfather, his mother, his sister, and Oscar all have their stories told and this helps you think critically about the big picture.  In the end, you wonder if Oscar's demise was inevitable given all the misfortune that preceded his life.  What I enjoy about Diaz is his hyperbole and his ability to make a sentence stick out in your mind visually as you read it.  If you are going to read Diaz's work this is probably the one to pick up first.   

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[1] It’s only fitting that I place a footnote in this review because Diaz does use them somewhat extensively in the book. But do you see how distracting this is for you to either stop reading where the little number tells you and come down here to read something entirely new or to skip over the little number but feel compelled to read it when you’ve finished the page? Then you have to remember what this footnote is related to within the story or if it's really related at all.  What I really want to tell you in this footnote is that one of the narrators in the story is Yunior, who happens to be the main character in TIHYLH. If you read TIHYLH first, you will realize what a sad little boy-man Yunior is and that may color your reading of Oscar Wao. What else can I say in this footnote? I should make it kind of official and put a fact in here or something, right?  Well I was born in Ohio which is the only state with a non-rectangular flag. It's really called a burgee.

If You Were My Man

Since I basically wanted to stab my eyes out with the last four books I read, it was time for a good old cheesy romance full of scandal and lust.  Since I couldn't get a hold of the latest Jackie Collins (who is my usual go-to author for these guilty breaks) I picked up this book by Francis Ray.  I'm not even ashamed to say I enjoyed this book.  It was just nice to have a book that kept me turning the pages instead of snoring.  There is a lot to be said for simple writing that gets to the point.  Questionable dialogue and my own personal eye rolling aside, I had FUN with this book.  At times, I was talking to it like I was at the opening of a Tyler Perry movie.

Me to the main female character:  "Girl just tell him the TRUTH!"
Me to the main male character: "You KNOW you love her!! Stop playin'!"

It was a welcome break from my faux-intellectualism. You already know the plot. Boy meets girl; girl is reluctant;  girl isn't reluctant beyond page 60; nobody wants to admit they are in love; big argument or misunderstanding; something potentially tragic or dangerous happens; then everyone admits they actually ARE in love...the end!  Oh and you know you have adverbs like warm, moist, hot, hard, and wet floating around in every chapter. However, I submit today that knowing the formula for a book like this adds to the enjoyment because you already know the couple will be victorious no matter the circumstances.  So you really can just pop some popcorn, kick your feet up, and jump into the story.  I couldn't read these books over and over again, but a few times a year I just have to take it back to basics.

Sacré Bleu

I enjoyed Lamb, which is also by Christopher Moore, so when my book club selected this book I thought it would be a good read.  However, I was bored by the entire story.  Now, mind you, my first degree is in Art History so I thought it would be interesting to see the various artists portrayed in a work of historical fiction. Alas, I had to buy a cup of coffee to finish the last 100 pages.  The book starts with Vincent Van Gogh's apparent suicide.  But was it really a suicide?  That is what fellow artists Lucien Lessard and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec try to discover.  Along the way, we discover that there is a supernatural duo that is leading painters to go mad, lose huge chunks of their memories, and forget about masterpieces they have created.  There is a lot of time jumping in the story. Within one chapter you may be reading about 19th century France and then you're back in 12th century France.  That was a little annoying, but I dealt with it.  What really became old quickly were all the sexual and phallic jokes.  Listen, I was in 6th grade around 1988-89 and I got my fill of prepubescent humor.  One or two jokes, whatever, but an entire book throughout which one guy uses the word penis as his punch line?  I'll pass, and you should too. 

1Q84

This book was initially published in Japan as three separate novels.  In the United States, however, all three novels were combined and published as one uber lengthy 900+ page novel.  The themes in the story are loneliness, love, banality and illusion.  It was a chore to read because there is quite a bit of repetition.  I chalk this up to the fact that since it was originally three books, you have a bit of synopsis repeated in each subsequent book.  This book could have easily been 300 pages and would have, possibly, been a stronger story.  The general story is that at the age of 10 years old two kids who were essentially outsiders, for various reasons, held hands briefly in a moment of understanding.  By 1984 they have grown up to lead ordinary, lonely lives.

The girl (Aomame) has become a fitness trainer and part-time assassin. The boy (Tengo) has grown up to become a writer and part-time math teacher.  They both are pretty bland people, but they still obsess about that one little hand holding episode from childhood.  Aomame randomly enters a world that is similar to 1984 but not quite the same (there are two moons instead of one) so she names it 1Q84.  She kills a very important cult leader in this new world and has to hide out. The daughter of the cult leader is also hiding out in the same neighborhood with Tengo.  Eventually they find each other and go back to 1984 via the same way she came into 1Q84.  She apparently had to enter this "other" world in order to find her one true hand holding love of her life, Tengo.

The story reunites the two in a very slow, jagged, meandering way with a cast of characters that I couldn't have cared less about.  This makes the book unbearable.  There are long discussions about philosophical questions.  There is a LOT of food description here.  I don't think one meal goes without description.  You read about the chopping and the boiling and the consumption of just about each meal. There are a LOT of breast references too.  Women who think theirs are too small.  Men observing breasts in sweaters. Women who think theirs are too big.  Men picturing women having their breasts suckled. It is unnecessary to the plot and entirely aggravating.  It's obvious this is a male author who is obsessed with breasts. I was over it.  The book was too long and had too much superfluous information. As one reviewer put it, it's pretty much "1000 uneventful pages".  I hated it. It was almost like I was reading Moby Dick all over again!