Book a Week with Jen

On Romance Reading and Writing

2011-12-26T10:15:00.004-05:00

I spent the week before Christmas on vacation in Providence, RI. Before hopping on that Amtrak train, I hit Barnes & Noble to stock up on a genre I'm further studying: romance novels.

It's a not-so-hidden secret that I'm a fan, and I've attempted to write one before, though half heartedly. This fall, I made major steps in that direction. I have 40-something pages of my first real shot at a novel almost done (the photo includes pages that are part of that manuscript), and I'll be submitting a sample from that book to a competition in January. I have a pen name picked out, too, but I don't know if I'll use it. More on that in another post.

While I've read romances and I'm a member of RWA, I've stuck to a few authors whose work I know I'll love, so for vacation, I went judging books by their covers, honing in on contemporary romance whose authors had hit the New York Times bestseller's list: Only His
by Susan Mallery and Coming Home
by Maria Stewart.

What I learned:

1. Both of these books are parts of larger series, and include more primary and sub characters that I'd ever seen in other types of fiction, even other types of romantic fiction. This makes sense from a sales point of view. If you get a reader hooked into the Fools Gold series or the Chesapeake Diaries, then they'll keep buying books in that series. So in my book, I've upgraded two of the minor characters to have slightly larger roles, and when I pitch this book to agents, I'll be marketing it as part of a series.

2. Geography is big. Both series are very tied to locations. The ties to that place is another factor in the book. I already had that (two guesses as to where the book is based haha), so I'm good there.

3. Willing suspension of disbelief. In Only His, the hero's company is building a casino. The mayor says that no one objected. Oh PLEASE. But it's not an important plot point because the book is focused on the people. The people!

4. This isn't quite what I want to write. I get the idea of multiple characters for series, but both books were a little bit too cluttered for me. I think Nora Roberts has handled this well - the heroine of the next book might be a prior book, but the hero rarely is. And the backstory of that minor character is only hinted at until she gets her whole book.

It's a good start, and a less than painful way to have conducted research while on vacation.

And if it sounds like I'm taking a very pragmatic, structured and studied entry into writing these kinds of books - well, I am. Why not!

So if you read romances, too, who are your favorites?

On bad books

2011-12-05T14:29:00.001-05:00

I was in New York this weekend on a two-day writing retreat, and brought a book I'd expected to review for Guyspeed.com along with me (I stayed in Red Bank, NJ, which meant I had some down time on the train to and from New York). But the book was so rotten that I emailed my editor and said I just couldn't do it - and this is a site that will list things that they hate.

Could I have done that for this book? Yes. I didn't, though, because I hadn't read the whole thing. Two chapters was enough. In order to do a proper "I hate it" review, I'd have to read the whole thing (yes, I have ethics!), and I didn't want to subject myself to that.

Two reasons why the book was bad:

1. It was written by someone who said they were an 'expert' on the topic, though she'd only been doing it for four years. Sorry, writer. Four years does not make you an expert on something as multi-level and complicated like this, especially when you write about the people who taught you - people who have decades of experience.
2. The writing sucked. Too many adjectives. Too many adverbs. Writing about details that did not matter - and then repeating them (lots of cigars and whiskey on the same page, explained the same way).

I should have guessed something was up when I saw that the book had an unusually large font. Bad Jen, bad. Her bio also touted that she'd written for X, Y and Z women's magazines. I should have known better on that front too. That means nothing, really.

I wasn't at a loss for reading, though. Beth Ciotta's Jinxed is a free ebook (for a limited time). I downloaded the Kindle app for my iPhone, got the book (all while sitting at a diner counter), and had to it read all weekend.

First time I ever "got" the convenience of an eReader. I don't know if I'll make the full on plunge because I'm very comfortable with reading on my iPhone. But maybe.

Let's talk about Eloisa James

2011-12-01T15:28:00.001-05:00

I've been doing some book review for this site, which is very fun. I've also been plowing through two tomes on personal finance, which is not very fun. And then there's holiday and family stress, and I decided I needed a break.

This year, those kind of reading/mental breaks have been spent with Eloisa James.

Eloisa James is the pen name for Mary Bly, a Shakespeare professor at Fordham. I interviewed her back in 2009 for a story I wrote on the real lives of romance writers. I'd never read her books before, but included her because of her fun story, and because she lived in New Jersey. She was incredibly friendly and smart - a great interviewee. I read one of her books for the story, and enjoyed it, which surprised me because she writes historical fiction. Most of her books take place mostly in the Regency time period (1811-1820).

Historical romances were never really my thing, probably because my first experiences with these books were sneaking reads from the big tower of romance novels at the Camden County Library in the early 1990s. Most of those books are what Smart Bitches call Old Skool where the hero was such an asshole that he sometimes raped the heroine.

But the book I read - A Duke of Her Own
- and the novels thereafter - were really smart. No simpering heroines. These women usually said "eff you" to trends of the time period, and there's always some female character - whether the main one or someone in the supporting cast - who actually enjoy sex. Big different from ye olde historic romances of yore.

In When Beauty Tamed the Beast, which I just finished, Linnet Thynne is a beauty who is "ruined" because she flirted with the Prince. That in itself isn't so bad. But she showed up in public in a dress that made her look pregnant, so of course, everyone in the ton assumed she was a giant hussy, and since she was below the Prince in rank and he couldn't marry her, her father decides that she's worthless.

Until he meets with the father of Piers Yelverton, an earl she's told was harmed in a childhood accident and can't have children. So Linnet's father cooks up a plan to marry her off to Piers so that he'll have an heir, even if it's not his - and remember now that Linnet isn't even pregnant. He's also a surgeon and, apparently, not very nice. Hence the beast.

Linnet sees this to her advantage. She can get married (which she HAD to do in that time period) without having to sleep with her husband. Her mom slept around, so she figured she can too if she wants.

See? Not so typical.

Sure, there's some sex, but it's not the focus of the book, and it's more about two really different and stubborn people, and I learn something about a time period that I didn't know much about. And no one was raped. Take THAT Old Skool romances.

This doesn't mean I've given up on Nora Roberts. No way. But I'm up to date on most of her books (the ones I want to read - I don't like the books she writes as J.D. Robb). I bought a bunch of James book during the Borders going out of business sale. So whenever I need that break? There's a treat waiting for me in my library.

Four years later, an essay

2011-11-17T15:58:00.000-05:00

If you've read Book a Week with Jen - the ebook or the blog - you know I kept referencing an essay I was writing about the person who dumped me, an event that was one of the things that lead to me starting the 52 books in 52 weeks project.

Four years later, here it is.

It's been completely rewritten, revised and rewritten again since I first wrote it, and I obviously updated it, but it's finally seeing the light of day. I wrote then that, if it were ever published, that "the sh*t would hit the fan." I don't think it will now. That great big thing called "time" and "perspective" have changed things, and gave me the space from the actual event to write an essay I felt like I could share.

It's not pretty, and part of me is still very embarrassed that I let myself get into that situation. But if this essay helps one other person, then it's worth it.

Reading 2011

2011-11-17T07:52:00.002-05:00

This came in the mail yesterday. Well, these. I'm starting to review books for a new website, and I called in a specific kind of book from publicists on my book PR list. I thought I'd get a few. Didn't think I'd require a crate.

I spent some time with Book a Week with Jen when I was turning it from a blog series into a book. One thing I realized is how little I write about books anymore compared to 2007-2008. A few reasons for this. First, my writing was deflected into travel writing when The Jersey Shore: Atlantic City to Cape May was published - more than I could have imagined. It's now in its second edition, so I've spent a large chunk of my writing time on the shore in the last four years. I mean a really large chunk.

Second, there just aren't many book review outlets anymore. When Frank Wilson retired as the books editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer, I lost my reviewing gig there (yes I tried, but that editor who took over his role has never gotten back to me). I did a few book related things here and there for women's magazines, but they're wretched to work for, and I don't agree with their overall 'message.' Every month, without FAIL, they will tell you that you're too fat, you're not please your man, and you'll die young, most likely of breast cancer.

I sometimes review for American Way magazine, but they're typically short. The biggest book-related piece I've done in years was for Runner's World.

I'm still reading, of course, but with no pattern or intention. It's a little weird.

I'm going to try blogging here more again. I don't think I'll do another Book a Week series, but who knows? Maybe.

Also! I'm a guest on Allison Winn Scotch's blog today, talking about ebooks.

'Book a Week with Jen: 1 Year, 52 Books, and a Year of Starting a New Chapter' is now an ebook! Buy it here.

Book a Week with Jen - now on sale!

2011-11-07T09:21:00.003-05:00

"In 2007, freelance journalist Jen A. Miller got dumped, lost her grandfather, wrote a book and bought a house - all in a four month span. She couldn't run, she couldn't write, and spent most of her time lying on her office floor.

To break herself out of her depression, she decided to read 52 books in 52 weeks, and write about them all.

In Book a Week with Jen, Jen recovers from the worst year of her life by reading - everything from dating books written for men to foodie lit to running books to romance novels (and even an instruction guide to threesomes). Funny, inspiring, and full of essays about good books, Book a Week with Jen is how one writer used the power of reading to pull herself through to a brighter side."

It's finally here! The Book a Week with Jen eBook! Thanks to everyone who supported this project, both when I first started writing it in 2007 and those talented pros who helped the actual eBook happen.

I hope you enjoy it - and for only $2.99, it's a cheap and easy reading experience :-)

Buy it for your Amazon Kindle
Buy it as a PDF.
Buy it for your Nook
Buy it in any other eReader format, including those for iBook and Sony Reader.

Book a Week with Jen: The ebook!

2011-11-04T14:33:00.000-04:00

This blog isn't dead yet! In fact, it's now an ebook!

Well, partly. I don't want to say too much since the book's not actually on sale yet, but if you read this blog from the beginning, you'll be very familiar with what the book is about. More details soon!

Review: American Wife

2011-07-26T22:03:00.001-04:00

This is a curious book. Joyce Carol Oates called Curtis Sittenfeld's third book, American Wife: A Novel, her most ambitious project. I might agree with her there. But I'm not sure I agree that the ambitionof this novel quite followed through.

American Wife is about Alice, a small town girl who lives a dull, normal life. As a teenager, she kills a classmate in a car accident. She eventually because a librarian. At 31, she meets Charlie Blackwell, a loveable but somewhat dim man who has inherited fortune as part of a well known political family name. They marry. They falter. He buys a baseball team. He drinks. He stops drinking. And he eventually becomes President of the United States.

Sound familiar? That's because Alice's story mimics that of former first lady Laura Bush. Sure, Charlie works in meat packing and lives in Wisconsin. But there is no way to not see the similarities, right on down to Laura causing the death of a classmate in a car accident.

Sittenfeld has openly proclaimed her love of Laura Bush, and Alice's issues - toward the end of the novel in the "Presidency phase" - seem to be Sittenfeld's way of defending the former first lady. And this is where the book started to wobble.

I was engrossed in American Wife up to the point that Charlie becomes President. I forgot the Laura Bush ties and became fascinated in the story of this woman she created albeit rooted in fact because she was a woman faced with choices. She killed a boy, but she continued to move on with her life (though weighed down by regret). She gets pregnant, but has an abortion. She goes to college. She becomes a librarian. She passes on marriage proposals and breaks up with a very dull man. She stays single into her 30s, but agrees to marry Charlie six weeks after meeting him. Those passages where she first meet's Charlie's family harken heavily back to Sittenfeld's debut novel, Prep: the fish out of water in the rich world theme. I didn't mind the repeat. It was from a different point of view than the younger narrator of Prep, and even though my boyfriend does not come from a wealthy family, I could identify with Alice's apprehension of being tossed into someone else's substantial family history.

But when the Presidency comes in, it's too close to reality for comfort. Charlie does almost exactly what President Bush (the second) did. The reaction to 9/11. The road into war. There are even copies of Dick Cheney and Karl Rove. Alice's bleating defense for herself and for not stopping Charlie sound less like Alice and more like a Laura Bush fan trying to explain why this woman did what she did - marry a buffoon who tripped into the Presidency who, if she hadn't been married to him, you think she wouldn't have voted for. And my dislike doesn't come from my dislike of GWB. It's just not believable in a work of fiction that Alice would have done what she did.

I don't regret reading the book, but I wish the last section had gone in a different direction. I almost didn't buy it. I loved Prep, but didn't like Sittenfeld's second book, The Man of My Dreams, which was the first major newspaper review of my career. My then editor sent it to me. I was horrified that I thought it was so terrible. Only after meeting a New York Times critic at Book Expo America and realizing that she disliked it as much as did I feel relieved that I wasn't a moron for not enjoying the following up book to a debut that had been so widely heralded.

But American Wife had gotten so many good reviews. Ambitious? Yes. But a complete winner? No.

The weird thing about this is that I WANTED to love love love this book. I don't necessarily feel guilty about panning The Man of My Dreams because it deserved to be panned, and the job of a review is to inform the audience, not flatter the author. But I knew then and know now that Sittenfeld is a talent, and one who needs to get her work out there to combat all that stupid chick lit and Jennifer Weiner crap that is being heralded as women's fiction. Sittenfeld's writing is strong and her topics important, but I still feel like she's unpolished. American Wife is a much better book then Man of My Dreams. Hopefully ambition will not get in the way of further good fiction from a talented yet albeit still unproven author.

Interview: Michael Uslan

2011-07-25T08:15:00.000-04:00

Check out the August issue of New Jersey Monthly for my interview with Michael Uslan about his new book, The Boy Who Loved Batman: A Memoir

Uslan is responsible for getting every modern Batman movie - from 1989 to today - on screen, and the book is about his journey in making that happen. Believe it or not, it was not an easy road.

But it's more than just a "my life in movies" book. It's a wonderful memoir about being a kid growing up in New Jersey. The writing is vivid and lively, and I devoured this book in three days - three very stressful, busy days where all I wanted to do was drop everything to finish the book. It's a great read.

Observation Part 2: More Hair Covers

2011-07-15T14:23:00.000-04:00

So apparently this is still happening.

Those were all taken yesterday at Barnes & Noble. I didn't go looking for them - they were all in the same "new releases" shelf. I barely even had to move to take a picture of all of them.

Why? No clue. Any thoughts?

Review: Everything I Know about Love I Learned from Romance Novels

2011-06-03T12:00:00.002-04:00

Welcoming back Sarah Wendell, aka Smart Bitch Sarah to the blog today. She was co-author of Beyond Heaving Bosoms, and my go-to person for two articles I wrote about romance writers. As her website says, she is "Man Titty Media Pundit."

Her new book, Everything I Know about Love I Learned from Romance Novels, comes out in October. If you haven't checked out her site, please do. It is everything you want a website to be: funny (very funny), informative, and opinionated.

Her topic is romance novels. As I am a defender of the real Jersey Shore, she is a defender of a genre that generates over $10 billion a year. Still, despite romances being one of the most if not the most profitable segment of a declining book industry, romance writers and readers are easy targets.

Want examples? This, this or this will do.

Dumb. Epically stupid. To suggest that women who read romances are addicted to porn is idiotic. Would you say your grandfather is addicted to mystery because he reads the new James Patterson book as soon as it comes out? Of course not.

But romance novels, as Wendell points out in this a thoughtful and succinct treatise of the genre, are, for the most part, for women by woman. They have emotions. They have feelings. And, yes, they sometimes have bad covers. But the industry is doing SOMETHING right. $10 billion does not lie.

I'm a 30 year old woman. I'm in a committed relationship. I not only have a bachelor's degree in English literature but a master's degree as well. I even review non-fiction books for upstanding publications, including the Philadelphia Inquirer and American Way magazine. I don't really like ice cream. And I don't have a cat.

I do, however, enjoy romance novels.

Does that surprise you? It shouldn't. I grew up reading books like Sweet Valley Twins and Sweet Valley High. I started in on Clive Cussler novels at 13 - and those books have more sex than a lot of romance novels do.

They're an escape. They're a mental and physical rest. As Wendell points out, escaping into another world where you KNOW there's going to be a happy ending is a break from everything else that's going on. I have a new book out and am moving at the same time. To sit for a half hour over lunch and slip into another reality is a wonderful break.

And a lot of them are well written, too. The level of detail and accuracy in an Eloisa James book is beyond what I read in most non-fiction. James, by the way, is really Mary Bly, a Shakepseare professor at Fordham with degrees from Oxford and Yale. No slouch.

Sure, some romance books are stinkers, which is where Wendell's site comes it. It reviews, praises and criticizes these books like any other books.

Which they are. Just maligned by people who don't know any better.

Thank you, Wendell, for expressing that so well in this book.

For Dads and Daughters

2011-05-25T14:26:00.002-04:00

If you've got a daughter active in sports - or your said girl who was/is active in sports (hello my fellow brethren!), check out Daddy's Little Goalie: A Father, His Daughters, and Sportsby Robert Strauss.

Robert is friends with my aunt and uncle, and his daughters - yes of the book - are classmates with my cousins. He is also a skilled journalists, and we often share bylines in the same section of a magazine or newspaper.

Example: for the July issue of New Jersey Monthly, he wrote a feature about Atlantic City, and I wrote the sidebar about Miss America.

Anyway, it's a recommend.

Book Expo America Book Signing

2011-05-23T15:37:00.001-04:00

For anyone going to the Book Expo America conference: I'll be signing copies of my bookon Tuesday at 11am. I'll be at booth 3424. AND I WILL HAVE SALT WATER TAFFY.

Anatomy of Two Articles

2011-05-18T15:16:00.001-04:00

As you probably know from reading this blog, I'm a freelance journalist, and sometimes I write about books. For the last year or so, I've been reviewing books for American Way magazine, and I can't review those books right after reading them because of my contract.

But now that these two stories are out, I thought you might be interested to see how two assignments from the same book came about.

In September, I get a slew of catalogs from publishers, showcasing what books will be coming out in the next season. After I think most of them have hit my mailbox, I sit down with sticky notes and a pen, and start marking what books I might want for what magazines.

One of those books was Halfway to Hollywood: Diaries 1980--1988by Monty Python's Michael Palin.

"American Way," I marked on the sticky, and requested the book. I pitched it to my editor who said yes. I then proceeded to read all 660+ pages of the book.

The assignment was only 125 words. I was getting paid in accordance to a short piece. Why slog through the entire book?

Of course, because that's what I'm supposed to do. It's what any decent journalist would do. I knew how long the book was before I pitched the review. It wouldn't be write to do a review without reading what you're reviewing, even if it is over 600 pages long.

One theme kept popping up: Running. Palin is a big runner. Not in the "do 52 marathons in 52 weeks way," but in the running-to-clear-the-mind way. I sent his publicist a note asking her if he still ran. He did, she said.

In November, I pitched a story to Runner's World for their "I'm a Runner" column, which runs at the back of every issue.

I'd been trying to break into Runner's World for three years. I even wrote for Bicycling already, which is owned by the same company - and I don't own a bike!

Surprise, surprise:

The article ran in the April issue, with an extended Q&A online.

And in the June issue, I saw this:

And here's the American Way piece.

From reading one book for one small assignment, I ended up writing another big assignment, and I'm currently working on my third piece for Runner's World. And I got to talk to Michael Palin! Yes, that Michael Palin!

On Tuesday, I'm going to Book Expo America for two reasons: first, to sign copies of my new book. Second, to find new books to write about for magazines. And the cycle starts all over again.

Review: Fool for Love by Eloisa James

2011-05-12T15:19:00.000-04:00

Oh HELL yeah I read another romance novel. C'mon, folks. Smart chicks read them, too, especially when they're written by Shakespeare professors from Fordham.

Quick refresher: Eloisa James is really Mary Bly, who I wrote about here. I don't really dig historical romance - especially when the hero is named "Darby" in an obvious one-letter difference from hero of heroes Darcy. But Bly's books are so researched, and interesting and funny, and such a window into another time period that, when I wanted something fun to read, and couldn't quite handle another Nora Roberts murder-mystery themed romance, picked up Fool for Love, which James published in 2003.

The heroine here is Henrietta, a country bumpkin of sorts but Heiress whose mother died in childbirth. She has also inherited her mother's weak hip, which doctors told her was the reason her mother is dead, and warned Henrietta that she cannot have children.

Darby (yes, see?) is a bit of a city fop who stands to be disinherited because his aunt is knocked up. Since the aunt (not related to him) and his uncle essentially lived separate lives, and the uncle had a mistress, and the aunt was known to get around, he assumed that the kid is not his uncle's - even though the uncle died in the aunt's bedchamber (intrigue!) So if the baby is a boy, Darby loses his inheritance.

So he decides to hit the countryside to see what's what. He brings his two step sisters along. Their parents are dead, so he's responsible for them. While in town, the girls run away from their nursemaid, and into Henrietta.

And things, of course, unspool from there.

The only thing that really bothered me was the Darby name. The aunt's lover's name is Sebastian. Sebastian! Put that name on a hero!

Interesting read when I didn't want to think about what I was reading. I dig it.

Review: Furious Love: Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton and the Marriage of the Century

2011-04-27T22:27:00.001-04:00

Long title. Longer book. But worth it.

I'm 30. When I was a kid, the Elizabeth Taylor I knew sold that White Diamonds perfume and was good friends with Michael Jackson. I saw her and Burton in the movie Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolfe and, like most Hollywood icons, thought she was gorgeous, but that's about it.

When she died, I asked both my boss and my father who they thought would meet her at the pearly white gates. "Richard Burton," they both said.

On a Facebook recommendation, I picked up Furious Love to get a better understanding of what everyone talked about between these two.

Goodness. Talk about a love hate/relationship. I don't know if I hoped that Burton met her at the gates of heaven, or if they should still stay in their separate quarters. If Taylor were one of my friends, I'd have told her a zillion times to just stop talking to him, knowing that she couldn't stay away. It's a sad book, too. What if they hadn't been so public? Or had such problems with drinking?

The book's very sensational, and reads sometimes like an issue of a supermarket tabloid, but I guess that fits with the theme of who these people were, watched constantly, wrapped in a scandal that never quite went away. I imagine if I was an adult at the time this all happened, I'd be fascinated too.

It took me a long time to finish this book, but I'm glad I slogged through. I feel I have a better grasp on what was a fixture of pop culture for a very long time.

Review: Just Kids

2011-03-29T08:42:00.000-04:00

Not sure what I can say that hasn't been said already about Patti Smith's memoir Just Kids. Not only has it been widely praised, but was also a nominee for book of the year in the National Book Circle Critic Award in the autobiography category.

Smith, I didn't know, grew up in the South Jersey area. I also had no idea that she lived at the Chelsea Hotel, that she never thought she'd be a singer, that she went to New York to be an artist in drawing and poetry. I had no idea that she was such an amazing writer, either.

It's not really a rock and roll memoir. Instead, it's a coming of age story about a confused young woman who moves to New York at 20 years old after giving up a baby for adoption. She lives on the streets for a while until she meets the artist Robert Mapplethorpe. Together, they struggle with their work, themselves, and if not each other, then their relationship with each other, particularly Mapplethorpe, who was exploring his homosexuality at the same time he was in a relationship with Smith.

It's beautifully written, and even if you're not familiar with Smith's music, worth a read.

Review: Spoiled

2011-03-16T13:49:00.000-04:00

In July, I bought a pair of pink loafers. I had just started a full time gig and needed something other than flip flops to wear to work. Closed toe shoes were vital, too, since I'd banged my toes up pretty good running, and no one wanted to see that.

After an hour in DSW, I found a pair of pink loafers. They seemed ridiculous. I hate pink. I don't really like loafers. But they were deeply discounted, so I figured I'd give them a shot.

Eight months later, I traveled to a conference in Tampa with only one pair of shoes in my bag: the pink loafers. They are comfortable and, believe it or not, go with almost anything.

I tell this story because that's how I felt about Spoiled. Looking at it, I thought that the book wasn't for me. It's a young adult book about a spoiled Hollywood brat and the stink she puts up when the half sister she never knew moved into her mansion. Not exactly my kind of thing, especially since (aside from the half sister part), I figured it'd have a very Sweet Valley, Jessica/Elizabeth thing going on.

But the book is written by Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan a.k.a. the Fug Girls. The person who had this computer before me apparently loved their work, and since she didn't clean her cache, I accidentally got to their website. I'm hooked. It looks at celebrity fashion, but with snark and a slight British overtone (Cocks has dual citizenship). Based on that, I gave Spoiled a shot.

And read it in a day.

Is it brain bending fiction? No. Is it predictable? Of course. But was it something wildly entertaining to read? Absolutely. At times, I forgot that it was written for a younger demographic.

My only quibble is that I worry it'll go stale fast with all the name dropping of celebrities and fashion lines. But hey, if you're taking it on the beach this summer, will you really care?

Review: Drinking with Miss Dutchie

2011-03-10T13:49:00.001-05:00

My feelings on Drinking with Miss Dutchie: mixed. And short.

On one hand, Ed Breslin's story is worth telling. He finally was able to commit to sobriety and quit smoking after he and his wife adopted a lab they named Dutchie. He circled the drain multiple times with his drinking, and having a dog helped him, he thinks, finally pull out of that death spiral.

On the other hand, the narrative of this book is a muffled. Breslin jumps back and forth from the current day to the past and back again, and repeats himself. I think this would have done much better told in a linear fashion. It would have given strength to the memoir element rather than shucking it behind the story of a couple and their dog.

Review: Rules of Civility

2011-03-07T20:00:00.001-05:00

Rules of Civility was on the top of the stack of galleys in my office when I was about to leave on vacation. I saw the cover, read through the preface and though, OK, this book might have a shot.

It had more than a shot. It's a stunning novel, and one that I read in just over a day.

Rules of Civility is about Katey Kontent, a 25-year-old secretary who, with roommate Eve, meets a Tinker Grey on New Year's Eve, 1937. Katey is a legal typist. Grey comes draped in a fine cashmere coat and orders the girls champagne just as they ran out of nickels for martinis. Yes, he is Gatsby-like, but without the overlapping obsession about one woman. And since the book starts in the 1960s with Katey looking at an art exhibit featuring Tinker as a poor penniless man, you know that this wealth will not last long.

The trio hit it off, and eventually make dates together. Tinker seems to be leaning toward Katey, which doesn't rest too well with Eve. Right when Eve seems to shake it off, though, well, I won't say too much more or I'll ruin the book for you.

I wouldn't say this is light vacation fluff. There's too much depth and texture. Even though the book revolves around the trio, the character of Katey, who was orphaned at 19, is almost like its own story. It made me wonder how Amor Towles, a 46 year old man from the suburbs of Boston, could capture the limbo that is being in your mid-20s.

The setting of late 1930s New York City, too, is well done. This book makes me want a historical novel and gives me a headache at the prospect at the same time.

I regret to say that you can't buy it until July, though. But mark it down. Make sure you grab it when it's out. Yes, I think it's that good.

P.S. I just read through the Q&A that came with the book. Towles allowed himself one year to write the book. He wrote, revised and, as he said, "banked" one chapter a week. What a marvelous idea. I think I might try that since I'm struggling with my fiction (though he did add that the entire process took about three years, which included revisions of the entire thing).

Review: In Office Hours

2011-02-15T08:09:00.000-05:00

Well, this was a dishy little novel.

In Office Hoursis about two women who have affairs. One, Stella, is a higher up at a ginormous oil company in London. She starts sleeping with a 27 year old male new hire - yes, she's married, but not to him. The other is Bella, a 20-something single mom who works at the same company and starts banging her married boss.

In each case, we only get inside the woman's head. It's the kind of book that makes me wonder why ANYONE would have an affair. They both seem to know it won't end well, but they forge ahead anyway. But why? It's not that author Lucy Kellaway doesn't explain the (gravely flawed) rationale for their actions...but maybe it's me.

Kellaway is an editor and columnist at the Financial Times, which is why the office part of this book is spot on. That, combined with the British melodrama feel of the book, makes for a light read. I'd have enjoyed this on vacation if I was away.

Review: The Secret Lives of Dresses

2011-02-08T08:19:00.001-05:00

I don't know if I've ever described a book this way, but here goes: The Secret Lives of Dressesis cute.

I can't think of a better word to wrap up this sweet story about a college senior who, after her grandmother ends up in the hospital, starts working at her grandmother's vintage clothing store. It's written about Erin McKean, the woman behind the super fun Dress a Day blog.

Talk about the right book at the right time, too. Last year, I wrote this piece about vintage in Tampa for the New York Times. I'm trying to find the perfect vintage dress to wear to my book launch party in May, and I've been talking to a few dealers about my options (late 60s, early 70s, something along the lines of Halston designs - apparently that's what I'm after). I also made a big vintage buy in December - probably the most expensive dress I have ever purchased - and I think it was worth it. I'm flying back to Tampa in March for Phillies spring training, and trying to figure out if I have time to go to La France, which is one of the places I wrote about in the Tampa article, and the coolest store I've ever been in. They sold me my first vintage dress, a pink floaty 1930s thing that was in "as is" condition. It probably needed an overhaul, but being a poor college kid, I didn't have the resources to fix it. I think I wrote it twice before it fell apart. But both times I wore it? Felt like a million bucks.

The book isn't about why vintage rocks. It's about a turn in one woman's life. But it's a nice element, and very well done.

It's not a perfect book, though. Some of the characters a too cliched, and the plot lines a shade predictable. But I don't think this book was meant to be a big thinker. It's the kind of book I'd suggest you bring on vacation. It'd make great relaxed reading.

On another note: I apologize that the blog's been a little quiet lately. I've been reviewing books for American Way magazine, and I can't write here what they are because of my contract. Gotta keep that dog in fancy kibble.

Review: Concierge Confidential

2010-12-27T20:46:00.000-05:00

I took Concierge Confidential by Michael Fazio (with Michael Malice) on vacation, and it turned out to be the kind of book you want to take on a trip. It's light, it's gossipy, and it gives an inside peek into the concierge system and how they can get you those dinner reservations when the place is supposedly booked up.

Fazio was a concierge at a big hotel in New York, and then later ran his own concierge company, which serviced apartment and condo buildings. What started as an escape from Hollywood turned into a career of what he found he did best: service.

I read this book while staying in a hotel in DC that left a message on the bed saying they were going to shut down the power for four hours overnight and gave guests a glowstick to guide us around the room if we needed it. Really? That's service? Didn't seem to match what Fazio said about it.

It's nothing that's brain bending, but a good, quick read. I picked up some tips on how to ask for hotel upgrades, too.

I also appreciate that he put his writing partner on the cover because I have a feeling that the OTHER book I read this week, which was a meh 'celebrity' memoir, was written by a ghost writer who got no credit. Now, I know that ghost writing contracts are all different, but it irked me.

A plan comes together

2010-12-14T18:57:00.001-05:00

I was ready to write a short review of the latest book I reviewed for American Way magazine, but then I pitched the author to Runner's World since he writes a lot about running. Ding ding ding! Got that assignment too, so I'm not allowed to say who I'm writing about. What I will say, though, is that he's incredibly funny and wrote diaries so interesting that I couldn't put the book down - not easy to do when those diaries are almost 600 pages.

Notes from the book reviewer's office

2010-12-05T11:04:00.000-05:00

I'm deep into a very long and twisting book that I'm reviewing for an inflight magazine. I love it, but it's time consuming. So in the meantime, some updates from other corners of my book-related world:

1. I finished the NaNoWriMo challenge! It's when a lot of crazy people attempt to write a 50,000 word novel in the month of November. I did it. But it's not edited - for anything, not even spelling. I started out with three different plots. I jump from first to third person and then back to first again. It ended up being a young adult book about an American girl who has split her time between Tampa, FL and Oxford because her mum is American and her dad is British. In the year after high school graduation, she goes to live with her father. Lots of confusion and running and boys. It's really bad. But that challenge was worth it. I'm trying to write fiction again, and this forced me to sit down and just write.

2. My first book review for American Way magazine, which is the inflight magazine of American Airlines, is in the December 1 issue.

3. I'm doing my annual book clear out. I go through all the galleys and books and samples that have been sent to me over the year, and get rid of what I know I'll never use. They go either to the library, my cousin, or a college friend in Boston. This might sound shocking. But I can't possibly ever read or use everything that's sent my way, and sometimes I get two or even three copies of a book. I do mean clean outs whenever books start to overtake my office, but this is the big one. Books that don't make the cut? Novels that aren't something I'd read in my free time. Vampire books. Anything about how to get skinny or get rich quick. A lot of how to date books go, too. I'm sure there are books here that I would like to read, but I know I won't have time.

Review: Sweet Valley Confidential

2010-11-18T20:26:00.001-05:00

You'll notice that the picture used for this post isn't the usual plain cover image that I'd usually use for a book. I've taken a picture of my copy of Sweet Valley Confidential: Ten Years Later
because I think the level of security being put around preview copies of this book is just silly.

A refresher: Sweet Valley High was a mega book series targeted about Jessica and Elizabeth Wakefield, two gorgeous "perfect size six" 16 year old twins from the fictional town of Sweet Valley in Southern California. These books were packed with melodrama, romance and more melodrama.

I started reading Sweet Valley Twins, which were about the girls in middle school, while I was a tween and quickly jumped up to the high school series. I remember the first time I read a book in a day. I started with the latest Wakefield twins adventure on the beach, and finished as my mom was cooking dinner that night.

I could do that because these books aren't heavy. They were brain candy. I'd switch between Sweet Valley and Edgar Allen Poe. I do the same thing today, as evidence by the occasional Nora Roberts novel thrown in among whatever else I read and review here.

So I was jazzed to hear that a new Sweet Valley book was coming out, dropping in on the twins when they were 27.

A lot of women my age are excited for the series, too. Apparently the publisher thinks that so many are ravinous for this book, which will be published on March 29, 2010.

Look closely at the picture. You'll see the number 117 written in the top left hand corner. That's not part of the title. It was hand written onto the book in black marker. The number 117 was also written on the title page, the first page of the first chapter, and on the first page of the final chapters.

This is to prevent reviewers from selling copies on eBay. That's my guess.

I understand that there's a demand for this book, but...c'mon. It's not the next Harry Potter. It's the next installment of a silly melodrama.

I can't say too much about the actual book because of that assignment, though I will say that I wish they'd given this reboot a chance as another series instead of stuffing updates about every single Sweet Valley High classmate into one book. Part of me likes the twins better when they're stuck in the '80s. The "perfect size six" was taken out - I guess they didn't want to tackle the issue that they'd have to be "perfect size zeros" these days. A howl went up on the internet when all those "perfect size six" lines were changed to "perfect size four" in 2008 for new editions of the books.

Yes, there is a curiosity about the new book, but I don't think the book needs this level of security. But maybe I'm underestimating the rabidness of Sweet Valley fans.

Notes on Nora - and beyond

2010-11-15T08:30:00.004-05:00

A few notes:

1. As promised, I picked up Nora Roberts' Happy Ever After after reading the Franzen book. It was OK. I think the series could have been a trilogy instead of a quartet but then I would have only bought three books, not four. I don't think it's worth a full post. What else could I say that I haven't already been said? Roberts is a juggernaut, and even if she writes brain candy, I like brain candy every now and again.

2. Speaking of juggernauts, I'm currently reading Sweet Valley Confidential: Ten Years Later. It's for an assignment for an inflight magazine. I can't even even tell you how many Sweet Valley books I read as a kid (I included one in my book a week series), so I'm excited about this. Apparently, the publisher thinks there's a huge demand for this preview copy as they've marked it up beyond belief to prevent reviewers from selling the galley. I'll write further when I finish reading the book.

3. I'm participating in National Novel Writing Month, where a bunch of loons try to write a 50,000 word novel in the month of November. The book I'm writing is utter crap, but it's a good exercise. I've been trying to get back into fiction writing, and being force to sit down and write almost every day is a good way to get back in the habit. Maybe. We'll see what comes out at the end of November.

Review: Freedom by Jonathan Franzen

2010-11-08T19:19:00.000-05:00

Took me for what felt like forever to review Jonathan Franzen's Freedom. It's "the" book of the fall - not only has Franzen been on EVERY NPR show promoting the book (yes, even Marketplace), but Oprah anointed it as part of her book club, which is odd given this fight they had about Franzen's last book, The Corrections.

I can see why Oprah made it a pick. The book is about one family, told from multiple points of view from every family member but the main couple's daughter. The narrative focuses around the mother, Patty, who grew up to liberal NY-based parents and escaped what she considered her odd family on a basketball scholarship to Minnesota. There she makes best friends with a manipulative elf of a woman, and is introduced to two men who will greatly affect the course of her life, from college through middle age.

It's a political book, too, with much of the narrative focused around a post 9/11 world and the Iraq war.

It's a good book, but I think I'm going to need to read it again in a few years. It's still not my favorite Franzen book - that would be How to Be Alone, which is a collection of superb essays.

I wish I had more to say, folks, but that's it for now. Is it bad that I'm excited for the cheesy romance novel I have up next? Well at least I admit it.

I'm also participating in Nanowrimo, which is a project where a whole bunch of crazy people set out to write a 50,000 word novel in the month of November. I'm about 15,000 words in. It's a lot of crud - and makes me understand why Franzen worked on this book for 10 years. This stuff's hard.

Review: The Year of Living Biblically

2010-10-20T14:09:00.000-04:00

I'd meant to readThe Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possiblewhen it was published in 2007, but never got around to it. It was published during the whole stretch where my grandfather died, I started writing a book and went through a crushing breakup. Reading a book about the Bible wasn't exactly on the top of my priority list.

But I'm glad I finally got around to the book where A.J. Jacobs tries to live according to the Bible for a year. It's silly in parts, like him not shaving for a year, wearing all white, and the whole rules about how he's not supposed to share a bed with his life when Aunt Flo's around. It's more serious, though, than I expected and Jacobs is really changed by the experience. Even though he remains agnostic (not really a spoiler, so calm down), his view of the world has changed, and he seems to reach a spirituality that has little to do with God but more with seeing the world in a different way and appreciating why people believe in religion.

It also felt a little bit like a throwback. The book came out when stunt books were popular. Jacobs' first book was about reading the encyclopedia. I don't see as many of these now because how many times can you live in a retirement community as a young adult or live your life according to everything Oprah says? Apparently, when that well ran dry, the publishing industry turns to vampires.

So - good read, even though the trend of stunt memoirs is drawing to a close. Or maybe not - maybe a vampire living according to the Bible?

Delivering Happiness by Tony Hsieh

2010-10-03T19:25:00.000-04:00

I was surprised at myself when I bought Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purposeby Tony Hsieh. I'm not that big into business books. I shop at Zappos.com (of course), but I wouldn't call myself a devotee.

But I like what they do - which included giving me a credit for a pair of gloves that had fallen apart three months after purchase - and a few people recommended the book, so I gave it a read while going to and from New York today.

Not a bad read. It explains a completely different business point of view than what I'm used to, especially now that I have ended my career as a full time freelance writer. Hsieh writes that by focusing on the people who work at the company, and having a core set of company values, your business can really take off WITHOUT maximum profit being the bottom line...though those moves certainly help grow a business.

When I was freelancing full time - up until about two months ago - I felt like a commodity that had to be "bought" at the lowest price possible. Editors and publishers cut word counts, cut rates, treated me worse than I've ever been treated before. I felt like I was being spit on by some of them through vile-packed emails.

How do they expect to keep good, dependable skilled writers if that's how they treat us? The argument that they could get someone else to do it cheaper didn't help either. After five and a half years of freelancing full time, I took a full time marketing job and went back to freelancing part time.

Toward the end of that career, I realized that writing was not fun anymore. It did not make me happy. It did not give my any sort of financial security, and my "product" suffered. Maybe that's why this book spoke out to me, both as someone who was caught in a dozen tiny profit focused machines (magazines and newspapers) and as someone who was producing what became an inferior product.

I'm not saying that the job I have now will also be my final employment stop, but it gives me the flexibility to write what I want to write again. I'm working again on a novel. I'm writing on this blog again, and today I spent the day wandering New York City with a former college classmate. I'm writing an article about him for our college alumni journal. I wasn't worried about how much I was going to make per hour. I wasn't worried about all the other assignments I had to do. My only concern was being in that moment of catching up with an old friend, and making sure I had the information to write the best piece possible.

Somehow that relates to this book. It's a quick read, too. Great pick up.

Review: Admission by Jean Hanff Korlelitz

2010-07-25T17:37:00.002-04:00

I was sitting in a very boring faculty meeting at the University of Tampa when my college advisor slid a file folder across the table.

I thought it might be a notes for an upcoming story (I was editor of the college newspaper, which is why I was at said very boring meeting) or something for my professor's Shakespeare class, but it was my college application. I don't remember why he had it, but I do remember being horrified by my essay. I think Tampa got the one about how I looked up to my older brother, which is a fine thing to write about, but that essay I'd labored over as a high school senior looked amateurish to a college junior.

"How did I even get accepted?" I whispered to my advisor.

"They were letting everyone in that year," he said, and laughed.

He wasn't exactly lying. Tampa did go on a big "recruitment" kick, which I took to mean letting in almost everyone with a pulse. I didn't want to go to Tampa. I wanted to go to Boston University, but my parents were divorcing the year I graduated high school and I was told they didn't have the money, so I was going to Tampa, which threw buckets of money in my direction (I'd guess more for my grades and SAT scores than my essay). Of course, 17 year old me was livid. How dare they squash my dreams of becoming a marine biologist and moving to Australia to work on the Great Barrier Reef?

It's okay to want to smack 17 year old me. I think I'd want to hit her too.

I'd forgotten about the faculty meeting incident until I started reading Admission by Jean Hanff Korelitz, which is a novel about Portia Nathan, an admission officer for Princeton University. The book isn't so much about the inner workings of an admissions office (though there's plenty of that), but about Nathan, who is stuck in a rut until she's rudely pushed out and forced to find a new direction. Each chapter begins with the snippet of a fictional essay (Hanff Korelitz worked as a part-time reader for Princeton in 2006 and 2007) that looked very much like my essay about my brother.

The book is slow to start, and I almost gave up. I brought six books with me on vacation, and figured I might find something for apt for beach chair reading. But about half way through, I caught onto the story. It's beautifully written, too, so even in the slow parts, the rich language could be enough to pull you through.

I applied to Princeton for graduate school and didn't get in (nor was I admitted to 12 other English Liteature PhD programs). This I forgot, too, until I read Admission. That rejection might have been the best thing to happen to me. I'd be locked in a room somewhere preparing lesson plans for bored college students or writing some scholarly essay that three people would read. My life would have been a lot different if my parents did let me go to BU, too. Amazing how what seems awful at the time works out. Hopefully that's something high school seniors will keep that in mind when their admissions letters start rolling in.

One more note: this summer, I'm revising and updating a book I wrote three years ago. Gah. I feel like that college junior reading my high school essay all over again. I guess the good news is that the more I write, the better I get. Maybe I'll think the same thing if I look over this post three years from now.

Review: Broke, USA by Gary Rivlin

2010-07-25T17:14:00.000-04:00

For two years, I've written about personal finance for a few websites - first interest.com and cyberhomes.com, then bankaholic.com and now bankrate.com, creditcards.com and a few custom publications. I'm not financially savvy person and certainly wasn't when I started on this beat, but as I worked up from shorts to full blown features about deceptive practices of the credit card industry, I developed a stronger grasp on why money is such a complicated thing for so many people, especially because the deck is stacked against them.

Gary Rivlin's Broke, USA
shows how that deck is stacked in the favor of people who have realized how to exploit the poor. He looks into how payday lenders, pawn shops, check cashers and rapid tax refunders have sliced into the earnings of people who can least afford it, and the subprime mortgage crisis where he says the greed of a few caused harm to so many.

It's a bleak story, and probably not what most people would read on the first few days of their vacation, but that's what I did - the week the Federal Consumer Protection Bureau became a reality, at least by law so far.

The book is fascinating and frightening, though the narrative is slow and sometimes boring. I told a friend it reminded me of The End of Overeating, which was full of information that I think people should know but did not have a narrative that would pull almost any reader through (see Born to Run, Omnivore's Dilemma as examples of books that achieved that).

I don't know if that would stop people from finishing the book. I know I have an interest because of my work. But if you've ever wanted to learn why the poor stay poor, read this book. It's a painful eye opener.

Review: The Mighty Queens of Freeville

2010-07-07T22:23:00.001-04:00

I picked up Amy Dickinson's The Mighty Queens of Freeville because it was on the display table at Barnes & Noble, and I've heard the title about a thousand times. Dickinson, aside from being the Amy behind the "Ask Amy" advice column, is sometimes a panelist on NPR's Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me. I listen to the podcast every Sunday while either running or cleaning. I'm fortunate enough to have played a round on the show and won Carl Kasell's voice on my home answering machine (or iPhone, in my case).

I always assumed that the book was about misers. Freeville sounds thrifty, right? Dickinson is funny on the show, so I gave it a shot.

The women in this memoir are thrifty, but that's not the point of the book. Freeville, New York is where Dickinson's clan is based, and the book is about the women in her family, most of whom were left by their husbands. Dickinson's father walked out after he mortgaged her mother's farm, which left them with nothing. One of the saddest passages is when the repo men come to take the cows away.

I liked the book, and I read it in two days. It's not perfect, and sometimes the essays overlap and repeat information she already shared. But what she has to say about women and the power of female relationships stuck with me, as did her story of women who did not follow the traditional marriage>children pattern, whether they wanted to or not.

I thought about this a lot today, for a stupid reason: I renewed my passport. I didn't know that you had to turn the old one in to do so. I love my old passport, which I got right before I left the U.S. to study in England in early 2001. The 20 year old in that picture is so fresh faced and excited about everything. Why wouldn't she be? She was about to live overseas! She wasn't even a senior in college and didn't need to worry about what she'd do with the rest of her life.

I'm turning 30 in less than two weeks. What would she say if she saw me now? My chosen industry is collapsing around me. My sister and sister in law are both pregnant. I don't even have a boyfriend. Would 20 year old me be upset? Would she worry that all the work she'd put in between then and now would be for nothing?

I hope not. I'd tell her that I have a great life. I wrote a book, bought a house and got a dog - slightly crazy dog, but dog who thinks I'm the best thing in the ENTIRE WORLD. I've written for news outlets I never dreamed would even call me back, especially after that awful internship in Washington DC where I landed one story on the cover of a Texas newspaper but spent most of my time in the National Gallery of Art (take THAT guy who said I'd never be a journalist - who covered the World Series parade for the New York Times, huh?) I survived a wretched breakup that at 20 I never could have handled. I still sometimes hate how I look, but it's not as often, and I've learned to accept that having hips is a GOOD thing. I'd also tell her that some people she watched in envy as they walked down the aisle - including that college roommate she has at 20 - wouldn't be together anymore at the time I am now, and the whole relationship thing is a lot more difficult than she imagined - but that's OK. It SHOULD be complicated. It SHOULD be hard because, for it to work, it can't be like anything she sees in movies or reads about in magazines (magazines that she'll realize are junk by her mid-20s). I'd also tell her that she learns to stand on her own two feet, which makes those hard times easier to handle.

So back to Freeville. I liked seeing how Dickinson's story played out and that even after her husband left her with an infant to run off with his secretary, she had a great life. A fantastic one as did the other women in her family who'd been dealt a bad hand.

So what will my 40 year old self think of me? Will I ever be that old? (As I'd say to my 20 year old self - yes).

Review: Sima's Undergarments for Women

2010-06-07T14:23:00.000-04:00

Sima's Undergarments for Women by Ilana Stanger-Ross is one of the handful of books I picked up at Book Expo America. The rep from Penguin Publishing described it as a quirky little book.

That's exactly what it is, and another book I'd nominate as a beach read (boy, is there a bumper crop of those this year - that or I'm reading a lot more fiction).

The book is about Sima Goldner, a middle aged woman who owns a lingerie shop in the basement of her Brooklyn home. The story gets moving when she hires a beautiful Israeli woman, Timna, as her seamstress. Having a gorgeous young woman in her shop forces Goldner (or at least Ilana Stranger-Ross in telling the story) to revisit her infertility, and how that one thing she couldn't do - have children - has dominated her life, torn apart her marriage and put a big black rain cloud over her head. For decades.

I've never been a very maternal person. I don't coo at babies, and save for literally a week in my early 20s, never had a strong desire to have a baby. I didn't think I would sympathize with Simna, but I did. Stanger-Ross made her sorrow so real, especially in the flashbacks to when Simna was tested to find out why she couldn't have children. They tests they performed her were horrific, even worse than the word the doctor used to describe her: barren.

So even though it's a novel, it was a history lesson, too, about women's health and another generation's gender roles, and how a little communication can change someone's point of view. Very interesting read.

Review: Rich Boy by Sharon Pomerantz

2010-06-02T19:45:00.001-04:00

I've written about a lot of beach books coming out this year - fantastic reads that I'd recommend again. But they've all been trumped by Rich Boy by Sharon Pomerantz, which I'm naming my top beach read of the summer. If you're going down the shore for a week in August, get this, and plan to be stuck in your beach chair.

It's about Robert Vishniak, a boy from Northeast Philadelphia who dreams of more - much more than his working class parents, in their tiny row home and penny pinching ways, could ever dream of offering him. He's the first in his family to go to college, which should be a good thing, but he ends up chasing the one thing his parents didn't have: money. The novel is about how that one specific drive for that one thing can direct one man's life - well, two, if you count Robert's brother Barry. It's a long and winding novel, and completely engrossing and, yes, sad.

I grew up in the Philadelphia area, and know a lot of people from the Northeast, and can understand Robert's underlying motivation to do better. Pomerantz nails it there. Fantastically. My only quibble is that there are some factual errors in the chapter where the family goes to Atlantic City, and not small errors either. Even if you don't write about the Jersey Shore like I do, you'll probably pick them up, unless they are corrected by the time the final version prints (I have a galley).

But that's a small reason not to like the novel. Mark this one down. It's an excellent read.

Review: What I Know Now About Success

2010-05-30T10:41:00.000-04:00

I'll go ahead and give What I Know Now About Success: Letters from Extraordinary Women to Their Younger Selvesa mixed review - not unusual for a book that's a collection of essays.

It's a collection of letters that successful women would write to themselves at a younger age. Some are inspiring and great reminders that failure can lead to success. Reading those were freeing - made me realize that I don't need to be stuck in what I'm doing now, and that I can do something radically different. I could, if I wanted, pick up and move and start over somewhere else. They're also reminders that I do not need to attach my value to a relationship. Being single is far better than being trapped by someone who isn't right for me.

But some of the essays...well. Did I really need to read about so many cosmetics company founders? All that BS about how cosmetics make people feel pretty is hard to swallow. I don't look up to a woman who introduced Chinese women to make up. Not at all. I skipped some of those cosmetics essays, and I'm not sure Suzanne Somers should be held up as a role model.

The book is hit or miss. But the hits? Worth reading.

Review: Logicomix: An Epic Search for Truth

2010-05-24T09:17:00.000-04:00

If you told me to read a book about a bunch of men who chased a way to find a logical foundation of mathematics, I'd suggest you didn't know me. I topped out at pre-calc and struggled with physics, so this isn't something I'd really like to follow up on in book form.

But that's what Logicomix: An Epic Search for Truth is about. Why'd I read it? Because it's told in graphic novel form.

The book has two stories in one: the historical story of those men who tried to put logic into math, and then the authors of this book, Apostolos Doxiadis and Christos H. Papadimitriou, putting the book together. Splicing the two stories together gave it more of a human element as opposed to "these guys tried to form a mathematical theory."

I know this isn't very clear, but it's hard to explain. You need to see it - literally - to get it. Reading Logicomix: An Epic Search for Truth in graphic novel form made the information more accessible.

Beach Reads!

2010-05-18T08:20:00.000-04:00

If you haven't caught on, I do a version of this "summer beach reads" story every year, but it works. Why? Because new books are always published, and people always want something to read while sitting on the sand.

This year, I wrote the piece for New Jersey Monthly along with one of my editors, and we picked books that all have some connection to New Jersey. Two I've reviewed here already on the blog: Simply From Scratch by Alicia Bessette and The Edge of Ruin by Irene Fleming.

If you're looking for more beach reads, I suggest you check out the piece, or scroll through the reviews I've written here over the last six months. Many of those books are now out on bookshelves, and well worth a look.

Review: Unfinished Business by Lee Kravitz

2010-05-16T18:25:00.000-04:00

Unfinished Business could be a book in what will be an emerging trend in 2010 and 2011: the lay off book.

When Lee Kravitz was laid off from his job as editor of Parade Magazine, he lost part of his identity. He had worked so long and so hard at work that he forgot to be a human being. So he went on a year-long journey to reconnect with people from his past and, as the title suggest, taking care of unfinished business, from telling a favorite teacher "thank you" to finding what happened to a mentally disabled aunt.

It's a fascinating read, and an example of how anyone's life can be interesting. It had me looking at some unfinished business in my life, too, and asking who I'd visit or track down if I had a year to do it. My story would be a little bit different (Kravitz, after all, is of the AARP generation), but it could be worth looking into in honor of my 30th birthday, which is happening this year, and the cross-country trip I might make after the big day.

So will this be a trend? The "I lost my job during the great recession so I wrote a book?" Maybe. I'm going to Book Expo America at the end of the month, which is a great way to see what's next. Who knows. Maybe it'll be the next "zombie book."

I know I promised to review that latest Nora Roberts book, but it wasn't much different than everything else she's written, and I'm kinda tired (it was that kind of weekend!) Sorry, folks.

Review: Daring to Dream by Nora Roberts

2010-05-04T13:43:00.000-04:00

I've chronicled my love of Nora Roberts books on this site before. They are a wonderful escape valve for me, especially in times of stress. Now is one of those times, so I was jazzed to find out she had a new book coming out in April 27 (which will be the next review after this one).

But at the time, April 27 was too far away, so I dove into my library and pulled out what might have been the first Roberts book I ever read: Daring to Dream, originally published in 1996. It's the first in a trilogy I have read twice already, and I knew the characters well: Margo, the daughter of the housekeeper who at 18 years old fled to chase her dream and become a fashion model in Europe; Josh, the heir to the Templeton resort and hotel fortunate - and son of the family that kept Margo's mother as the housekeeper. When Margo is caught in a drug scandal and realizes she's broke, she comes back home. Sparks fly between the two. They have sex, they fight, they live happily ever after.

Typical Roberts, but can I admit something? This book frustrated me. Maybe it's because Roberts is a better writer now, or maybe I've read this too many times before, but all the nonsense of descriptions about the Templeton's fabulous wealth, and the strength of female friendships was annoying. It's also fabulously out of date. Homes along the cliffs of California cost, apparently, only $350,000. Margo's the perfect fashion model at a size 8, and she smokes - indoors - constantly. This was also in Roberts' "hair curling slightly over the collar" phase for men. Thank God the mullets are gone.

I almost put this aside once I had my hands on the new book, but I stuck with it through a very sunny Saturday on the beach. It's a good reminder that even writers I've enjoyed get better over time - a key lesson for me to remember as I continue with my writing and try to approve.

But I'll do without the smoking and mullets, thank you very much.

Review: Strathmere's Bride

2010-04-19T09:27:00.000-04:00

I'm my "other life," I'm a travel writer, with much of my work focusing on the Jersey Shore. I've set up Google Alerts for the names of the shore towns in my region - Atlantic City to Cape May - so I can stay up to date on news.

One of those towns is Strathmere, and the Strathmere Google Alert kept sending me notices about Strathmere's Bride (Harlequin Historical, No. 479)by Jacqueline Navin, a Harlequin Historical romance novel about the Duke of Strathmere and the governess winding her way around his heart even though he's supposed to be marrying someone of a proper bloodline - or something like that.

So when I saw a copy for sale for $.75, I bought it, and I read it on the plane to and from Chicago this weekend.

It wasn't bad. I don't generally dig historical romances, but this one wasn't too couched in proving the author did her historical homework, and Chloe, the governess, was likeable. The Duke wasn't too prideful or mean, either, as heros in historical romances can be (a former popular plotline in these types of books books involved rape - thank God that's not popular anymore). For $.75 (plus shipping), it was a good buy, and kept me company on airplanes and in restaurants.

Yes, folks, a smart, professional woman can read a romance novel and not feel bad for it - really!

Review: Boardwalk Empire by Nelson Johnson

2010-04-04T08:27:00.001-04:00

I won't say too much about Boardwalk Empire: The Birth, High Times, and Corruption of Atlantic Citybecause I'm interviewing author Nelson Johnson on Thursday, and he's a key figure in an article I'm writing.

What I will say, though, is that if you ever wanted to understand political corruption and how these guys seem to get away with it, this is the book to read.

It's also a long history of Atlantic City, which I write about in my other life.
Boardwalk Empire: The Birth, High Times, and Corruption of Atlantic City also inspired the upcoming HBO series Boardwalk Empire, staring Steve Buscemi and directed by Martin Scorsese. That series starts on the day prohibition was enacted. The book Boardwalk Empire takes a much longer view, from the island's beginnings up until 2002.

Here's a preview:

It premiers in September, and It'll be something. Can't wait. You can read more about the book here.

Also - shout out to South Jersey. This book was published by Plexus Publishing, who I wrote about a zillion years ago when I first started freelancing. Ok, I wrote about them in 2002 (I think). Not a zillion years ago, but that's the same year this book came out. Go figure.

Review: I Thought You Were Dead by Pete Nelson

2010-03-29T20:29:00.003-04:00

Odd title, yes? But I Thought You Were Dead by Pete Nelson isn't a horror story. It refers to what Stella the dog thinks whenever her owner leaves for the day. Until Paul returns, she thinks he's dead.

She does more than think this, though. Stella talks. Yes, a talking dog. You'd think this would make for a stupid book, but somehow, it works.

Paul is a writer for the Morons books - a fictional version of "for Dummies" or "Complete Idiot's" guide series. He's painted himself into a corner: he doesn't make much money, doesn't seem thrilled with his job. He's divorced, and his favorite bar is a dive where the locals hang out to get drunk together. He's dating a woman who splits her time between him and another boyfriend. Then his dad has a stroke. He's a sad sack, and his one constant respite is Stella the talking dog.

It's not like Stella talks to other people. She only talks to Paul. This isn't such a huge stretch. I talk to my dog, Emily, all the time. She doesn't talk back, of course, but I sometimes ask her questions that are too big to keep lodged in my head, and, yes, I wonder what she would say if she could talk. No person is in my presence as much as my dog. I'm sure she'd have some observations if she had Stella-like abilities.
I Thought You Were Dead is a sweet, sad story. I read most of it yesterday while recovering from a race. Since I had to work in the area the next day (today), I stayed at a hotel and my mom watched the dog. But I found myself reaching out to pet Emily while reading the book. I wonder what she'd say about that.

I'm feeling a bit like a sad sack myself, so this book came along at the right time. I'm reading a lot more fiction lately, too. Maybe it's because I'm on bad news overload and worry about the economy, the environment, whether or not I can keep things going in this writing career. I've had the same must-read non-fiction book on my to-read list for a month, but I can't bring myself to it. Fiction as a respite? Maybe. I'll ask Emily what she thinks.

P.S. A note about the marketing: The press release tucked inside the book made a big deal about how much indie booksellers loved the book. It's why I tucked it into my suitcase this weekend. Whoever came it with that strategy - IT WORKED.

Review: The Island by Elin Hilderbrand

2010-03-24T09:02:00.001-04:00

Summer's coming - must be time for a new Elin Hilderbrand novel.

Full disclosure: a few years back, I wrote an article about Hilderbrand. She's lovely, writes the first drafts of her novels in long hand, loves Bruce Springsteen and Philadelphia. Part of that interview is blurbed on one of her book jackets. Small thrill since I like and her books so much.

But I didn't jump to read The Island: A Novel when I got a preview copy in the mail (or three - yes, they sent me three). Why? I'm a little tired of reading about Nantucket, which is where Hilderbrand bases her novels. I had a "can you hear my eyes rolling from all the way over here" moment. It sounds like a great place, but really? Another one?

Turns out I was wrong. Sort of. The book doesn't take place on Nantucket proper but on Tuckernut, a small island off the coast of Nantucket that is all privately owned. No shops or restaurants. No electricity, either, other than what you can get from your generator. No hot water, no phone, no cell phone reception. If you want supplies, you have to hire someone from the island to come to your house via boat.

The Island is about four women who go to the family's ancestral house on Tuckernut for the summer. They're two sets of sisters: India and Birdie, then Birdie's two daughters, Chess and Tate. Each woman has suffered a romantic loss, except for Tate. She comes to Tuckernut looking not only help her sister recover from a tragedy but maybe to finally catch the attention of Barrett, whose father was the guy who brought them supplies on the boat when Tate was a teenager.

The book's great - my second favorite written by Hilderbrand. Her best, I think, is still The Love Season. If you've never read it, please do. It's fantastic.

One reader said she's excited to read reviews of all these summer books but that I'm KILLING her by talking about great books that aren't out yet. Sorry, Sarah. Summer will be here soon enough - this one comes out in July 6.

Review: Simply from Scratch by Alicia Bessette

2010-03-14T21:27:00.001-04:00

I don't even know where to start on this one. I have been stunned by Alicia Bessette's debut novel, Simply from Scratch, for a few reasons, and that's as good a place to start as any:

1. I know Alicia. I wrote about her husband, Matthew Quick, when HIS debut novel came out. They live in my town, both ran in the Collingswood Library Book Run that I also did, and I sometimes see Alicia out walking the couple's grayhound. She says she's seen me running around town, too. We had a lengthy discussion about my bright red arm sleeves, which are like long sleeves for running but without being attached to a shirt.

Where she ever found the ability to write about a recently widowed woman, I do not know. I've never been widowed or lost someone close to me who was not a grandparent, but she manages to write from such a deep well of grief for the main character, Rose-Ellen, whose husband is killed suddenly (I won't say how because that would ruin some of the plot techniques Bassette uses of sharing parcels of Nick's death along the way without saying exactly what happened until the end). The book picks up over a year after Rose-Ellen was widowed and is still in the depths of depression. I can't even tell you how many times I cried during this book, and still I have this feeling of a big black hole in my heart, a "what if" something like what happened to Rose-Ellen happened to me.

2. I didn't like the book when I started reading it. I got a copy of the book because I'm writing a piece about beach books written by New Jersey authors, so of course I wanted to consider Bassette's. I had no idea what it was about when I asked.

The first few chapters of the book is clunky, littered with adverbs and overwrought descriptions. But I stuck with the book, and it soon evened out. I read it while doing laundry. I read it before dinner. I put on a DVD after dinner but turned it off and stayed on my couch until I finished the book. Yes, it is THAT GOOD.

My only regret in telling you this is that the book doesn't come out until August. Her publicist rushed me an unfinished proof to read because of my deadline.

It could be that the intro that was a stumbling block to me will be smoother if you decided to give Simply From Scratch a go. And I suggest you do.

Book Notes: The Animal Review

2010-03-13T12:20:00.001-05:00

This is a stupid book. But I mean that in the best way. It's stupid like Wren & Stimpy are stupid. It's stupid like Beevis & Butthead are stupid. But the authors, Jacob Lentz and Steve Nash, are real people.

In The Animal Review, they look at animals and grade them. A king cobra, for example, gets an A+. An alpaca, which I admit is a funny creature that I love in part because it looks odd, gets an F.

They use some science, and exaggerate a lot. I read a few entries and it made me laugh. I won't read it straight through. Instead, it'll go into my second "office." And you know what I mean.

You can read more on their book blog. One note: the cover you see here, which I pulled from bn.com, gives the alpaca a D- while the book I have on my desk gives it an F. Maybe the alpacas protested?

Review: Mr. Rosenblum Dreams in English

2010-03-11T13:25:00.001-05:00

Oh my, what a beautiful book. Lovely would work too. It sounds more English.

Mr. Rosenblum Dreams in English: A Novelby Natasha Solomons is a novel about Jack and Sadie Rosenblum, two Jewish Germans who immigrated to England before World War II. Because they left, they were both spared - but Sadie's family was not. Her sadness is a character in the book, it is that strong, and she fights to remember that family and her way of life before she was forced to leave.

Jack, though, doesn't try to remember. When the couple immigrated to England, he was given a pamphlet on how to be English. Not only does he follow every suggestion to the letter, but he adds onto the list as he sets up a business and becomes successful. One thing that he can't cross off the list? Being a member of a golf club. He's rejected from every one because he's Jewish.

What's Jack to do? Build his own course, of course. The book starts in London, but centers on Jack and Sadie moving to Dorset as he chases his golf course dreams - even though he's never played a round - and Sadie spars with her sadness and alienation.

It's a slow book and meant to be savored, which is why I took so long to finish. The descriptions of the country - oh, they left me yearning for spring and flung me back to my first bus ride through England from Heathrow Airport to Oxford, where I studied for a semester. The countryside stunned me out of my jet lag it was so beautiful. This book captures that perfectly, and I have to admit that I was a little stunned the author's only 29 years old. It seems like a book written by someone older and made wise by age (though the jacket copy says that the book is based on her grandparents).

The book comes out on June 21. Put it on your list. It's wonderful.

Review: The Body Shop by Paul Solotaroff

2010-02-28T18:46:00.000-05:00

I've had a free subscription to Muscle & Fitness magazine for two years - a professional courtesy. It's stuffed with pictures of hugely muscular guys screaming, yelling, their muscles veiny and overwrought. A guy dressed as a spartan is on the cover. It's about as muscle worshiping a magazine as I've ever seen.

Everything in the publication is about how to build muscle and get lean naturally or with the help of supplements (and those ads are pretty scary). But in the back, in the classifieds, are text only ads about what look to be illegal ways of getting that same muscle mass. No matter how much Mark McGuire cries for forgiveness about using steroids, he still stacked millions upon millions of dollars for doing so, and guys still want to get big.

Paul Solotroff's The Body Shop is about the same thing: steroids, but in a far cruder form. He started juicing in 1976 as a college student, using something that was probably mixed up in a guy's basement sink. As a skinny Jewish guy desperate for girls to pay attention, getting big was a way to get them to look.

"The dockworker arms, with their bell-curve lines and vascular, shrink-wrapped skin; the rounded corners where the pectorals met and stood a little taller by the day--I had to keep checking my own reflection, touching and poking, rejoicing," he writes. "Even my face broadened, filled its own hollows, looked hand-carved, confident, ready."

But that's only the beginning. Throw in a dysfunctional father/son relationship AND mother/son relationship, and Solotroff was an easy mark to get hooked, first on steroids, then on drugs as he took his pumped up self back to New York and started stripping for cash with a shady band who kept sending him down the wrong coke-laced road.

Solotroff is a magazine journalist - unlike me, the the hard hitting kind (I lean toward features, something of which I'm not ashamed). Even though the book seems absurd, the writing is brilliant, vibrant. I can see him trapeezing through crime-rank New York, hitting the Jersey Shore to shake it for society women, losing it s the back alley stuff he's been shooting into his ass starts to uncoil him. Even though it's an engaging story, it turns tragic as Solotroff writes about what two years of stupidity did to him, and how it damaged him for life.

I knew a few guys in college who juiced. A roommate dated one of them, and one night after they got into a fight, our door was the victim of his friend's roid rage. I have never seen someone so completely unhinged. If he had managed to kick down the door, I fear what he would have done to her. It's scary.

So is The Body Shop, but it's well worth reading. As long as those shady adds continue to appear in fitness magazines, and kids are still offered the chance to get big fast, it's a must read.

Review: Vanishing Acts by Jodi Picoult

2010-02-17T21:03:00.002-05:00

Cue up book two of the weekend mini-break.

I've avoided Jodi Picoult. I know I'm fuzzy on the details but bear with me. It was a while ago, and I only have a faint memory it: She wrote an essay for a writer's magazine - I don't remember which one - that annoyed me. It was right around the time when the chick lit argument burned through the literary world, and I think it had something to do with that. It reminded me of something Jennifer Weiner, who I cannot STAND, would say, so I never read any of Picoult's books.

I ended up with Vanishing Acts because I found a used copy in an antique store for $5. I added it onto my bill, which also included an obnoxious yellow and white cocktail ring.

For $5, it was worth it. Vanishing Acts is a story of disappearance told from a six points of view (I think). She gives each character his or her own voice and writing style. I don't want to give away too much of the plot because, if I'd have read the back of the book before reading, I think it would have spoiled the experience. This is the kind of book I like to approach with a bare mind.

But it's not perfect. Some of the late plot turns are too clunky, and one narrative turn that I think is too easy and even "cute," not as in pretty but as in "ha ha, I'm so clever for doing this!" Still, I sunk myself into the couch after dinner and followed it to the end. I wanted to see what happened.

Will I pick up another Picoult novel? Maybe. I'm not rushing out to buy more of her work. But if I see another book for $5 in an antique store, or need a beach read, or something to go along with a long flight, I consider it worth the investment.

Review: Water Hazard by Don Dahler

2010-02-15T21:07:00.001-05:00

I didn't think I'd like Water Hazard by Don Dahler. It's a mystery novel. It's manly. It's about golf. I dated a pro golfer in high school. Our four years together was enough birdies and eagles and par for me, thank you very much.

But I needed a book to take with me on my weekend trip, and the galley of Water Hazard came right before I left (it'll be published in March). Despite a wobbly start, I got sucked into the story of Huck Doyle, sometimes pro golfer, sometimes private eye, as he runs around Hawaii trying to solve his friend's father's murder while also playing in a pro golf tournament. There's plenty of booze, babes and golf talk. I skimmed through most of the golf stuff, which made the reading easier.

It's an incredibly male novel, but I ended up liking it anyway. It reminded me of all those Clive Cussler novels I read as a teenager. For an airport book it was pretty good. It kept me occupied during the three-hour delay on my flight to Minneapolis, and on my three hour wait on the way home. The latter wasn't because of a delay. Apparently, USAirways stopped letting people fly standby for free if you're trying to get on a flight that's not completely full. Harumph. But this book made the wait more bearable, which is what a good mystery novel should do.

Review: How to Make Love like a Porn Star by Jenna Jameson

2010-02-10T23:16:00.000-05:00

Don't freak out, people. This isn't an instruction manual. How to Make Love Like a Porn Star is Jenna Jameson's memoir about, well, how she became a porn star.

I've read parts of this book since it was published in 2004. I read a few chapters at the Barnes & Noble in Philadelphia while waiting to meet a friend; another few chapters from another friend's copy that he kept on his coffee table. But I never wanted to pony up to buy the hardback copy.

I needed a book to take with me on what I hope will be my flight tomorrow, and bought the paperback edition at Borders. But given that we got socked with another huge storm in New Jersey, I was stuck instead and read all 577 pages in two days.

It's not the best memoir ever, but it's pretty interesting. She doesn't try to hide that she had a ghost writer either. Neil Strauss, who's been on the blog before, worked with her on the book. I lost my way a bit in the middle when the book shifted from narrative to transcripts of Jenna talking with her family, and old diary entries. It seemed unnecessary. And the book's dated. It ends with a wedding. She's already divorced.

I've spent most of the week worrying about my flight leaving tomorrow. But compared to some of the stuff she's been through? A delay is nothing.

Review: The Edge of Ruin by Irene Fleming

2010-02-08T08:37:00.000-05:00

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

2010-02-04T16:49:00.001-05:00

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

2010-02-03T22:05:00.002-05:00

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

2010-02-02T16:47:00.003-05:00

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

2010-02-01T22:45:00.001-05:00

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

2010-01-26T08:13:00.001-05:00

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

2010-01-25T13:45:00.000-05:00

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?

Review: The New Frugality by Chris Farrell

2010-01-22T12:05:00.000-05:00

"Eighty percent of small businesses fail in their first five years, so hitting that milestone in what amounts to your own small business is pretty awesome."

So said a friend when I told him that I was celebrating my five-year anniversary of being a full time freelance writer.

It was a nice compliment, and soothing. Freelancing is a precarious job. I scrap for every piece of work, and the pay doesn't always match the effort. I don't get any job-sponsored benefits, and I think I've only had two raises in those five years. Add on top of this that 2009 was not be kind to me. The Great Recession dropped my income by at about 25% in a year where I worked more hours than I ever had just to keep that 25% number from increasing.

So money was a big weight on my shoulders last year, and the start of this year, too, as I wait for several media companies to make good on late payments (and this isn't just the small guys - I'm waiting for a mega international publisher to pay me on a job I submitted in AUGUST).

I've gotten smarter about money in the last five years. I didn't have a choice - I have to be since I don't get a regular paycheck. Since January 2008, I've been writing about personal finance because I wanted to know more about it. I treaded water the first four years of writing and wanted the fifth year to be dedicated to setting up my retirement and investment plans.

Well, that was washed away by the Great Recession, and I was back to keeping my head above water. But in that time, I read and wrote as much as I could about what I WOULD do when work started coming in again.

Which leads me to The New Frugality by Chris Farrell.

I listen podcasts of to Marketplace Money every Sunday while marathon training. Farrell is economics editor for the show, and this book is an excellent round up of the kind of financial information I'd been looking for. It's not so much about how to save money anywhere you can, but how to plan for your financial future.

Apparently it worked. My mom works in financial planning, and last night I told her exactly what I wanted to do. She agreed 100%, and not just because she's my mom.

If 2009 taught me anything, it's about how to live on less. Even when things turn around (and I'm convinced they will), I will continue to live on less. I want to sock away as much as I can.

But I'm going to live my life, too. I'm going on vacation next week, which I know I need to recharge after a bad year. It's not an extravagant one, but somewhere easy to get to, and somewhere in its off season so it's cheaper.

Tricky this money thing.

A few notes:

1. Farrell says in the latter half of the book that he started caring more about his money when he was diagnosed with colon cancer. He then says nice things about having gotten cancer. After spending a few hours with Jen Singer, who is in remission, I was appalled by what he said. If you feel the same way about folks who say cancer is a gift, this might not be the book for you.

2. Farrell writes at length about being frugal when it comes to college. So very true. I'm glad that my parents forced me to go to the cheaper school. I don't have to deal with an obscene student loans like a lot of friends do now. If you have high school aged kids, pay special attention to this section. It'll help you cut through the emotion of wanting to give your kid whatever he or she wants when it comes to college, and to make smart financial decisions.

3. Farrell writes at length (again) about the choice to buy a home. This is a topic I think about a lot since I bought a house in 2007. There are so many factors that go into whether it's right or wrong to buy. Some people might say this was a mistake. But my mortgage (plus taxes plus insurance) are about the same per month as what I was paying in rent. And I do love owning my own space. No creepy landlords!

One of my 2010 goals is to pitch segments to Marketplace Money (they said to go ahead, which is encouraging!). This book helps. I already got onto Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me! It's not too farfetched!

Wait, Wait...

2010-01-22T08:51:00.000-05:00

If you read this blog, you're probably a little geeky like me. You'll love this, then: I'm a contestant on this Saturday's edition of NPR's Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me!

You'll find the details here. They recorded the segment last night. It's the most nervous I've ever been about anything - more so than giving the commencement speech at my college graduation, more so than being on live TV. Yes, really.

Have you ever...

2010-01-17T09:15:00.000-05:00

...been so disappointed with the book you're reading that you left it behind? I did. So if you picked up a well worn paperback at the 15th and 16th & Locust PATCO station last night, you're welcome. Maybe it'll be up your alley.

Review: Last Night in Twisted River by John Irving

2010-01-16T13:50:00.001-05:00

I don't know what I could say about Last Night in Twisted River that hasn't already been said -- John Irving is one of those writers who, I think, writes literary fiction but literary fiction that is read by a mass audience.

Last Night in Twisted Riveris about three men of the same family - a cook for a logging settlement, his son, and then the son's son. When the book starts, the cook is a young man, the son only 12 years old, and the narrative moves on from there, but not in a traditional point A to point B story line. It's like the characters are little blurs moving down that A to B line, jumping back and forth in the story, but only slightly. It's an effective story telling method, and even though this book took me a very long time to read (in comparison to how fast I usually read), I enjoyed it thoroughly.

I almost put it aside, though, given its graphic nature and how often death invades the story. My grandmother died recently and then, less then a week later, a friend suddenly and far too young. John Irving, I thought, was too much. But I found myself drawn more into the story instead, like reading the book, even though far from cheerful, pulled me away from the sadness around me. Hard to explain.

Thanks to my dad and stepmom getting me Last Night in Twisted River: A Novel for Christmas. I really wanted to read it, and I'm glad I did, and at this time in my life.

Textbook Time

2010-01-06T08:01:00.001-05:00

While in college, I worked at the college bookstore. It was great for me -- discount! -- but I saw the pain of textbook buying a thousand times over, every single semester.

When I taught at Rutgers-Camden, I tried to pick a book that was cheap, and my second text was online.

Not all professors are that way, though. So if you're looking to find cheap books, here are a few options. Remember to look for the current edition and PREVIOUS edition of the book online. Sometimes changes from edition to edition are slight, and the previous edition is fine.

1. Half.com. This is my go-to site when buying books. I've also sold my old textbooks through the site and made enough cash to keep my dog in fancy kibble.

2. Amazon.com. Amazon's set up a textbook page for you crazy college kids (full disclosure: I am part of the Amazon Associates programs, so if you click on that link and buy something, I get a couple of quarters in commission).

3. Your bookstore. Colleges do buy back books at the end of the semester and re-sell them. These can run out quickly, though.

4. Online. My "textbook" for one of my Shakespeare classes were copies of the texts printed from the web. How can I do that? Because no one owns the copyright of Shakespeare. The same is true for a lot of older texts, so they're online for free. I have a Shakespeare iPhone App, too - again, free.

5. Cheap versions. If you're taking an English class, you can get about 1000 different versions of the works of Keats or Wordsworth. Dover's books are great, and they do the best to keep their costs down. They used to be Dover Dollar Editions, but the prices have gone up. Still, they're cheaper than buying a $15 paperback.

Of course, your teacher might want a specific edition by a specific publisher, but most professors know the costs of textbooks and are OK if you save money where you can -- at least in the humanities.

Review: The 10 Laws of Career Reinvention

2010-01-02T14:35:00.001-05:00

I judged this book by its cover. Given how many "change your life!" books I'm sent around New Year's, can you blame me? I expected The 10 Laws of Career Reinvention by Pamela Mitchell to be one of those career books that use a lot of exclamation points and promise that no matter what you want to do, it's possible if you reach! for! the! stars!

Instead, a found a sharp, smart, eye-opening book about what to do if you want to change your career. Mitchell is founder of the Reinvention Institute, and shows that she knows her stuff. Not only does she give sound and practical advice, but she uses real life examples to showcases those 10 laws of reinvention.

I felt like someone hit me on the head when I read The 10 Laws of Career Reinvention. It made me realize why I've felt so listless and lethargic lately.

I'm tired of being a freelance writer.

It sounds like a great job, doesn't it? I interview fascination people and write about a host of topics, all from the comfort of my own home. It has been a great full time career for the last four years, but there's a huge chunk of me that's exhausted from the constant assignment chasing, contract negotiating, and late checks. The recession took more of a toll on me than I realized. My income dropped 25% this year, even though I worked my tail off. Plus, as my income shrank, costs have only gone up: food, travel, healthcare, taxes, everything. Freelancers haven't gotten a raise since the 1970s. Could you imagine earning today what your counterpart earned 40 years ago? I've almost left freelancing before, but was always brought back in. Why? I realized it wasn't always me, but people telling me not to "give up." Were these other folks freelancers? No. But they openly admitted that they envied my lifestyle, usually shrugging off what I said were the downsides. Well, I'm not in this for them. I'm in this for me.

I didn't do all the exercises in the back of the book, but when I was half way through, I realized what I'd like to do next with me life, and have taken the first steps to reach that goal. I haven't felt so energized with work as when I took those steps to the new me. I'm not going to share what that is, but I'll take all your good luck wishes :-) I can tell you this, though -- it's all about writing, like my current job, and has a lot of the same elements of freelance journalism that I enjoy. But it's a different kind of writing.

If you're feeling the same way about your job, or have been laid off, this book might be worth a read (she does pay a lot of attention to those who have been victims of the recession -- it's a very "now" book). I'm glad I did, and if you read this blog, you know I don't say that often about these kinds of books.

Want to get an idea of what the book's about before buying? Check out www.reinvention-institute.com.

Resolution Books

2009-12-29T15:48:00.002-05:00

I'm not a big New Year's resolution person. I'm not sure if pledging to change your life completely always works. And why January 1? If I make any self-pledges, they tend to be in the fall. Everyone's back from vacation, and life goes back to normal, hence goals.

Then there's the whole my gym is going to be so crowded I want to scream. But that'll go away by February 1...which is when the dating books hit hard (though I'm already sick of the eHarmony commercials flooding my TV).

Anyway -- January 1 is still a biggie in the resolution business, so what I call "resolution" books have been rolling in. They're usually in the self help and diet category, though I've seen a lot more financial books since the recession kicked in.

I generally don't pay attention to the diet ones (like Fat Flush for Life: The Year-Round Super Detox Plan to Boost Your Metabolism and Keep the Weight Off Permanently- are you kidding me?) but two financial have been spared the donation pile.

First, Suddenly Frugal: How to Live Happier and Healthier for Lessby Leah Ingram. I've known Leah for years and started reading her blog when she first started typing away. I'll give this one a full review when I finish reading it.

Second, One Year to an Organized Financial Life: From Your Bills to Your Bank Account, Your Home to Your Retirement, the Week-by-Week Guide to Achieving Financial Peace of Mindby Regina Leeds with Russell Wild. Leeds wrote One Year to an Organized Life: From Your Closets to Your Finances, the Week-by-Week Guide to Getting Completely Organized for Good, which was enormously successful. I haven't read it, though. The only "organizing" book I listen to is A Perfect Mess: The Hidden Benefits of Disorder - How Crammed Closets, Cluttered Offices, and on-the-Fly Planning Make the World a Better Placebecause it supports the idea that a bit of messiness makes life better.

This book looks like it could be a helpful, though, especially since it's organized per week per month for a year. It's not necessarily written for someone like me (I write about personal finance, so I'm past the basics), but as an experiment I'll be reading along per week per year. It's got a heavy dose of organizing mumbo jumbo and some odd advice (my first step toward financial health is supposed to be drinking more water?), but Leeds co-wrote the book with Wild, an MBA and certified financial planner, and some of the advice I've read already is sound. Stay tuned.

Merry Christmas!

2009-12-25T14:23:00.002-05:00

On deciding not to read a book

2009-12-23T13:00:00.005-05:00

I got a galley of Marry Him: The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough in the mail yesterday. It's the book spawned by a controversial Atlantic piece about the same topic, where author Lori Gottlieb implores women to just marry some schlub already. I didn't like the article, and I didn't think I'd like to book. I gave it a try, though. After chapter one, I put it down. Here's why: The marketing blurb on the book says, "In the March 2008 issue of the Atlantic, Gottlieb argued that women need to stop waiting for 'Mr. Right' and start settling for 'Mr. Real.'"

Ooo boy. Then, in the prologue, Gottlieb lists the "must have" qualities she wanted in a man when she was younger. It's over two pages long. I made a list of my own, and it had one thing on it: "Not an addict."

If someone has a two-page list of demands, then I'll go out on a limb and say being single is their own fault. Maybe the book will speak to them. But it will not speak to me because it is not written for someone like me who will go out with just about anyone, is not marriage obsessed, and feels comfortable in her own single skin.

So. I'm not going to ruin my Christmas by reading the book solely for the sake of getting angry at the author Sorry, folks. To to the library it goes. If you're in Collingswood and want to read a copy, I'll have dropped it of by New Year's.

P.S. I don't know why the spacing is wonky on this post. Hopefully the type ship will right itself in the next one.

Review: Portrait of an Addict as a Young Man

2009-12-22T14:10:00.000-05:00

Portrait of an Addict as a Young Man: A Memoirby Bill Clegg isn't coming out in June, and I hesitate to review it six months in advance of it's publication date. But the book is so damn good (I read it in two sittings) that I don't want to wait and let its impact fade.

Portrait of an Addict as a Young Manis about Clegg's crack addiction. Instead of being a point A to point B story of how he became a crack addict, the book jumps back and forth, from a bender back to events in his childhood that could have lead up to him looking for an escape, ending with him coming out of rehab (I don't think that's a spoiler since the book is already written) and an event in his childhood that could have triggered that first need to get high.

The story's told in chunks of paragraphs that make the narrative jumpy, but it works and helps the reader understand the jumpiness that was Clegg's life, through the weeks of no sleep with nothing but crack, sex and vodka, to his extreme paranoia, to taking hits of crack before important work events, to family and his boyfriend trying to pull him out of hotel rooms and into rehab.

It's an incredibly sad story, even with the positive outcome, because even though Clegg has left that world, you get the feeling that those he left behind are still there. It's a startling portrait of addiction, and how easy it is for anyone to become hooked.

The New York Observer did a piece about Clegg's disappearance from the literary scene, and fills in the gaps between the end of the book and today, where he is once again an agent and now author, and good to read along with this review.

This is going to be a big one, folks. It's not often I'm floored by a memoir, and I am by this one.

Review: Early Bird: A Memoir of Premature Retirement

2009-12-20T09:22:00.002-05:00

A few weeks ago, my dad and I headed to sunny Florida. Goal: Visit his parents and sit in the warm Florida sun.

It poured for three days straight. The only sun we got was a thin beam or two upon landing in Florida and flashes of light while taking off and back to Philadelphia.

After reading my facebook updates from the retirement community ("If you didn't hear the directions, grandmom will remind you. Fourteen times. Before the first exit" ; "Grandpop says some women are just yum. Others are yummy yummy" ; "I welcome all early bird specials"), umbrellatrix Katie Sweeney suggested that I read Early Bird: A Memoir of Premature Retirement by Rodney Rothman.

I'm no stranger to the retirement community lifestyle. I went to college in Tampa, and was incredibly homesick my freshman year. So my grandfather would drive cross state, pick me up, and drive me back to their retirement community in Sebastian, Florida. I'd lie at the pool, eat too much food, and read on their sunporch, usually borrowing books from the club house library, which is made up of community donations -- and let me tell you, those ladies like some racy stuff (on the rainy trip, I read Lipstick Jungle, which I borrowed from that library AFTER putting back a book about four office mates who seemed to boff each other daily).

I liked going because it felt like time froze. I didn't have to worry about classes or boy drama waiting for me back at college. I didn't have to figure out where I'd be sitting in the cafeteria, or about stick thin freshman prancing around the school (I was the youngest person -- everywhere!) or if I'd be stuck home on a Friday night. Everyone was stuck home here, and in bed by 9 p.m.

In Early Bird: A Memoir of Premature Retirement, Rothman moves into a retirement community in Boca Raton after losing his job. Boca is not Sebastian. He moves into a condominium tower. My grandparents live in a stand alone home in a gated community (he makes a great point that city retirees tend to go toward tall buildings while suburban retirees go to stand alone homes -- such is the case with both our experiences). My grandparens are also Christian, and Rothman chooses a mostly Jewish community. Some of the landscape has changed, too. Rothman wrote at the height of the real estate boom. I visited at the bottom, and a lot of houses in their community sat empty and for sale with no buyers.

But both communities seem the same -- the members up before 6 a.m., the cliquish pool group, the events people attend for free food, even bingo games. I played bingo once on a college visit. It was splendid, though my grandparents don't play unless I go. My grandfather prefers cards, and my grandmom baking.

Rothman is dead on in his descriptions of the retirement community life, but some of it feels forced. He does things "for the book," and while there's nothing wrong with that (might as well write a book if you lost your job and move into a retirement community when you're 28 years old), it made parts of the book feel forced, like when he shops for his future retirement home.

He comes to the same conclusion I do after every one of my four day trips to see my grandparents: Nice place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there just yet.

This week, I booked my annual trek to St. Pete Beach, and mentioned it on twitter. "Didn't you just come back from a Florida vacation?" someone asked. Nope. That was visiting grandparents, which involved trying to tune out Fox News, not eating every time my grandmom offered food, and fighting the urge to go to bed at 9 p.m. Vacation will involve sitting on a beach in a string bikini drinking margaritas WITHOUT worrying that I'm going to give an old man a heart attack, visiting dark Russian bars after hours, and reading racy books that I pick. Oh, and staying up past 9 p.m.

Notes on Julie & Julia

2009-12-17T07:54:00.002-05:00

Last night, I watched Julie & Julia, the movie based on both Julie and Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously and My Life in France

I started this blog by reading Julie and Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously (you can read that first review here).

I understand now why the publication of Julie Powell's follow up book, Cleaving: A Story of Marriage, Meat, and Obsession, was delayed until December. As I've also written here, I hated the book for a lot of reasons, and I couldn't watch the movie without remembering:

1. How much I hated Cleaving.
2. What Powell eventually did to her husband. I know that the happy ending didn't really happen, and that all the problems simmering in their marriage exploded thereafter.

I also watched You've Got Mailover the weekend, another Nora Ephron film. I don't know if it's the acting or what, but that was a much more clever film. Julie & Julia didn't have that same charm. I also agree with Joy Manning that Amy Adams was way too skinny for the role. Nora, Nora, Nora. If you wanted to make a movie about people eating (as she has said in interviews), make it look like they eat!

Review: Yiddish Yoga: Ruthie's Adventures in Love, Loss, and the Lotus Position

2009-12-15T14:04:00.005-05:00

A few notes:

1. I am not Jewish.
2. I do not do yoga.
3. I am not a senior citizen.

I tell you these things because my choice of Yiddish Yoga: Ruthie's Adventures in Love, Loss, and the Lotus Position might be a surprise (especially since, as I write this review, I'm listening to Christmas music and wearing a Virgin Mary medallion). But I still enjoyed this short, punchy, illustrated story about a woman who is all of those things.

When Ruthie Brodestein's husband passes away, her granddaughter buys her a year membership to yoga classes. The book follows Brodestein through her year of classes, and includes her revelations as her body stretches, and how doing yoga helps her work through her grief. It's funny, whimsical and a good read, even if it doesn't have my swapping out my running sneakers for a yoga matt.

My only disappointment was realizing that Ruthie is not a real person and that Yiddish Yoga is fiction. But to author Lisa Grunberger's defense, I didn't look before I started reading.

I grabbed this book off the shelf after starting and stopping two different books last night. I finished this one in an hour, and what a delightful hour it was. I got this book too late in the mail for it to be part of my holiday book gift guide, but maybe that's a good thing -- it allowed me to give it a full review.

Review: The Yugo: The Rise and Fall of the Worst Car in History

2009-12-14T08:40:00.004-05:00

"I'm reading about Yugos," I told a friend this weekend.

"Yugos! I loved them! They must have made a ton of money," he said.

Hardly, as is shown in Jason Vuic's The Yugo: The Rise and Fall of the Worst Car in History, which will be published in March 2010. It's about how the Yugo rode into the U.S. on the power of a strong viral campaign and rock bottom price tag, and crashed because the cars were less than reliable, being produced by a company always on the edge of insolvency.

In telling the story of the Yugo, Vuic also writes about small cars in America, and how they form the bottom of the car food chain -- an important bottom (says this Honda Civic driver).

It's an interesting story, but not as told here. Vuic is a history professor and Yugoslav expert, but adeptness in teaching history hasn't translated into the strong narrative that this book would need to make it more interesting non-fiction read and less wikipedia entry about the little car that couldn't. He tells the story but doesn't show it. Even the lively bits, like Yugo girls prancing around the car when it was introduced to dealers, fall flat.

Unless I missed it in the notes, Vuic didn't interview the star of the story, Malcolm Bricklin, an apparent egomaniac who cooked up Yugo America and has a sting of failed companies and bankruptcies in his wake (and is still trying to push cars). He's doing media interviews and even had a documentary made about himself.

I can understand why Bricklin might not want to be attached to a book about Yugos, but even if he said no, that should have been made clear. His refusal to be interview would say a lot about his character and thoughts about the car post mortem.

Did I learn about Yugos and the car industry? Yes. But the book read more like a history text than the non-fiction narrative story I think the Yugo deserves.

To check out some Yugos re-purposed in interesting ways, click here -- it's a show referenced in the book, and hysterical.

Recommendation: The Secret Language of Money

2009-12-11T12:07:00.003-05:00

This is a recommendation and not a review because I've been hired to review The Secret Language of Money: How to Make Smarter Financial Decisions and Live a Richer Life by David Krueger, M.D.

Briefly: It's about the emotions surrounding money, and tells you how to start looking as money as money and not something else. It's a simple statement, but a powerful one. How many people shop to make themselves feel better? And spend beyond their means? Bonus: the book is written in plain language with only a tint of "be empowered!" It's not a blueprint to get out of debt, or a replacement for a financial planner. It shows why so many of us don't view money as a means to acquire life essentials. It's a trickery issue than most people think.

Review: Lipstick Jungle by Candace Bushnell

2009-12-09T15:13:00.002-05:00

Once a winter, I make a trek to Florida, either to sit on the beach in St. Pete or visit my grandparents in the Vero Beach area. Fortunately, this winter I'll be doing both.

Unfortunately, the trip to my grandparents' was last weekend where it promptly turned from 80 and sunny to pouring right after my plane landed, and it poured for two days. I mean raining-cats-and-dogs-keeping-you-awake-at-night pouring. It wasn't exactly what I'd hoped to be doing, a plan that originally and vaguely involved lying around the pool reminding old men what us young gals look like.

So I hunkered down and read like I had nothing else to do (which was true). I finished Wild Romance, and started another book. In between, I picked up Lipstick Jungle from the retirement community library, and read it cover to cover so I could return it before I came back to NJ.

The book is about three high-powered friends: a movie studio executive, a magazine editor and a fashion designer. Each faces a work and personal life crisis. The movie studio executive's wet rag of a husband threatens to leave; the magazine editor has an affair with a male model; and the fashion designer starts dating a billionaire and considers selling her business for a big payout.

While the book's mostly fluff, the character's intertwining tales did have something to say about women in the upper echelons of the working world, and reminded me of what my college advisor told me: That if I were a man, I'd be seen as assertive. But as a woman? People just called me a bitch, and I'd have to toughen up to get used to it.

The role reversal with the movie studio executive and stay at home dad raised some interesting points (how would it look different if he were the exec and she the stay at home mom?) As someone who runs her own business, I was intrigued at the perception of women in power and how we might be hard to date (I've had some men say this to me). If the alternate is to be docile and let a guy think he's right all the time -- a tactic my grandmother suggested to me this weekend -- I'd rather be alone. Reading this after Wild Romance lead to a "great think" on the flight home where I determined that being single at 29 with my own business is not really a bad thing. So I'm untraditional. I'm OK with that.

Even though only three years old, though, the book is stale. The worship of designer labels and money is misplaced, much as it is in theSex and the Citymovie, which was based on another Bushnell book (and I'm not just saying that because the Bushnell-inspired Carrie Bradshaw of the movie and show made everyone think freelance writers can write one column and afford a luxurious New York lifestyle. Right).

For two days in rainy Florida, it was something to do that inspired a few thoughts on my part. But high art? Not really.

Review: Wild Romance: A Victorian Story of Marriage, a Trial, and a Self-Made Woman

2009-12-08T13:08:00.003-05:00

Chloe Schama did not set out to write about Theresa Yelverton. She tucked herself into the British Library to research "sensation novels," books from the Victorian era that, while popular then, have not stood the test of time. Schama discovered Theresa Yelverton in a footnote to one such story, about how the bigamy trial she brought against her husband served as inspiration for one such story.

Schama tells Theresa Yelverton's story in Wild Romance: A Victorian Story of a Marriage, a Trial, and a Self-Made Woman, a dense but fascinating look at women's rights in a society when a woman's value was strapped to her husband.

Her case sounds like a Victorian version of "he's just not that into you" -- Theresa meets William Yelverton on a steamer from France to England in 1852. The two stayed up all night talking, and started swapping letters, at first fervently. As time passes, Theresa writes more frantically than Yelverton. She's like the woman waiting by the phone for the guy to call.

Eventually, though, the two meet up again and are "married" in a way that was legal in Scotland at the time: They pledged to each other that they were married. Theresa worried this would not be enough, so they were married again in a church in Ireland with no witnesses.

Imagine Theresa's surprise when Yelverton marries another woman and begins having children with her. This could have ruined Theresa, so instead she accused him of bigamy, and media frenzy that was a little bit Chicago and a little bit John & Kate ensued at the trial.

This is all fascinating, of course, but the book gets really good when the trial is over and Theresa decides to travel the world and write about it for magazines and newspapers. How could I not love the woman? I'm jealous, in fact, that she saw a world partly industrialized, and wrote about her travels along the way.

It's an amazing story about a self sustaining woman who, in spite of great and public heartbreak, made something of her life. I'm sure the book's being published in March to coincide with Women's History Monthly, as it should be.

The only sad part? That some attitudes toward woman haven't changed. I'm a single, professional woman with what I'd like to think is a viable writing career. But the pressure to be attached to a man is still intense, from family, friends and I admit, a little bit from myself. I sometimes think something's wrong with me for not being married at 29, which is silly of course.

But I'll explore that further in the next review. I think this is the first time I've had two reviews stacked up -- I was in Florida for the last few days and read two books on the trip without a chance the blog. The next one is contemporary, but about the same things. Women, our issues never change, do they?

Book Gift Guide for the Holidays

2009-12-02T12:25:00.000-05:00

Hey ho, it's the holidays! As you know, a lot of publishers send me books in hopes that I'll write about them. So, instead of sending the November batch to the library donation bin (which is where a lot of books go even if I DO read them), I put together a small gift guide of many types of books. Deck the halls, people. Deck. The. Halls.

29 Gifts: How a Month of Giving Can Change Your Lifeby Cami Walker.
This is the perfect gift for anyone who needs a feel good story. It starts bad, though -- Walker dives into a steep depression when she finds out she has MS. She digs out of it by giving one gift a day for 29 days. Now, for someone with Spock-like logic, it's a little spacey and new-agey, but I enjoyed the read. It made me give a few gifts myself.

PostSecret: Confessions on Life, Death, and God
Ever heard of PostSecret? It's this movement where you can anonymously send postcards with whatever you want on it. IT IS FASCINATING. What would you say if no one knew you were saying it? PostSecret: Confessions on Life, Death, and God is a collection of PostSecrets that have to do with -- you guessed it -- life, death and God. It's a great gift for anyone interesting in such things, like the relatively who isn't that into Christmas, or your friend who points out that Christmas is a pagan holiday. Great stuff. Just flipping through the book prompts a lot of though.

Ace of Cakes: Inside the World of Charm City Cakes by Duff Goldman and Willie Goldman.
Obviously, if you know someone who likes this Food Network show, it'll be a good gift. But here's why it's a great gift -- this isn't just a book of pretty pictures. Ace of Cakes includes in depth interviews, behind the scenes shots, and even fan mail from viewers. When you can sit down with a big glossy book and read it cover to cover without turning the page every two seconds, you've got a winner.

Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters
Yes, the book is as silly as the title suggests. This is the second book out of Philadelphia-based Quirk publishers that puts something strange in the text of Jane Austen. The first, Pride, Prejudice & Zombies was a runaway hit and also out in a new deluxe editionfor the holidays. Either one is a silly romp for English lit fans.

Dita: Stripteese by Dita Von Teese.
Holy moly. If you're got a burlesque fan in your midst, this is the book to get him or her. The package includes three flipbooks. Of a burlesque dancer. Enough said.

Bon Jovi: When We Were Beautiful
Also in the "people with pretty hair" category is this massive tome about Bon Jovi. Come on. You know you've screamed "Livin' on a Prayer" at one point in your life. It's like a rite of passage. The book was made in honor of the band's 25th anniversary and focuses mostly on 2008, though there are some beauties of early career shots (AND THAT HAIR).

Led Zeppelin: Shadows Taller Than Our Soulsby Charles R. Cross
This isn't just a book -- it's a Led Zeppelin experience for any super fan. It includes photos, of course, but also reproductions of ticket stubs, set lists, magazine covers, posters and backstage passes. There's also a CD including an interview with Jimmy Page, and a keepsake slipcase. Like I said -- perfect for superfans.

The Christmas Secretby Donna VanLiere.
I'm not a big fan of super sappy Christmastime. But some people are, and this blog is a blog for all book lovers. So if you have one such person in your life, The Christmas Secret would be a great choice. It's by the same author of The Christmas Shoes and The Christmas Hope. It's about a struggling single mother who saves someone's life. This costs her the job that kept her afloat, but leads to a series of events that change her life.

Review: Mennonite in a Little Black Dress

2009-11-27T19:57:00.007-05:00

Mennonite in a Little Black Dress: A Memoir of Going Homeby Rhoda Janzen is a sad story. It's a memoir wrapped around one moment: When her bipolar husband leaves her for Bob from Gay.com.

While draped in sadness, the book is not a complete downer. Her marriage reads like a nightmare where she lost herself in the depths of supporting and tip toeing around her husband.

While Janzen does have moments of peace and recovery, the book is penned less than three years after the split. Is it enough perspective to look back on events? I think so, though the theme of unhappiness and regret weighs on the book, as it should. Break ups are rough. I'm still bearing the aftershocks of a bad one from almost three years ago. Janzen's marriage lasted 15 years, and obviously didn't end amicably.

The best parts are when Janzen writes about her parents, who are, as the title suggests, Mennonite (Janzen is no longer a strict member). These bits reminded me of growing up Catholic, a childhood I've revisited over the last few months as I wrote a long article involving New Jersey's Catholic Church for a non-church audience. Granted, Catholicism is not the same kind of minority religious group as Mennonite (42 percent of New Jersey is Catholic), but growing up inside any sort of religious practice brings its quirks and oddities that your non-religious friends find strange. I found this out when I switched to public school in seventh grade. People didn't go to church on Sunday? Really? And some people might think the stations of the cross are gory? What could possibly be gory about nailing a human being to a cross for three hours?

Like Janzen, I've left the church of my childhood so the feelings of longing for the traditions, and distance from a religion that seems so out of step with time hit home too.

My friend Joy asked me today what I was reading, and if I'd recommend it. I would this book. It's a little long and meandering, but most of the places Janzen winds up are worth reading. And if you grew up inside a religious family? It'll be amusing, illuminating and maybe a trip down memory lane.

Book Break: Given the Power

2009-11-24T08:21:00.001-05:00

Want to check out a cool video in time for Thanksgiving? Then click here for a short piece called "Given the Power," which interviews immigrants who have settled and thrived in NJ. It's a nice piece just in time for Thanksgiving.

Dad with the funnies

2009-11-19T10:25:00.003-05:00

Yesterday, my dad hung out in my office as a work crew fixed a leak in my roof. He sat down in my desk chair, looked at me and said "You're not really going to read Jailbait Zombie, are you?"

HA!

Brain Trust: Who reads this stuff?

2009-11-16T14:06:00.002-05:00

Behold, Jailbait Zombie, which showed up in my mail last week. I get a shipment of these mysteries/thrillers/true crime books once a month, and I usually put them right into the "donation" bin.

But this one caught my eye. First, the title: Jailbait Zombie. Then, the tag line: "She's young, she's hot, she's trouble...and she'd dying to get bitten." Um, what?

My question to you is: Who reads this stuff? There's got to be an audience if these books keep showing up in my mail and on bookstore shelves. I'm not judging, either, if you do read these kinds of books. I've written twice about the interworkings of the romance novel industry (Sarah Wendell, my go-to-gal on all things romance publishing, said this book is not romance, not even paranormal or erotic. Yes, I asked her).

Thoughts?

Review: Between Here and April

2009-11-15T17:40:00.004-05:00

Between Here and April by Deborah Copaken Kogan is a book about choice. Elizabeth is a former war journalist who chooses to stay closer to home after her daughters are born. She is not happy -- her husband is working all hours, she's passing out at odd times, and she becomes obsessed with a first grade classmate, April, whose mother committed suicide and killed her two daughters -- April included -- with her. Elizabeth forces the issues of her husband's distance her and unhappiness as she interviews people who knew April and her mother, Adele.

By making this a story about two women, Copaken Kogan shows how far and how far we have to go in terms of women and motherhood. Post partum depression wasn't a recognized illness in 1972, which is when Adele committed suicide. Adele saw a therapist, yes, but one who gave her valium to calm her nerves and zonk her out. Even PMS wasn't considered and excuse for being moody or depressed. Neither was giving up a career to stay at home with her daughters (Adele had been a nurse pre-marriage).

Elizabeth's world is different, but not so much. She sees a therapist, yes, but she's still responsible for her children and their care. She's responsible for the home and hearth while her husband does whatever he wants (while she's on the road working on her story, is becomes enraged that she didn't pick up his dry cleaning). Childcare in the U.S. is a joke, which prevents Elizabeth from really going back to work and producing celebrity TV show short instead of things that matter to her -- until she delves into what really happened to Adele and April.

It's a well written, moving read (though not perfect -- the end is odd). And it's one of those books that had me thinking about it long after I'd put the book back on the shelf.

My sister got married last weekend. I was the older, unmarried, sister and maid of honor who just broke up with her boyfriend. When my sister got engaged, people assumed I was jealous because the younger sister was getting married before me.

Um, no. My discomfort with her getting married young had nothing to do with me. Would it be nice to be married right now? Sure. I'm heartbroken about breaking up with Bill. I've spent the last week on the couch watching hour after hour of Law & Order and Bones reruns. I think about him more than I should, and random reminders -- a t-shirt he left behind. a song we both enjoyed, a letter he left me one morning -- have me breaking out in tears. It hurts, even though I'm the one who ended up (He moved to Minneapolis for a promotion without factoring in what it would do to us. After two months apart, I realized I needed more than that).

But in this week of post-break up, I've taken a good hard look at my life. I like my life. I like what I do, where I live, and what I could be. About five years ago, I set out on my own to become a writer. Two and a half years later, I bought my home and wrote a book, and since then, I've created a career I enjoy. It's not the perfect job, and sometimes I want to throw in the towel (boy, has this recession been tough), but I choose this career. I can choose to do something else, live somewhere else, become someone else if I want to. I can lie on the couch and watch hours of TNT if I want. I can train for a marathon if I want (which I am doing, by the way). I could go to Florida for a month, move to Florida, become a professional dancer and no one could tell me no.

I wasn't jealous of my sister. No, I was happy for myself and annoyed at people assume the married-with-kids-before-30 track is what I want. Because it's not. Not only has that path not presented itself, but I'm not even sure I want kids. I like my career. I like my life. I'm open to change, but I know that no matter what, I can stand on my own two feet and take care of myself. It took work to get myself to that point, and for that I'm proud.

Elizabeth's struggle is not one I want. I don't want to feel trapped by marriage and children. I want to be a thousand percent sure, too, and marry someone who will support me and help me grow, not provide an "answer" to my problems. I know too many people who did that and are already divorced (one of my college roommates just this month).

I'm not writing this post to judge anyone who did get married young and have kids. We all have a different path. Mine is one way. My sister's is another, and neither one of us would be happy on the other's track. But I wish this pressure to get married and have babies would go away, and everyone would stop assume that's what all women want. It didn't work out for Adele, or Elizabeth. And it wouldn't have worked out for me. For THAT I'm thankful.

Review: A Race Like No Other: 26.2 Miles Through the Streets of New York

2009-11-04T13:37:00.005-05:00

I finished Liz Robbin's A Race Like No Other: 26.2 Miles Through the Streets of New York on Saturday -- the day before the 40th running of the New York City Marathon. Her book details the 2007 running of the marathon, focusing on the front of the pack and a lot of people in between.

The book is organized per mile, and laces the race's history through the runner stories. It's no small race, either -- it's run by over 40,000 people a year.

The book is good, but not perfect. At times, the narrative wobbles, and Robbins repeats herself. But it's fascinating for a runner. I never gave much though to a race game plan before reading this book. Who knew I could create a run strategy, just like a basketball play? The book's also pricked up my interested in this year's race. I ran a 10k on Sunday, and kept checking Twitter for marathon updates at the post-race breakfast.

I've been toying with the idea of running a marathon for some time now, and I might finally be ready. Could I go out and run one? Probably, albeit it slowly with walking. But if I'm going to run one, I want to RUN it and at least try to be competitive.

I'm already race ready for a half marathon (I'm running the Philadelphia Half Marathon on November 22) and could continue on that base to reach marathon level. We'll see how I feel after the Philly Half. If I manage to run that race in under 1:37, I automatically qualify for the New York City marathon, and I'll take it as a sign to run it. But I doubt that's going to happen unless Jesus himself pushes me. More likely, I'll put my name in the lottery and pick a spring marathon.

So we'll see. That Sunday 10k took a lot out of me, as you can see below. A full 26.2? It's a little scary.

Review: Your Flying Car Awaits by Paul Milo

2009-10-28T08:16:00.003-04:00

Quick review for a quirky little book: I read Paul Milo's Your Flying Car Awaits: Robot Butlers, Lunar Vacations, and Other Dead-Wrong Predictions of the Twentieth Centuryfor an assignment, and it's packed cover to cover with tidbits that continue to make me a fountain of worthless information -- like why we don't drive flying cars even though we can technically make them; how hoverboats are accepted but hoverboards are not; and why doomsday scenarios haven't come to be (unless you are getting all your food via algae pills).

The book doesn't come out until December, but if you have a friend who's a science nut, put it on your holiday list. It's spot on.

Review: Born to Run by Christopher McDougall

2009-10-24T17:44:00.006-04:00

In the three and a half years I've been running competitively, I have never really hurt myself.

Sure, I've turned my ankle here and there (I blame childhood softball and clumsiness more than anything), but I've never had real knee pain, heel pain or even shin splints.

This makes me lucky -- eight to ten runners gets hurt every year. By delving deep into the middle of the earth and finding a tribe of Indians who run great distances in little more than rubber foot coverings, Charles McDougall has made the case that less is more, especially when it comes to running.

McDougall's book, Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen, has been called "that barefoot running" book, which perhaps it is. But it's not just about how Nike may have screwed an entire generation of runners. Born to Run is a wonderful memoir and narrative on why humans evolved into runners, and how we can become better runners when we shuck the marketing mumbo jumbo and rediscover the joy in hitting the open road.

McDougall, a contributor to Runner's World and Men's Health, wanted to know why his feet hurt, and how to fix them without involving shots or orthotics. So he went out to find the Tarahumura Indians, a Mexican tribe that lives in the Copper Canyons, a place they choose because it's so hard to get to, and they don't want to be found. By trying to run like the Tarahumura, McDougall discovers that all the padding, all the marathon scheduling, and all the training runners are told to do might not matter at all. The Tarahumura just run, and so do a band of out-there American runners he finds along the way.

I probably shouldn't have read this before I run the Philadelphia Half Marathon on November 22. I finished the book yesterday, and was self conscious about my shoes, feet and running form on that days' three mile jog. Should I ditch my shoes, run in an old flat pair, try not to heel strike? Am I making my feet and ankles weak in this spiffy new pairs of running sneakers?

So many questions and ideas ran through my head that I had to stop, shake my brain clear, and start again with the goal of not thinking at all. I've been fine so far. I think I'll make it through another month of training.

I might try something different after the half marathon, though. I'd like to test a pair of Nike Frees, which are supposed to mimic barefoot running, or at least try some barefoot drills in the grass. I might even break out my soccer cleats, which have no padding, and do some speed work in the park. A lot of what McDougall writes makes sense -- we didn't need sneakers for thousands of years, and only now we're worried about pronating? I started playing with my dog barefoot in my house, and I don't chase her with the same form I run in my sneakers. Maybe some of the points about running for joy and wonder rather than paces and times will bring me to that next level of running where going on a six mile jog is not a big deal but fun.

Even if you're not a runner, Born to Run is worth reading. It's one of those books that I want to dissect to see exactly how McDougall created such a wonderful narrative. I'm also comforted that, in the acknowledgments, he thanks his Men's Health editor Matt Marion by saying "Like everything I've written for Matt, it came into his hands like an unmade bed and came out with crisp hospital corners."

I worry a lot about my writing. Am I taking on the right assignments? Am I adding enough texture? What if I go on a jaunt that my editor hates? What if I tighten up the writing too much? What if I make a mistake and no one assigns anything to me ever again? Reading that someone like McDougall struggles with the same thing, and turns in imperfect drafts, is comforting. Maybe this book will help me be looser and freer about both my running and my writing.

I'm going to go on a run of running book reviews (pun intended). I've just been named Running Editor of Liberty Sports Magazine, a freebie in Philadelphia about all things sports. I'm doing it more for the opportunity to explore running through writing than for monetary glory. It might even get me a free pair of Nike Frees to test. When I started running, I thought it would be something I did a few times a week to stay in shape, but now it's become a big part of my life. If I can meld writing and running together sometimes? I just might find more joy in both.

For more on Born to Run, check out this interview McDougall did on the Daily Show:

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Full Disclosure

2009-10-07T19:54:00.005-04:00

My first book review for a major publication was of The Man of My Dreams by Curtis Sittenfeld. I didn't pick the book -- the then-book editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer, Frank Wilson, picked it for me based on my clips, my age, and my interests.

I didn't rush out and buy the book. It wasn't even out yet. Wilson mailed me a bound copy, which is the novel in what looks like a book report form, without the final covers, but all the text and marketing information. For subsequent reviews, he'd sometimes send me a bound copy, or I'd go into the Inquirer book room and pick something from racks and racks of galleys, which are also preview copies of books but in what would look like a trade paperback form, sometimes with final covers, sometimes not. The paper is sent so many of these bound copies, galleys and finished books that Wilson gave unused copies to prisons.

I tell you this story because of the recent FTC ruling that bloggers must disclose what they receive for free. This seems ludicrous to those of us who work in the book world. We've always used bound copies, galleys and finished books mailed from the publishers to do our reviews. Thousands of books are printed a year -- we, nor any publication we work for, could ever afford to buy all of them. It's standard practice, and I don't feel obligated to give someone a good review because I'm sent a copy. Because every publisher does it, I don't feel like I'm getting special treatment. In fact, I'd like to tell some of them to stop sending books because I can never get to everything that's sent to my office (what I don't read goes to family, friends, and the Collingswood Library).

But just so I don't get whacked with an $11,000 fee for not disclosing so on a blog that I consider a volunteer effort: Publishers send me free books. I probably read 2 percent of what's sent, and sometimes review those books on this blog. If I review something before it comes out, it's a galley. If the book is brand new, it's most likely a galley.

So there's my disclosure. And just to prove I don't feel like I have to give a good review to something sent for free: I hated The Man of My Dreams, and wrote so. A quote from that review: "It's not that the reader can't sympathize when Hannah makes mistakes--and she makes some big ones, like allowing an older man to get her drunk at an office party, and letting a sex addict convince her that his side dalliances have no impact on their relationship. But she doesn't learn from them, and the repetition is grating."

I will never hold back in telling you what I think about a book, whether I buy the copy or not. My job to you is to give you my opinion of what I read. I write for you, not for authors, not for publishers, and not even for myself. So there's my full disclosure.

Review: Modern Love: 50 True and Extraordinary Tales of Desire, Deceit, and Devotion

2009-10-05T13:11:00.006-04:00

I ordered Modern Love: 50 True and Extraordinary Tales of Desire, Deceit, and Devotion from half.com for a simple reason: I'd like to place an essay in "Modern Love," a column that runs every Sunday in the New York Times that has to do with -- you guessed it -- love.

I've tried before, and after re-reading those essays, I saw why they weren't accepted: they were angry and jumbled, more the rantings of a broken heart that something someone who doesn't know me would want to read. I've been trying to write about the same relationship since it ended almost three years ago, but I don't think I had enough distance from the break up to write about it clearly.

I touched on this topic in my review of Cleaving. If I didn't have enough distance years after a break up, I doubt Powell should have been writing about the dissolution of her marriage while it was still happening.

The capper on trying this project again: the October ASJA newsletter interviewed Daniel Jones, who edits the column, about how to land something, too. Best way to land the assignment is to read what's already been published, right?

There is no right or wrong thing to write about, it seems -- the anthology includes essays on being a gay teenager at a prom, the don't ask, don't tell policy, the death of a child. Some essays are simply "here's my story."

Reading the anthology of past essays has helped me write out my story I was only into the second essay that I started re-writing the story I've tried so many times to write before. I kept getting back out of bed to type up what I thought would be a few notes about what I wanted to say. An hour later, I'd finished the shell of the essay, long before I finished reading all 50 entries in the book. I didn't feel angst-y in writing about what happened, or re-living those events in my head. That's a good sign that it's finally time to write about it.

So far, I've gone through five drafts, and I think I have a few more to go. I'll send it to a few writers to get their take, too, to tell me where they see flaws, where I need to expand, and what I need to cut. The revisions are the tedious, craft part. I could say writing it was easy, though I've been trying to write this story for so long. Maybe time will make this draft the right one to make it into print.

If my essay is not selected for the column, I'll keep reworking, revising, and sending it to other publications. Essay writing is unlike any other writing I do. Not only am I writing about myself, but I finish the essay and ask someone to publish it, rather than asking for the assignment and then writing. This is probably why I don't write as many essays anymore. I'm so busy with work that I know will pay that it's hard to carve out time to take a risk on something that might not ever see the light of day.

But I'm glad I tried. I like writing essays. I think I have something to say. I'll keep you posted...

Library Run, and Reading Notes

2009-09-28T21:02:00.005-04:00

I beat the director! I really did!

On Saturday, I ran in the Collingswood "Beat the Director" 5k, which I wrote about here. If you beat the library director, you got $10 of your registration fee back.

I wasn't sure how I was going to do. I've felt sluggish since shoulder surgery, and even though my miles are up, my speed is not. Still, I pulled out a 22:24 time and beat the director by 10 whole seconds. I finished 11th overall, and 4th among the women. I even placed in my age bracket! I did not, however, ask for $10 back. It's for charity, after all.

Here's a picture of the start. I'm in the middle in yellow:

This is a picture with fellow Collingswood writer, Matt Quick:

Matt is author of The Silver Linings Playbook. It fell between my "book a week" series, so I never wrote about it on the blog, but it's a fantastic novel that he wrote in accordance with the 2006 Philadelphia Eagles football season. It's not just a football novel, though -- the main character, Pat Peoples, is trying to get his life back together, and does so by moving into his parents basement. It's got a dash of a love story in it, too, and -- best of all -- it takes place in Collingswood. Matt shared some details about the film adaptation (the Weinstein brothers bought the rights), and if it holds true...it's going to be a big movie.

I've run into Matt at a lot of events, and also while running around Knight's Park. I didn't choose to read his book because it takes place in Collingswood. His publicist sent it to me without knowing that I lived here. I also didn't know when I read it that I went to high school with Matt's brother.

Just one more example of what a small, constantly overlapping world South Jersey is. I'm sure it's like this in other areas of the country...or maybe not.

I haven't posted about a new book because I haven't read any that I've enjoyed. I read the first 12 pages of Jonathan Safran Foer's Eating Animals(Pub date Nov. 2) before tossing it into the donate pile. I liked his novels, but this...not so much. When I got the galley, I wondered why he was suddenly jumping into the non-fiction, food writing world. After 12 pages, I still wondered.

Usually, I'd soldier through, but I'm not reviewing the book for anyone, and I had a foot high stack of magazines to work through. I'm almost done with them now (oh, Atlantic, you are blocking me from that goal), and I also ordered another book through half.com that arrived today. It's a compilation of essays, which I haven't read in a while. I have a few meetings tomorrow and am going to take it with me to read in-between sessions, and essays should work for that purpose.

My last meeting tomorrow is at Rutgers University -- I'm talking about what English majors can do with their degrees. Should be an interesting discussion...

Review: Cleaving by Julie Powell

2009-09-16T22:04:00.006-04:00

I didn't want it to end up this way. But, unfortunately, it's true: Cleaving: A Story of Marriage, Meat, and Obsession, Julie Powell's follow up to the best selling, immensely fun and delightful Julie and Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously, is not a very good book. It's dull. It's trite. And it reads more like an unbalanced woman's rambling than something being marketed as the Hot Holiday Memoir.

I started my first Book a Week series with Julie & Julia. It's a charming book where Powell sets out to cook every single recipe in Julia Child's Mastering The Art of French Cooking. It started as a blog, and once the blog caught media fire, became a book, then a movie starring Meryl Streep and directed by one of my heros, Nora Ephron.

That book isn't just about the cooking challenge, but also about being a 20-something stuck in the middle, and she can't get out of it. She married young, which is part of the story. The other is not knowing what she wants to do in life. Together, those conflicts and a fun true life story formed a very funny blog and charming book. It inspired me to start this blog, even if I'm not keeping to the strict "book a week" format anymore. I found great inspiration in what she did, and it helped me take on a project to work through a breakup. It wasn't a salve for everything, but it helped.

Cleaving is what happens after the fame and success, and it ain't pretty. Powell apprentices for six months as a butcher's shop in New York state after having a two year affair with someone she met in college. He's a sinister creature, even if she tries not to describe him as so. He's abrasive, distant, and plays her like a fiddle while her husband, a seemingly sweet guy, clings. The husband dates but still dotes on Powell, even as she makes little attempt to hide or end her affair.

Her actions are not what I'm judging here. It's hard to see her as sympathetic, but I've been caught in a relationship I can't shake, and I've read and appreciated books about far worse.

The reason I don't like the book is because the retelling of the whole sordid thing is dull. She whines -- a lot. Powell becomes that best friend who is dating the absolute wrong guy, knows it, still does it, and won't shut up about it.

In this case, though, that friend wrote a book about it. It's not something you want to listen to over the phone, and it doesn't make for good reading.

What this book would have looked like if she wrote it from years from now? The narrative ends in February 2008. That's hardly enough time to process the ordeal, especially since, even in the acknowledgments, it's unresolved. Have you ever tried to write about a break up right after it happened? It's impossible to do without sounding like a mopey teenager. In Cleaving, Powell has zero perspective. So when she tells the story, it reads like a diary recounting facts. The same kind of food writing is there, and some of the butchering information is fascinating, but it's not nearly enough to prop up the book.

Friends have told me than an exeprt from Cleaving appeared in movie-branded version of Julie & Julia, and that's where I think some of the problem lies. With all the attention heaped on the first book and the movie, I'm guessing Powell was under pressure to pop out another book. I read that the release has already been delayed once. The original timeline probably had the book publishing right when the movie hit, but now it's coming out in December.

One lesson to take away from the book, and it's more of a life one: marriage is not always the answer. Just getting married will not make people whole. It will not slice away all of their problems, their issues, and create a perfect being. It's not a balm. Money and professional success aren't either. This book shows that. Clearly.

I know a lot of people are going to buy this book anyway. The media storm means there's a lot of interest in Powell, and I got my preview copy of Cleaving in September when it's publishing in December. But if you're looking for a good book on a break up that involves food, try Nora Ephron's Heartburn, which is a fictionalized version of her break up with Carl Bernstein. It's a caustic novel, but intelligent, funny, and includes the same kind of wonderful food writing that Powell is known for. But the difference is that Ephron makes us care about the characters. By shading the truth in fiction, she can say how she really feels. Powell is far from clear. She's muddy in writing about herself, her husband, and her lover. A book about such an intense topic needs to be sharp. The wishy washy business? It's a disappointment.

Review: The Big Steal by Emyl Jenkins

2009-09-10T09:08:00.002-04:00

I'm not much of a mystery fan, which is why Emyl Jenkins' The Big Steal had been in my "to donate" pile. But I had nothing to read -- and I mean NOTHING. None of the books on my "to check out" shelf looked appealing. Most are non-fiction, and for Labor Day weekend, I didn't want to read about parenting skills, social networking or the power of no.

So I pulled this book out of the donation pile, plunked my butt in a lawn chair, and read away on Saturday.

For that purpose, it was a good choice. It's part of a series called the Sterling Glass mysteries. Sterling Glass isn't a pretty item; rather, she's a middle aged antiques appraiser who happens to get caught up in a mystery with every job she takes. In The Big Steal, she's been hired to assess the value of antiques broken and/or stolen from the estate of Hoyt and Mazie Wyndfield, who built a huge palace filled with stuff in Orange County, Virginia.

But Glass doesn't just waltz in, give a value, and go home. What kind of book would that be?

This isn't high art here, but a light, fluffy mystery that reminded me a lot of the board game Clue. There's no real violence, not graphic sex, and no cursing. It's just a story to keep you company. Every chapter starts with an antique's question too (Jenkins is an antique's appraiser), which gives the book an Antique's Roadshow type feel. And I love Antique's Roadshow. Ask my mom. We've conference called during some episodes.

Next up is a book that a lot of people are waiting for:

I'll report back!

Running for My Library

2009-08-26T11:20:00.000-04:00

Just watch. The video says it all!

Review: Nibble & Kuhn by David Schmahmann

2009-08-23T20:09:00.003-04:00

I'm surprised sometimes by what books show up on my doorstep. When a bubble pack envelope shows up, I usually know how I got on this publisher's list, or I had requested a title from that publicist.

Nibble and Kuhn by David Schmahmann, though, was a mystery. The Academy Chicago Publishers? Never heard of them. Never heard of Schmahmann or his book, either.

But as I cleaned out my "to be considered" stacks to donate to the Haddonfield Public Library Book Sale, the cover caught my eye -- the blurry background with the hazed out light pricks at the bottom. What the hell. I'll give it a go. If I didn't like it, I could always throw it in the donate pile.

But I liked it! It's a tidy, not terribly taxing novel without a lot of twists and turns. It's a story about Derek Dover, a disillusioned Boston lawyer and two things: the girl he can't have, and the impossible case that is dropped into his lap.

The book is also about a law firm that is trying to be bigger than its britches at exactly the wrong time. It's very now -- recession and real estate collapse included. Like Kermit Roosevelt's In the Shadow of the Law, which is more legal thriller than Nibble & Kuhn, it reaffirmed that I made the right call in not going to law school. I think the tedium would have gotten to me, and it's not longer one of those careers where it seems that you're guaranteed a high paying job at the end of the line.

Nibble & Kuhn is not a legal thriller, and it's not a romance. It's a short, fast novel good for hot summer nights when I was cooped up in front of the window AC unit.

Now, about the blog: It's back, sorta. I'm not doing another book a week series -- it was too taxing when my work life busied up. But when I read a book I enjoy, like Nibble & Kuhn, I'll post a review. Why not? Maybe you'll like it, too.

P.S. It's been years since I read Roosevelt's debut novel, but I still remember the detail about a lawyer analyzing cashmere socks. It's funny what images still stick.

Redo

2009-08-01T17:37:00.002-04:00

Today I took apart what I called the "Book a Week" shelving. I kept both book a week series on this shelving unit since I started the projects in the fall of 2007. Every book was put on that shelf in order as it was read.

So I was a little sad when I took the books out. I was doing my usual summer book purge where I take all the galleys I can't use and donate them to the Haddonfield Public Library (they have a boffo book sale that this year is on September 12). So it was time to also tackle the book a week series and get rid of everything I didn't like or couldn't see myself reading again.

But I didn't want to leave the shelves blank, so I created this display, which has some book a week books and some favorites that had been shelved in my spare room.

Now, of course this isn't my entire book collection. I have books in my office, spare room, dining room and living room. They're part of my life, and I'm trying to use them more as decor. Why not? I like how the colors sort of match up in this display. I have cookbooks out in my dining room, along with a shelf of my grandfather's books (the matching set looks nice), and then of course magazines and books on my coffee table.

Where do you keep books in odd places?

Book 52 of 52: Because it Feels Good

2009-07-15T07:52:00.002-04:00

I didn't want Because It Feels Good: A Woman's Guide to Sexual Pleasure and Satisfaction by Debby Herbenick to be the last book in this series. It's not that I didn't like the book -- it's a friendly, accessible guide to sex for women written about women that makes sure to include the mind as well as the body. But end the second go-round of Book a Week on a sex book? Well, it is what it is. I had to read it for work. I tried to read a literary biography as book 52, but it didn't stick and put me to sleep.

Honesty time: I don't think this version of "Book a Week with Jen" had the same zip as the first one. The first one, I think, was a way to get over a devastating breakup. I was dumped at the start of this one, too, but it wasn't a sliver of the last experience, and I met Bill mid-way. Does being happy make someone a better or worse writer? I don't know. But my angst sure did give me something to write about.

Thanks again for following along. As always, the archives are alive and well. Take a poke through if you've just started following. You might be surprised.

THANK YOU!!

Nora, Nora, Nora

2009-06-29T23:39:00.003-04:00

If you've read this site, you know I have a special love for Nora Roberts. Is she a romance novelist? Yes. Are you books sometimes hokey/predictable/sigh worthy? Always. But they are delight to read when I need a mental break.

Roberts got the New Yorker treatment in the June 22 issue. And Sarah Wendell, co-author of book 12 of 52 and all things romance novel got a nice shout out as well.

Well done, ladies! I've been typing away at a romance novel myself. Why not? I like reading the genre. I used to write fiction. So I'm giving it a go. Whether it amounts to anything is another story. I dutifully put away 2,000 words a day for a bit, but I'm lagging because of work and boyfriend. Hopefully this article will inspire me to get back at it.

Book 51 of 52: Personal Assets

2009-06-26T08:00:00.004-04:00

Wowza. I think my cheeks are still burning after this one.

I picked up a way discounted copy of Personal Assetsby Emma Holly, I don't know where. I do know that I recognized the name from Book 12 of 52 as one of the authors that one of the authors enjoyed. For $4? Why not.

What I forgot, though, was that Holly writes a specific kind of romance novel. In fact, some wouldn't even call it a romance novel. It's erotic fiction. I imagined if someone filmed it, it would be classified as pornography hence why my cheeks are still burning.

But it's not a bad book. It has very good plot structure, suspense, and strong characters. Otherwise, I wouldn't have kept on after realizing that "erotic fiction" was written on the cover. The story's about two best friends, both caught up in the fashion retail world, and how said best friends find the loves of their lives. The difference between erotic fiction and romance? In this case, the characters like to get it on a lot, sometimes with strangers, sometimes in trios. Not for the faint of heart, though the cover of this one is probably one of the more tame from Holly's titles (thank goodness because I had the book in my bag yesterday when I went to my mom's house).

Am I really at book 51 of 52?

Book 50 of 52: Gossip of the Starlings

2009-06-22T16:35:00.004-04:00

Before you think I'm a speed reader: I read both of these books over the last week, but hadn't had time to write up the last post until today. I finished that book on Thursday. I'd started reading Gossip of the Starlings by Nina de Gramont before that, but had to put it aside in favor of the work-related reading.

I didn't like TK. I was curious enough about the plot to finish reading the book to see what happened, but I didn't like any of the characters. To really dig a novel, you have to at least identify with someone if not like parts of one of the characters, or so hate a character that you must see what happens. I wanted to smack everyone in this book about privileged prep school kids who drugged their way through the 1980s. Poor rich babies as they whine about coke and horses? Yawn. Not even worthy of a "beach book" label.

Book 49 of 52: Getting Past Your Breakup

2009-06-22T14:07:00.007-04:00

Where was this book two years ago?

Getting Past Your Breakup: How to Turn a Devastating Loss into the Best Thing That Ever Happened to You by Susan J. Elliott is about exactly what you think it would be about: getting over a break up. It's not one of those "your ex is evil and you are fabulous" books. It's written in a calm, soothing tone that makes no judgements against who dumped the reader. It focuses on how the dumpee can start putting the past relationship in the past and then move ahead.

I like Elliott's way of comparing getting over a breakup to grieving (makes sense since Elliott is a grief counselor). I thought back to my bad break up two years ago while reading through the book, and my reactions then were a perfect match. Maybe I did roll my eyes when Elliott went on and on about daily affirmations, but there is a lot of good advice here, like "NC" -- no contact. Nothing, zip, zilch, zero. And no going back to said ex for "closure." It's done. Let it go. Getting back in touch again will not help.

How timely. I read this book for work, but once and a while I'd get an email from my ex, who is now engaged, just saying hi. He called me last month, and when I saw the number on my phone, I let it go right to voicemail. I considered asking him for an apology for everything he did (he was a lying alcoholic who left me for someone who he said was "younger and hotter.") But why bother? I'm confident in myself now. I have a wonderful boyfriend who is 1000 times better and makes me think all those over the top romantic songs CAN be true. When I heard the ex was engaged, my first reaction was "that poor girl."

I don't need his closure. I got that on my own, and you know what? I think I'm stronger for it. Call it a cliche or whatever you want, but I don't think I'd have done everything I did if I hadn't gone through that. I didn't return his call, and I set up a filter on my email account so that anything from him is sent right to the trash without crossing my inbox. Very liberating to do that.

Will I thank him? Of course not. I hate that I let someone walk all over me like that. I sometimes can't listen to music I know he liked, but that aversion is fading (I'm listening to my Anberlin Pandora channel as I write this, but I don't think I could ever enjoy Angels & Airwaves again). I came out if it OK, which is why I think Elliott's book can help people stuck in the depths of despair over a break up. Minus the affirmation stuff, it's clear of self help mumbo jumbo too. Interesting book.

Book 48 of 52: No Regrets

2009-06-12T15:49:00.003-04:00

I was just lamenting to someone the other day about the poor quality of galleys I picked up at Book Expo America. Galleys, if you're not in the biz, are preview copies of books that are given to folks like me in the hopes that we will write about them. I usually pick up so many good books that I'm set reading wise for months.

This year? I didn't like anything I grabbed. I also said that a lot of books coming out seem like longer versions of Glamour magazine articles, and I have little love for Glamour. It's one of those women's magazines you can rely on to tell you the same three things every issue: you're too fat, you don't please your significant other, and you're going to die young (probably of breast cancer).

Sarah Ivens, author of No Regrets: 101 Fabulous Things to Do Before You're Too Old, Married, or Pregnant, has written for Glamour and another one I love to hate, Cosmo. She's was editor-at-large for OK! magazine, which is in a boat load of financial trouble (she left in December). The book definitely recalls a pre-recession time. It tells women to do things like Shop Till you Drop in New York City, Buy a Burberry Trench Coat and take fabulous trips to far flung countries as "must do" while I know most of us are just trying to hang on and save every penny we have.

And, yes, it reads like a really long Glamour magazine article (without the "you're going to die young" part though it does focus on looking younger and skinnier -- Spanx aren't something everyone should do to feel better about themselves), but it's not ALL bad. I can see someone in a rut, whether from heart ache, job ache or general ennui, finding some of these 101 things to do inspiring. It's a "kick in the pants" kind of book -- just skip over some of the sillier suggestions, like getting fake eyelashes and get a Brazilian wax. Really? Not something everyone needs to do.

I've done 59 of the 101 things she recommends. I did pretty well up until the travel and beauty parts. With travel, I can't afford a lot of the vacation suggestions. For beauty, it's stuff I would never want to do or can't do (can't dye my hair back to my childhood color since I don't dye my hair and, yes, it's the same color). Not bad for someone who has little interest in the magazines the author writes/wrote for.

Book 48 of 52: Face to Face

2009-06-10T20:14:00.003-04:00

Today's guest on Fresh Air, the Terry Gross NPR interview show, was Maria Siemionow, the doctor who performed the first face transplant. The interview was fascinating. I would expect her memoir to be the same.

Except I finished Face to Face: My Quest to Perform the First Full Face Transplantthis afternoon, and it was one of the more dull memoirs I've ever read. I hate to seven say it because Siemionow has a fascinating story. She grew up poor in Poland and came to the U.S. to study hand transplant surgery. In December 2008, she did a face transplant on a woman who had been horribly disfigured through domestic violence.

But how dreary and dull and full of cliches. I think she'll best be served by a biography written by someone else. Her story is very flat and one dimensional. Those extra angles need to be added to pain a full picture of a woman who has done something amazing.

Two cover notes: the image is misleading. While the face transplant Siemionow was a vast improvement for her patient, she does not look anything like the woman on the cover. Also, part of the cover verbiage touts about an epilogue that about the actual transplant. It's only three pages.

And for a stand out memoir by a transplant surgeon? Try Pauline Chen's Final Exam: A Surgeon's Reflections on Mortality.

Book 47 of 52: The Runner's Body

2009-06-09T12:54:00.004-04:00

Two words: MUST READ. Well, Runner's World The Runner's Body: How the Latest Exercise Science Can Help You Run Stronger, Longer, and Fasterby Ross Tucker, Jonathan Dugas and Matt Fitzgerald is a must read if you run. It might be a little overwhelming to novices, but if you're like me and have three, four, five or many more years of running tallied on your legs, understanding the science of running can be an eye opener.

Perfect timing for me to read this, too (aside from being assigned a review for a newspaper): I'm hitting my summer wall, which is when it gets hot and humid in New Jersey and the last thing I want to do is run. I tell myself that I CAN'T run because it's hot. I chalk it up to being a "cold weather runner," but I'm starting to wonder if it's more of a mental block that comes from once being so dehydrated that I almost ended up in the hospital (not from running, though -- and not from drinking alcohol). That experience was petrifying. I lost all control of my body and was sick for days after. Why would I want to put myself out into hazy, hot and humid weather and risk it?

I've been working past this block so far by doing hot and humid runs this past week, starting in the early morning hours. I've also bought myself a water bottle that straps around my hand, even though people tell me I don't need to hydrate for runs under an hour. I understand that after reading this book, but I think having it with me, knowing that I can get a drink if I need it, makes a huge mental difference, and has pushed me through some muggy runs so far (a sip of water from a water found at 22 minutes into my run today made a big difference).

The information about overhydrating was eye opening, too -- no runner has died of dehydration, as far as the authors know. But runners have died from putting too much water and sports drink in their bodies. I'll tell that to all the Broad Street volunteers who screamed at me to drink during the last legs of the race. The authors carefully pull apart research that comes of the Gatorade Sports Science Institute and why their studies do not work for runners, and they imply without directly say that their push to get runners to drink, drink and drink some more has lead to tragic outcomes.

Yes, it's scientific, but told in a way that is accessible. I've taught technical writing before, and this book is an example of technical writing done right. Fascinating read.