Book Review: One More Thing

I've been in a pretty big book funk for the past six weeks. I finished reading Meg Wolitzer's The Interestings (which I loved) in mid-January.

Since then I've tried to make it through two books, Gary Shteyngart's Little Failure and Donna Tartt's The Goldfinch and I just couldn't do it. I felt like Little Failure was the same story over and over again, chapter after chapter. I picked it up after hearing Shteyngart on NPR but in retrospect I should have known better since his previous book Super Sad True Love Story totally weirded me out. The Goldfinch gave me more anxiety in the first 100 pages than any other book I've ever read and I quickly lost interest even though it was the first book of me, my Mom and my Aunt Lau's book club (sorry, guys!).

Last night though, I heaved myself out of my funk by finishing B.J. Novak's new collection of short stories One More Thing. I don't think I've ever seen anything Novak has been in and I'm not a total fan of short stories, but this book got a lot of buzz so I figured it must be worth the read.

The stories in Novak's book range from one page to more than 30 and I genuinely enjoyed every one of them. Some of them are funny, some are sad and some left me a little confused but happy that I had read them none the less. My favorite story comes in the beginning of the book and its a story about a man meeting his grandmother in heaven. It is so not what you think its going to be, but I read it three times it was so wonderful and brought me such comfort. I would definitely recommend this book to everyone, I loved it!

On a totally unrelated but still B.J. Novak note...why are Mindy Kaling and B.J. not dating? I know that its 2014 and men and women can be friends without being in love but still I ask: would they not be the best couple? Like ever? I will continue to hold out hope!

Some of My Favorite 2013 Reads

Remember last year when I tried to read 100 books and I did a review every time I finished one?

I've read almost 50 books this year and I think I've been reading pretty fast...I'm not sure how I thought 100 books was doable last year?

I've read some really incredible books this year though, so I thought I'd share with you! You can find all of the books I've read since my graduation from Penn in 2011 on my Goodreads page (in case you are really interested in my literary opinions!).

I would also like to say at this point (because she's going to call me out on it if I don't) that I read a lot of these books because my Mom (who is a literary trail blazer!) recommended them to me. It is my goal in life to one day say to my Mom "Have you heard of this book?" and for her to say "No, tell me about it!". It has not yet happened and I don't think it ever will.


Where'd You Go, Bernadette (Maria Semple).
5/5 Stars 
This book was totally not what I thought it would be. I loved the characters so much and I loved how it was written. For anyone interested in a little mystery and the dynamics of family.

Eleanor & Park (Rainbow Rowell)
5/5 Stars 
I've read the other two books Rowell's written (Attachments and FanGirl) both of which I loved and read this year. I picked Eleanor and Park though because the ending was so intense! And also I just finished it four days ago...but you must read FanGirl too, it was incredible.

Faith (Jennifer Haigh)
5/5 Stars 
About a disgraced Boston priest and his sister's attempt save his good name. For anyone who went to Catholic school!

The Universe Versus Alex Woods (Gavin Extence)
5/5 Stars 
Whatever you do, don't read the ending in public...tears everywhere. About a young British boy who was hit in the head with a meteor and his friendship with a local Vietnam Veteran. Great for anyone who is looking for a moral challenge in a book. Might be my favorite book of the year.

Engagements (J. Courtney Sullivan)
5/5 Stars 
I've read two of Sullivan's other books and I haven't loved them but Engagements was really great. One of my friends said they thought it was a little depressing, but the characters were so wonderful and the stories were all intertwined...it was perfect.

The Husband's Secret (Liane Moriarty)
4/5 Stars
It was set in Australia and I don't think I've ever read a book set there. Make sure you read the Epilogue, it makes the entire book!!

The Marrying of Chani Kaufman (Eve Harris)
4/5 Stars 
A finalist for Man Booker Prize this year, about a young Hasidic woman in England who gets married. The story about Chani's family is wonderful, her mother was my favorite.

And there you have it! Some of my (read: my Mom's) best books that I've read in 2013! My Mom has a Goodreads page, too incase you're interested!

The End of My Book Moratorium

Reading 100 books in 365 days is a lot of work. When you decide you're going to attempt such a feat (and announce it to your loyal blog followers) you think its a great idea!

You think to yourself "I love to read AND I have a Kindle AND I love that I have no homework because I am no longer in grad school (will this ever get old?) AND I have to read all the books I want to read now before I am in grad school again (anxiety, doctorate say what?) THIS IS THE BEST IDEA I'VE EVER HAD!"

But then you get to book #25 and you hit a wall. A wall that involves a window seat on the Long Island Railroad and a running routine four nights a week at 8:00PM, you tend to fall asleep on the train. And you are asleep at 10:00PM? Meaning that your reading time is cut to zero and then its five weeks later and you have read NOTHING but are plenty caught up on all of your podcasts, television shows, blogs and current national and pop news, NONE of which has anything to do with your New Years Resolution to read 100 books.

BUT THEN you take a week off for your 25th birthday (best idea ever) and your Fiance gets you a brand spanking new Kindle Fire! And you're at your parents' house (which has a patio) and then your Aunts' house (which has a pool) and before you know it, you are back in your reading grove! So bloggy friends, without further ado I present to you: The End of My Book Moratorium, Books #26-30. 
 

Read this book! Recommendation courtesy of my bloggy friend, Lauren and holy goodness she was so right! Read it right now, it will make you wonder why you've spent so many years not pretending to be a Rockefeller. 

 

Domestic Violets was meh. Its about this guy who works at a company he hates during the 2008 financial crash...his Dad is a famous author, he wants to be an author...you get the idea. It was kind of whiny BUT my friend Jimmy, who works in advertising (who also read this book), taught me a lot of extra advertising jargon that the protagonist in this book could have used. Like "net, net", which I use all the time now. For instance "This post is a summary of a lot of books I read NET NET you should not read this one because it wasn't great." See? I am a natural. 

The Darlings was also about the financial crisis but was about a family behind a ponzi scheme and not the little guy in Domestic Violets. Its getting an extra star because its set in Manhattan which is my absolute favorite but I spent the whole book waiting for something big to happen and it never did, so three stars it is. 

Obviously the new Joan Rivers book is hilarious. I love her and I highly recommend I Hate Everyone unless you are easily offended.

How Can I Talk If My Lips Don't Move was really an incredible book. As someone who works in Teacher Education I think the book should be mandatory reading for all aspiring teachers but I think that its totally a valuable read for everyone. There is something so incredible to me about that fact that Tito can't speak verbally but that his words reach thousands of people through his books. Read it, read it, read it!

So there you have it, folks. Books #26-30. I'm thinking 100 books isn't totally realistic by December but I'll be keeping you posted on my progress!

Book Funk

This is not a post summarizing my latest book because friends, I have read nothing in almost two weeks.

I have started not one, not two but THREE books. And I hate them all! I will not tell you what they are in the event that I read them later on...I don't want to taint your opinion of them.

HOWEVER as of right now I hated them!
Last week I kept falling asleep on the train...WHY? Last night I listened to a Nerdist podcast with Tina Fey, which while entertaining was NOT reading. I searched my Kindle for a full twenty minutes trying to find something I wanted to read. I could not find one thing and it made me cranky.

Friends, how do I get out of my book funk? Do you have any book suggestions? Help me puhlease!

Book #25

All of the books at my library are hard cover and none of them have jackets or descriptions.

Last week, I was wandering the stacks (one of my favorite things to do) to find another book and I saw this one! But with no jacket and no description, I opened Don't I Know You and in the middle of the page it said "Museum of National History."

And I don't know if I ever told you this, but I l-o-v-e books that are set in New York! So I borrowed the book and three days later Book #25 was complete!

I really liked this book, even though it started with a gruesome murder on the Upper West Side in the late seventies. The book chronicles the lives of the people who might have been involved in the murder for ten years including a building owner, a preschool teacher and an elderly resident with cancer and her son. While there was no definite resolution to the murder, I really liked this book a lot!

1/4 of the way to 100 friends...this might not be looking too promising!

Books # 23 & #24

Chugging right along here in the Year of 100 Books, friends! I would like to say though, that I get like half the number of views (thanks, Blogger for rubbing it in) when I make these posts. Geeze, blog readers! My feelings are only a little hurt, I guess.

Book #23 was Hilary Winston's My Boyfriend Wrote a Book About Me. Steph loaned it to me because I loved Mindy Kaling's book so much. Winston's account of dating in Los Angeles is not nearly as funny as Kaling's account of womanhood, but it was decent. I also totally identified with her self proclaimed cat lady-ness and I will admit here and now that I cried while reading the epilogue that included the death of her cat (SPOILER ALERT!). Tears on my morning commute! And if you Google, you can find out who her boyfriend is...maybe his book will go on my list for the rest of the year.

Book #24 was Pete Dexter's Paris Trout which was published the year I was born! And which I just found out was made into a movie in 1991...Goggle you guys...super helpful!

Set in Cotton Point, Georgia Dexter's book tells the story of Paris Trout who was originally a respected member of his community but who ends up on trial for murder.

I loved the characters in this book, and even though some points were slow I'm still giving it four stars because of Harry Seagraves and Hana (Nile) Trout. I'm debating about the watching the movie this weekend...has anyone seen it?

Book #22: The Things They Carried

Book #22 was a rough read. 


Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried is a continuous narrative comprised of short stories about The Vietnam War. The stories involve Jimmy Cross, Henry Dobbins, Rat Kiley, Mitchell Sanders, Norman Bowker, Kiowa, and the main character Tim O’Brien, all members of the Alpha Company. 


While the book was not overly filled with violence, I think the book would have been easier to get through if it was filled with gore. Instead, O'Brien writes stories that are dense with emotion and feeling both during and after the war. I can't say that I particularly enjoyed The Things They Carried, but I'm definitely happy that I read it.  

Book #21: The History of Love

I actually finished Book #21 last week, but just never got around to writing my review. I wanted so badly to love Nicole Krauss' The History of Love, but I just could not get into it.

The book involves a bunch of different characters and spans about sixty years from Nazi occupied Europe to (more or less) present day New York City. I think that one of the main problems I had with the book is that I kept getting the old man in the story confused with the old man in Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. Also, one of the main characters runs all over NYC (much like Oskar in Extremely Loud) looking for clues to solve a self created puzzle. It sounds crazy to say that I got the characters confused, but in my jumbled head they were basically the same people. This fact made the story a real struggle for me to get through.

I also despise Coney Island for reasons that have absolutely nothing to do with Coney Island and everything with a miserable 18 months where I once spent almost every weekend there (I'll spare you the details). So when Alma befriended a Russian immigrant who lived near the beach, I almost put the book down (I swear I'm not usually this irrational).

All of this is to say that the two stars The History of Love is getting has very little to do with the book itself. Though I did find it lacking a compelling plot and often times found myself wondering "Why have I spent eleven pages reading about this man's pneumonia?" and "Oh crap I just read three pages and can't remember any of what happened".

My Mom loved this book though, so maybe it was just me?

Book #20: Bloom

I've talked about Kelle Hampton before on this blog, and book #20 was her very recently published memoir, Bloom: Finding Beauty in the Unexpected.

I've been a follower of Kelle's blog, Enjoying the Small Things, for almost two years and one of the things I like best about it is the pictures...there must be hundreds of them per week. And her book was filled with them too, which I really enjoyed. While a lot of the book talked about things I knew about as a blog reader, it also talked about some things that never come up, like her relationship with her father.

Overall, I really enjoyed this book. It seems that Kelle (as though I know her!) has a really wonderful perspective on life, though at some points I of the book I could have done with less reflection and Go Big or Go Home talk...after a while it made the book drag a little bit.

Three out of five stars for Kelle Hampton but five out of five for her Instagram photos of New York last week, because they were awesome!

Books #17, #18 & #19: Chaos Walking Trilogy

First, I have to say that I never reviewed Book #16, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. Whoops!

I'm keeping track of my books here on the blog and on Goodreads, so while I updated and rated it on Goodreads, it totally slipped my mind here. Anyway, it was meh (three out of five stars) and I didn't like the ending at all. Also, I definitely cannot even think about seeing the movie because the trailer made me too upset, but I might recommend that more than the book.

Books #17-#19 were the Chaos Walking series by Patrick Ness. I'm just going go right out and say it and I'm probably going to get a lot of flack for this.

I think I liked it better than The Hunger Games. 


I know. I'm sorry Katniss Everdeen. It might be because Fiance and I just saw the big screen version of the Hunger Games (and I hated it) but I geeze I loved these books.


Chaos Walking is set on a planet (New World) where the relatively newly arrived male settlers' thoughts are audible to those around them. Tyrannical ruler (a la President Snow, Hunger Games folks) seeks world domination, almost 1,000 pages of action packed reading follows.

Overall, I found the characters to be very compelling. The first book is written solely through the perspective of one of the protagonists, Todd, but each book adds another perspective which added to the depth of the story I think. The transition between each perspective was never clumsy and really added to the narrative (I can't believe I just wrote that...but its true!).

I would definitely, 100% recommend these books to everyone (I brought the first two to my grandmother on Sunday) but am secretly hoping they don't gain the acclaim that eventually found The Hunger Games. There is no way a movie could do this book justice and that seems to be the path for popular books these days. So puh-lease do not read it and keep the Todd Hewitt and Viola Eade of my imagination alive and well.


...But seriously, you should read this book right now. 

Books #14 & #15

Books #14 and #15 came and went in under six days (thank you body for not falling asleep on the train!) and I think I was on a little bit of a book high. Do you get that? All accomplished and happy that you finished a book instead of watching the NCIS Los Angeles marathon...despite your love for LL Cool J? Book high, people...its the new thing, obviously!

Book #14 was recommended to me by my boss who, knowing I loved The Hunger Games, thought that this would be a great read for me. He was right! Fair warning though, it is super dark.  

The Long Walk, which Stephen King originally published under the pseudonym Richard Bachman appears to be widely available under King's name. If you try for it under Bachman though, your library has to special order it for you from a library in Kansas. Seriously.

The Long Walk is set in the not to distant future where, on May 1st of every year, 100 boys start walking and do not stop until only one of them is left. Not to eat, not to drink, not when their sneakers fall apart, and not even to go to the bathroom. Ew. I love distopian stories  (The Handmaid's Tale is my favorite book of all time) but this was a tad bit dark, even for me. Overall though, I thought this was a great story and really hit home for me (slash made me a little terrified) as I'm considering doing this next May...hopefully they'll let me stop to pee.

Book #15 was significantly less impressive than book #14. Michelle Haimoff's These Days Are Ours came recommended by Hello Giggles Shiny Happy Book Club, so I thought I'd give it a try. The reviewer, Sarah Heyward, wrote of the story "Above all, there’s an impressive balance of wit and heart at work here, and I would be lying if I said I didn’t tear up a few times". Awesome, I thought, let's give it a try.

Set six months after September 11th, recent college graduates (who live in their parent's fancy, fancy apartments) are attempting to find jobs and regain some sense of normalcy after the attacks. I was expecting a more coming of age tale (as ridiculous as that sounds) but instead I got a bunch of whiny characters who spend lots of money (or their parent's money) on shoes that they don't wear to the office. I also thought that Haimoff totally dismisses the one person in the book who has a job by describing her as "on auto-pilot" while totally legitimizing the crazy "I want to marry this guy because his apartment is beautiful and his parents seem nice" rantings of the protagonist.

Overall, These Days are Ours was an easy read set in New York (which I always like). If you're not in the mood to be totally annoyed though, I can't say I would suggest it.

Book #13: The Ex-Boyfriend's Handbook

The average rating of The Ex-Boyfriend's Handbook on Goodreads is 3.44. Because Goodreads has rarely steered me wrong, this average prompted my reading the book upon discovering it on my Kindle (have I mentioned that a bunch of the ladies in my family have the same Amazon account? Totally awesome). 120 pages in, my Mom told me that no Kate, no one purchased this book...it was free on the Kindle Blog a few months ago. Warning bells, my friends...warning bells.

I really had high hopes for this one because it is set in England and I love books set in England! The plot was less than stellar (girl leaves boy, boy embarks on makeover journey, boy enlists the help of annoyingly attractive best friend and obviously attractive personal trainer, boy falls in love with personal trainer). Sorry for the spoilers. Worse than being predictable, Ex-Boyfriend was filled with terribly hackneyed one liners. And I thought the ending was terrible. Positive of the book: I love tea and then drink a lot of it!

I was apprehensive about giving this book only one star, since that piece of crap Steve Martin wrote got zero. I'd like to take this time to say that there is a BIG jump from zero stars to one star! This was an easy read and the characters were likable enough whereas the crappy Steve Martin took me forever and I hated the characters and worse than anything it made me NOT LOVE STEVE MARTIN ANYMORE. Tragic.

I'm hoping to finish Book #14 by Saturday morning except that I have to be careful with it because I had to get it out of the Rare Books section of the library. And it has a broken spine and a special label on the cover. So I feel like I can't read it on the subway for fear of...well a lot of icky things can happen on the subway. This post was much more ramble-y than I wanted it to be so WISH ME LUCK and farewell!

Book #12: The Night Circus

The Night Circus, book #12 in the Year of 100 Books, is definitely the strangest read so far. I can't really say that I loved, loved, loved it. But I can't say that I didn't like it either. Really, I thought it was basically a 400 page short story. Nothing seemed to really happen, but that didn't make me hate it. I'm not sure I'm doing a good job here...

Let's discuss the plot, I suppose.

Marco and Celia are bound to each other as children to fight in a magical duel, the rules of which are never quite specified by Morgenstern. The arena is a magical circus (the description of which really made the book for me) but no one ends up winning in the way the the architects of the game would have hoped.

The detailed descriptions of the actual circus were incredible. But I thought overall the characters were blah and so was the story. That's my scientific review: blah. But perhaps worth it if you like fanciful circuses!

I'm going to need everyone to NOT SPEAK TO ME for at least the next month while I attempt to gain some momentum here.

OK, OK I guess you can speak to me. But not when I am on my couch competitively reading against myself.

Book #11 (Finally): 11/22/63

I love my Kindle. A lot.

It is the big one, with the giant screen and even though I cannot wait to get the Kindle Fire for my birthday in June (cough cough Mom & Dad/Fiance), I think I'm going to miss my gigantic one. (Please note that Fiance and I are currently embroiled in a debate about why I want a Kindle Fire instead of an iPad. More on that later)

While I do love my Kindle, I do not love that it refuses to tell me how many pages are in a book. When I decided to read the new Stephen King two weeks ago, I thought to myself "You're flying to Georgia, driving to Albany and have to commute. You'll finish this in four or five days tops".

Pssssh, friends Stephen King laughed in my face. Because (in true Kate fashion) I slept both ways to Georgia, and was distracted by Dilly in the car on the way to Albany and yesterday when I looked on Good Reads, it told me the book was 849 PAGES. So here I am, two weeks, 849 pages and one book later.

With that being said, this book was worth every single second. It took me about 150 pages to get into it, but once I did it was unbelievably wonderful. SO wonderful in fact that it is my first 5 star book of 2012!

I would absolutely recommend this book to any history buff, time travel lover or casual book reader. YOU MUST READ THIS BOOK! But don't read the end of it on the train, because it is so unbearably heartbreaking you may cry and then strangers will stare at you. 

Book #10: Jerusalem Maiden

I finished Book #10 last night on the train, and holy crap did I love it (it took me way longer to read because I was a total slacker over the weekend...must remedy ASAP). Talia Carner's Jerusalem Maiden was on my Kindle and came highly recommended from my grandmother. 

Esther Kaminsky is one of the Haredi, the ulta-orthodox Jews who consider themselves "the chosen of the Chosen," who live in Jerusalem. Despite her passion for art, Esther is pressured into marriage by her family to a merchant, Nathan, and moves with him to the port city of Jaffa. 

The book is really just wonderful. Esther is so likable (despite some not so wonderful instances of mothering) and you really feel like you're in Jerusalem (and eventually Paris) as corny as that sounds. I would absolutely recommended Carner's debut novel and I'm definitely adding her other books to my remaining 90 this year!

Book #9: Dedication

Book #9 was Dedication and was written by Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus, the authors of The Nanny Diaries. I'm giving it a solid three out of five stars.

I struggle with McLaughlin and Kraus' books because I think the dialogue is always too disjointed. There are times when I have to read a paragraph two or even three times (which is embarrassing because this book is not rocket science) because its so all over the place. Dedication absolutely suffered from this (I'm not sure if it has to do with the fact that two authors wrote it) but overall, it was a cute book.

Cute I think is the best word to describe it, actually. Katie Hollis, successful environmental advocate, returns home to Vermont to confront her high school boyfriend, Jake Sharpe. There are a lot of friends involved, which I always like and its a fast (read: relaxing, don't have to think much) 300 pages.

Book #10 is up next...1/10 of the way there!

Book #8: My Life in a Harem

I was hoping to post earlier today, but I didn't finish book #8 Some Girls: My Life in a Harem until the train ride home tonight.


My Life in a Harem has been on my To Read list for a year or so, after I found it on my Amazon Recommendations (I'll have you know I thought the title was "My Life in Harlem"...super wrong) and then I saw Jillian Lauren on CNN last month promoting her new book Pretty. I decided then that it would be my January book for the Bestie Book Exchange (have I not told you about BBE? More to come on that later).

Lauren, adopted as a baby from Chicago by a Jewish family in New Jersey, details her early departure to college, her subsequent drop-out, and the strange tale of how she ended up as a harem girl for Price Jefri of Brunei (abbreviated version: stripper to escort to harem girl).

Lauren's tale is most definitely a page turner and at some point will really make your skin crawl. In certain points of the book, Lauren is not particularly likable...but I think she makes up for that through her story telling.

In the epilogue, Lauren talks about the international fall-out that befell Prince Jefri in the late 1990s after a former Miss USA accused him of holding her captive in his country. Whatever you do, do NOT google anything about him at work...you'll get some images that are not suitable for work viewing. Or anywhere, really.

Book #9 here I come!

Book #7: Infidel

My friends, Book #7 was deep. So deep (and dense) it took me almost 10 whole days to read (plus or minus some sleepy train rides). Ayaan Hirsi Ali's Infidel has been on my To Read list every since I saw her two years ago on The Daily Show.

Infidel chronicles Hirsi Ali's life from her birth in Somalia through her years in Kenya, Medina and Ethiopa to the United States after a short tenure as a member of the Dutch Parliament. In addition to being a compelling personal memoir, Infidel  also serves to chronicle Ayaan's journey from devout Muslim to secular atheist.

Infidel was a powerful book and despite what seemed at points to be a slow slog, I'm definitely glad I finally got to it. At the end of the book though, I did wish that more time had been spent on her time in Parliament, the development of her film Submission, Part One and her relocation to the United States. At times, Hirsi Ali's writing was slow and seemed almost repetitive however overall I would say it is a must read for anyone interested in women's rights, religion and the process of refugees to become citizens.