Goodnight Nobody

After perusing Goodreads.com, I briefly considered making this summer the Summer of Weiner (as in, Jennifer). There is quite the long list of hers I've not read or even heard of so I'm sure they'll wind up on a summer reading list at some point.

I brought few books with me on vacation to Arizona and Mexico because I'm literally the last person on earth not to have an e-reading device (when I made an effort to pay close attention, I noticed I was the only one around me in airplanes holding a physical book). Being in the middle of Gone Girl, I knew I would want my next read to be something that would suck me in and make me laugh. Weiner did not disappoint. Just as I suspected with The Guy Not Taken: Stories, Weiner really shines in the 350+-page novel category.

As a full-time working mom, Goodnight Nobody is a story of what I want to be, but is also a frightening portrayal of what some fear of becoming. And, of course, working or stay-at-home, discovering a murdered neighbor isn't high on my priority list.

Kate Klein is what she refers to herself as an "accidental mother of three." With her husband gone a lot, she spends a lot of her time with arts n' crafts, frozen, microwavable food, board games, and at least one trip to the playground a day that usually ends up leaving Kate frustrated with her apparent ineptitude at parenting according to the suburban, Stepford, super-moms. But one of those super-mom ends up dead, Kate being the one and only to stumble upon her body, and the only one with the resources to solve the crime. What ultimately ends up happening is that the world is just too damn small, something everyone everywhere can relate to.

Once again, Weiner delivers a witty, intelligent, funny, dramatic, and intriguing novel with great mystery and the obligatory twist. It was a great beach n' travel book, totally worth hauling in your beach tote (no doubt you've downsized to a clutch for summer). The cast of characters keeps you involved, constantly wanting more, and liking them even though you probably shouldn't; just like Miss Klein, herself.

Glad to check off another one of hers as read.

Gone Girl

So I took a bit of a detour from Jennifer Weiner's The Guy Not Taken: Stories and Goodnight Nobody with a returning author, Gillian Flynn and her incredibly disturbing Gone Girl. I read her Sharp Objects for book club and was thoroughly creeped; most of the scenes left me feeling like Flynn could use a nice long stay in a pysch ward. And I have to admit, had I read Gone Girl first, I think I would have "accidentally forgotten" to read Sharp Objects. For the losers who didn't read the book that month, we filled them in and it was enough to detour them from ever reading it.

Flynn writes the story we've seen a million times splattered over the news - wife disappears, husband is the prime suspect, and his strange behavior isn't helping matters. But the vivid, creative, every-detail-thought-of way she tells the story can only lead me to assume she's thought about unfolding this scenario before.

Flynn leads you on a wild chase of you knowing who did it, not being entirely sure who did it, wondering who actually did do it, and all the while in the back of your mind thinking what you do when it's a news story: was anything actually done or is it like that story of the bride who staged her own kidnapping? You never actually know until you do, and then you're even more disturbed than before.

This book is a definite beach-read and something you'll get sucked into and feel slightly dirty by. I lent it to my coworker and it was the first and only book we actually discussed (besides the quality of the bodice-ripper I gave her as a joke for Christmas).

I said before that Sharp Objects was fuuuuuucccckkkeeedd up and I'm going to go out on a limb and say that Gone Girl is fuuuuuucccckkkkkeedddd up to the second power. She has another book floating around the book-o-sphere and I might be compelled to read it in the future. But I say that more so because I would never close myself off to reading something. At least now I know that when I feel that draw, I will be reading some seriously disturbing shit. I mean, I knew Gone Girl was going to be similar in disturbing nature as Sharp Objects but now I'm like that puppy who's been bopped one too many times.

The Guy Not Taken: Stories

I decided it had been far too long since I'd read a Jennifer Weiner book and when I found some time in between book club reads, but not enough to start and finish an entire book, I picked up The Guy Not Taken: Stories, a book of short - you guessed it - stories packed with the wit, charm, empathy, and great sense of humor that I've come to expect from Weiner, and why she is one of my favorite authors with Sophie Kinsella (Shopaholic and Baby got me through some very rough bouts of morning sickness. And she had a girl, too!! And, no, I've never seen the movie,. I've seen parts and know the plot and I think their depiction is a complete travesty.).

Weiner expertly walks the line - if one even exists between the two - between chick-lit and what book-snobs would consider respectable literature. Her stories, long or short, deliver laughs, sympathy, drama, romance, and a certain serious nature that results in you pondering long after you've read the acknowledgment (because you know you read every last page). The first few stories, for instance, center around a family that has suddenly split apart and the consequences - good and bad - are revealed. And even if we aren't going through something similar ourselves, we still find ourselves being able to relate in some fashion.

While I don't envision ever being detoured from reading one of Weiner's books, I do have to admit that I enjoyed the book less as I neared the end. I'm not exactly sure what the last story - about an elderly woman taken hostage and forced to vacation by two young teenagers - is trying to convey, it just sort of left me feeling depressed. I found myself surprised at this, but it made me want to get back to reading one of her novels, where I really thinks she really shines (she does write incredibly funny Tweets about The Bachelor and Bachelorette, but because I can't watch live with her and I don't want to spoil it for myself, I avoid her Tweets like the plague).

So I picked up Goodnight Nobody.

Mockingjay

Suzanne Collins' Mockingjay was one of the first books I read this year, and I think I waited so long to review it because I have absolutely no idea where to begin.

To say this series blew me a way is an understatement. And don't even get me started on how it's classified as a YOUNG ADULT series. I mean, seriously?!

I'm ashamed to admit that I actually forgot I hadn't finished the Hunger Games series until something unmemorable triggered my mom-brain memory (as in, I have none), and Mer gasped and said, "You still haven't read that?! I'm bringing my book over right now so you can finish it. The third is absolutely my favorite." And she wasn't wrong; in my book of books, the final installment of the Hunger Games was absolutely the best, most worth the effort, and second easiest to plow through behind the first. Finally, everything I had hoped for in the first and expected in the second, was finally happening in the third.

Completely unaware of the goings-on behind the scenes, Katniss miraculously escapes her second Hunger Games on the side of the "good guys." Or did she...? Peeta has been captured by the Capitol to be used as a pawn in these larger-than-the-Hunger-Games games, and Gale is weird and distant, a far cry from the one person she could count on and trust. Expecting and motivated to hit the front lines of the now-emerged civil war, Katniss' role in the unrest is largely trophy-ish, a symbol used by the rebels to remember what they're fighting for. As the reader, I had hoped for more scenes from the fighting but that doesn't mean everything Katniss was up to wasn't heart-palpitating and breath-taking and, well, game-changing.

Reading this reminded me a lot of what Mer said about Game of Thrones; the good guys are the bad guys, the bad guys are the good guys, and you never know which is which, even as the story nears a dramatic and horrifying end. If nothing else, this story shines a bright light on the inter workings of war, the evil that is at the heart, and the coming together of people who believe they deserve better for themselves. And, if nothing else, provides a clear warning message for our future.

In general, stories of the post-apocalyptic nature provide us with a waning self-assurance of, that will never happen to us/our country/our world. But I firmly believe the Hunger Games provides more of a foreshadowing then we care to admit, taking into account the large consumption of reality TV we can't steer clear of, and the large degree of human suffering we find it easy to turn our heads away from. The way our current media sensationalizes every gruesome crime is the major foundation to our own Hunger Games, I just hope we never start to fear our power-hungry government more than we hate them.

Ask Again Later

It has been several years since I've read one of Jill A. Davis comedic masterpieces, of which I remember laughing out loud in a room full of people with my nose buried in Girls Poker Night. To this day, I can't even tell you what it was about, but certain lines about trying to gain admittance to a mental hospital, and a quick one-liner about suicide with a blow dryer stick out prominently in my brain. I can't tell if it's because I'm older and arguably wiser and less gullible, or if Davis really isn't as funny as I previously thought. And that was long before I ever tried smoking weed.

Ask Again Later is your typical young-woman-trying-to-find-herself chick lit littered with absolutely ridiculous scenarios that make you laugh out loud in that "WTF?!" kind of way. I wouldn't say it was the best book I've ever read - certainly not the funniest and I have yet to read anything by the All Mighty David Sedaris - but it wasn't a complete waste of time, either. It made me appreciate my boring, married-with-children life and made me wonder how necessary it is to have chick-lit in my literary life right now. Like rom-com movies, most romance novels, and porn, once you've seen/read one, you've read/seen 'em all. The random twists Davis peppers throughout the generally hum-drum story definitely keeps you on your toes, though, is much appreciated, and keeps the 240ish paperback pages turning.

Written as if we've secretly picked up a stranger's diary, we're led down a wandering path of a woman who has absolutely no idea what she's doing, where's she's going, or what her basic interests are. It reminds me of Runaway Bride when she has no idea how she prefers her eggs. By the end, we're not really sure if she's figured anything out, just that her life will continue in less of an up-heaved kind of way. So, good for her.