Review: The Edge of Ruin by Irene Fleming

I cracked open The Edge of Ruinon Friday night, just as a light snow started to fall. By Saturday, when I was in the thick of the mystery, almost 30 inches of the white stuff had piled up outside. Sunday morning, I raced to the end of the book before setting out on a 10 mile snow run.

I therefore dub The Edge of Ruin by Irene Fleming (who also writes under the name Kate Gallison) my blizzard book (it will work as a beach book, too - it's not published until April 27).

I'm not a big mystery fan, but this story about a murder on an independent movie set - a 1909 independent movie set - was perfect for being stuck inside.

It's largely based on fact, too. In 1909, Thomas Edison (yes, THAT Thomas Edison) held a monopoly on the movie industry. He employed "Trust detectives" to bust up any independent companies. Sometimes they'd walk up to the camera and break it.

Yet - in this novel at least - Adam Weiss decided to defy Edison and create four movies anyway. But the book's not really about him. It's about his wife, Emily, who doesn't agree with the plan but goes along with it since Adam sells all their belongings to get the film company off the ground. When he's accused of a murder on the set, Emily takes over and tries to get the four movies made by deadline while also freeing her husband from jail, and avoiding being killed herself.

It had just the right touches of historical flare to make this a period mystery, but it didn't go over the top with the details. It had enough characters who COULD have committed the murder to keep me guessing, too. Fun read for a long, frozen weekend.

We're scheduled to get another foot tomorrow, and I'm flying out again on Thursday. I have nothing to read. That's right - NOTHING. This thought is paralyzing. But I hope whatever I find is as fun as The Edge of Ruin.

For more in my blizzard book, here's a trailer:

Review: One Fifth Avenue by Candace Bushnell

Alrighty! Last book from vacation!

I found this one at the airport bookstore. Even though I've enjoyed two of Candace Bushnell's novels, I never bought one, nor have I followed her career.

I read Lipstick Jungle and Trading Up while visiting my grandparents because those books were available for free in their retirement home community.

But I had a Borders gift certificate, and I do love wandering around airport bookstores. They try to stock whatever is popular for different groups of travelers in a small space. One Fifth Avenue, this time, appealed to me.

Like Lipstick Jungle, it wasn't terribly serious and perfect for beachside reading. It's about the residents of one building in New York City, the politics of that building, and a snapshot what real estate means to some people in New York. It is a world beyond me, but it was interesting to read about it (geez, hedge fund managers), especially as it takes place right before the housing bust.

My favorite part of the book was Bushnell's skewering of people who want to be famous for nothing. The character is Lola Fabrikant, who skates through life on her parents money (which paid for, among other things, breast implants and a nose job by 18) and expects her parents to fund her New York City dream. She feels so entitled to what she wants whenever she wants it, and uses her vagina to get it when her parents money can't quite make it happen. She reminds me of every reality bimbo on TV right now, especially the one I call the troll (no, I won't explain here. She makes me too angry).

Best part? When she realizes that her parents having money in Atlanta means squat in New York. Oh, little fish. That big pond'll eat you up.

The book isn't going to tax your brain, but isn't that the point of fun reading?

Review: Hot Damn! by James W. Hall

When I tell people I went to college in Florida, I'm just as surprised as they are - still, nearly eight years after graduating. "You're SO Northeast," is the usual reply, or something along the lines of how I seem Ivy league, preppy or some other such silliness that really means: Why would someone who went to and performed well at an upper class public high school (my parents paid for tuition for me to go there) head south to a small private college with virtually no reputation north of the Carolinas? The answer is simple: Money.

I wanted to go to Boston University with all the passion and fervor my 17 year old body could muster. I got in, too. But BU is expensive. My parents were divorcing, so money was tight, and BU didn't offer any financial help.

The University of Tampa did. They were in the middle of a huge recruiting drive and kept throwing money at me. "It's not a matter of whether you get in," an admissions counselor told me when I made my on campus visit. "It's a matter of how much money we give you." The eventual answer was almost the full amount. By the time I became editor of the student newspaper, I was covered since my pay for that job was a stipend applied toward my tuition - and the first steps toward what would become my eventual career.

But I didn't stick around after graduation. I barely stuck around during my four undergraduate years - I left every summer and, one semester, for England. I didn't think the UT was terribly challenging, so I tacked on experiences that made it so (internship in a Washington, DC newsroom, semester studying Shakespeare at Oxford, editing the student newspaper).

Another reason I fled? I don't like Florida.

Sure, it's a great place to visit, especially when it's 20 degrees and snowing in New Jersey. While my family and friends dealt with snow and ice last weekend, I was lying by a pool in my bikini reading James W. Hall's Hot Damn!: Alligators in the Casino, Nude Women in the Grass, How Seashells Changed the Course of History, and Other Dispatches from Paradise. It's a love letter to the state written by Hall, a mystery writer and Kansas native. He writes about those things that kept me from staying in Tampa after graduate: The heat and humidity that gloms to your skin nine months a year, the recurring fear of hurricanes, the vagabond culture (no one is really from Florida). His recount about Florida summers shot me back to the Ford sedan I rented in 2003 to drive from Tampa to Gainesville for a job interview near the University of Florida. The front of the white car was nearly black at the end of the trip with all the bugs I killed. I thought I saw an alligator on my way over.

Even though I was offered the job, I turned it down. It might get hot here in the summer, but it's a different hot, no matter if the temperatures in New Jersey and Florida sometimes come out the same. Florida heat will suck you down into a deep abyss. New Jersey heat passes you over.

Hall didn't leave - obviously. He moved his life to Florida and bristles that he can never put a Florida native bumper sticker on his car. Even if we feel different about the state, I enjoyed his essays. It was perfect reading to go along with my explorations of Florida's west coast. While, yes, I did spend a lot of time by the pool, I also visited those sites I couldn't get to in college because I didn't have a car - the Salvador Dali Museum, Fort DeSoto, the Ringling Estate. And for a moment, while wandering the grounds of the gulf-side estate in the soft humid pre-storm winter Florida air, I thought "maybe I could do this." Then I remembered what it was like to run in that humidity, and that it was already sticky in January, and called my mom back home.

I picked up Hot Damn! from Inkwood Books, a fantastic independent bookstore in Tampa. I wanted some sort of Florida reading to go along with my St. Pete Beach vacation, and what better to read than stories about the strange place that is Florida? I might not embrace the state like Hall does, and I may cross my heart and pledge loyalty to the northeast, but I can still appreciate the odd corners of the vagabond state, and writers who show their love for it in a fun, zippy book of touching essays. And how could I not love a book with the opening line of "Essays are about as sexy as donkeys?"

Review: The One That I Want by Allison Winn Scotch

I got a galley of Allison Winn Scotch's upcoming book The One That I Want the DAY before I left on vacation. I've enjoyed Allison's first two books, The Department of Lost and Found and Time of My Life. I've also followed along as she transitioned from freelance writer to novelist (she still freelances but not that the level she used to), so I feel a separate sort of joy in reading her work.

The One That I Want is about Tilly Farmer, a 32-year old high school guidance counselor who works at the same school where she was once a student. She married her high school sweetheart, settled in that same town, and expected her life to spool out from there.

But everything's not OK in Tilly's world. First, her mother died of cancer when Tilly was in high school, which tore apart her family. It kicked off her father's drinking problem. Her younger sister became one of those stick thin aspiring musicians who ran off to Los Angeles at the first chance and comes storming back into town to raise everyone's hackles. Tilly and her husband have fallen into a well worn groove, and while Tilly thinks everything's perfect, it's not.

This unease is amplified when a chance meeting with a forgotten middle school friend enables Tilly with a curse/gift. She can flash forward to see what happens to people in her life, which sets the novel in motion.

It's a good book. I read the first 150 pages on the plane. It's better than Allison's first novel, but I liked Time of My Life better - it was my top fiction choice of 2009. I don't have a lot in common with Tilly Farmer. While I wasn't itching to get out of dodge after college, I didn't want to continue the life I had before. I "got" Jillian Westfield, protagonist of Time of My Life, more. Jillian is allowed to see what would have happened to her life if she'd stayed with the bad boy instead of settling down with someone else. When I read it, I was wondering the same thing about the former badboy (read: asshole) from my past. I thought about that book for weeks after it was over. This one? Not so much.

But that doesn't mean it's not a good book. I know plenty of women like Tilly Farmer who will have the same experience I did when reading about Jillian Westfield. And for a beach book, it's perfect - a quick yet thoughtful read. It comes out at the perfect time, too - June 1.

So have you ever had the same experience? Where you like one author's works better than others based on whether you can identify with the main character?

P.S. Forgot to add the pic of where I read the rest of the book. Ah, vacation...so soon a memory.

Vacation Reading

I read three books while on vacation - well, 3.5 if you count the one I started on the flight home. I usually post in "real time" i.e. as soon as I've finished reading the book, but I'm not going to rush to post everything at once. Stay tuned!

Review: Arm Candy by Jill Kargman

As predicted, I read Arm Candy by Jill Kargman before I left for vacation. I finished it less than 24 hours after I cracked it open. It's that kind of book - a piece of chocolate that melts quickly in your mouth. I read right through dinner and nature calling to get to the last page last night.

Arm Candy is about Eden Clyde, a model and muse, and how she moved from the sticks to the muse of a (fictional) American art icon. I thought this was going to be a modern day Sister Carrie, the way Clyde used men to swing her way higher and higher up the social and financial chain. But that's only the start of the book. The rest is Clyde dealing with hitting the 40 mark and realizing her social climbing might not have been so smart.

It's not a serious book. It's not a life changing book. It's even a little annoying with the talk of how skinny Eden continues to be (blarg). But it's a fun book, and one I recommend for your beach bag (it'll be published in May). It would have been the perfect vacation book if I hadn't read it so quickly. DAMN IT!

That's alright. I'm sure there are more like it out there. I haven't bought anything new to take on the plane, but I do plan to stop in my favorite independent book store once I land tomorrow and see what they suggest I read.

Vacation Reading

The most stressful part about packing for vacation - at least for me - is picking what books to take. This, right now, is what I'm bringing with me to a week in Florida (though I suspect I'll finish Arm Candy before I go. It's too fluffy juicy to put away for long). Why stressful? Because if I pick bad books, I'll be stuck with nothing to read. I know, I know, they do have bookstores in Florida, but it's so much easier to pick something out of my bag, which is probably why I pack more than I'll ever read in one stint.

I read the first few pages of each of these books to vet them for vacation reading - nothing to heavy or depressing, and NO SELF HELP.

How do you pick what books to take on trips?