Review: The Interestings

The Interestings by Meg Wolitzer

My rating: 5 of 5 stars



Kudos to Lisa for recommending another great book to me. I really enjoyed this...it's about six friends who attend an arts summer camp together as teenagers, and their relationships for the next 20+ years of their lives. It was especially fun to read this while on my summer vacation, although to call it a trashy summer read would be to minimize the compelling writing.

All six characters in this book were well-conceived although not all given equal airtime in the story. Jules is at this camp on scholarship, from the suburbs. Noah is the son of a famous folk singer. Ash and Goodman are siblings, raised in Manhattan. Ethan is a dorky but talented cartoonist. And Cathy is a dancer whose body is not cut out for it.

What was best about the construction of the book was how Wolitzer would follow one of the characters for a few chapters, then catch up with another one. It wasn't done in an exact rotation, but it wasn't haphazard either - when you had to know something new about one of the characters, she flipped to them.

The story itself was predictable - not in that I knew what would happen, but in that there were lovers, marriages, illnesses, and betrayals. The kind of saga that Messud's Emperor's Children wanted to be.

This was one I was sad to see end.



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Review: Caleb's Crossing

Caleb's Crossing by Geraldine Brooks

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



This is another I got from Mom's list. It was pretty good - I enjoyed Brooks' other books (Year of Wonder and People of the Book) and this did not disappoint.

The story is based on a real character - Caleb - the first American Indian to attend Harvard. But the rest of the story is imagined by Brooks, and told through the eyes of Bethia, a young woman whose father is a missionary minister on Martha's Vineyard in the mid-1600's. Bethia befriends Caleb and ultimately follows him to Cambridge, although under much different circumstances than her own matriculation into Harvard.

I was fascinated by this story taking place on the Vineyard, partially because a close friend had lived there for the past few years. I liked reading about the relationship between the missionaries and the Native Americans, and found Bethia an honest and likeable narrator.

Like much historical fiction, this book didn't have the happiest of endings, but the story itself was a good read.



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Review: The Invisible Bridge

The Invisible Bridge by Julie Orringer

My rating: 5 of 5 stars



My mom recommended this book to me and it was fabulous! WOW. My only regret is not reading it last year when I was in both Paris and Budapest, the book's two main settings. Totally a first-world problem.

This book follows the story of Andras Levi, a Hungarian Jew who moves to Paris to attend architecture school. His younger brother stays in Budapest, while his older brother moves to Italy to become a doctor. He and his brothers all face challenges as the Nazi party and its anti-Semitism become increasingly stronger in the 1930's and then WWII breaks out.

Andras' story is followed most closely, and also revolves around the relationship he has with a family in Budapest and their estranged daughter in Paris. But various love interests and life event for the brothers are chronicled as well.

While I found the first quarter of the book a little tedious, with a love interest that was on-again off-again to an extreme degree, the rest of the book was enthralling. I had a hard time putting it down, and couldn't wait to see what happened next. I was also interested in learning about the fate of Hungarian Jews during WWII, tragic but different from that of much of the rest of Europe.



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Review: Baby-led Weaning: Helping Your Baby to Love Good Food

Baby-led Weaning: Helping Your Baby to Love Good Food by Gill Rapley

My rating: 2 of 5 stars



Meh.

I liked a lot of the ideas in this book - feed a baby what adults are eating, let them decide when to feed themselves, let them choose from several options at mealtimes. The ideas behind these things were to raise a child who was not picky and was confident.

Well, the problem with the book is that it is not based on any sort of science. It's completely anecdotal and frankly some of the anecdotes seem kind of forced. There's no evidence that feeding babies purees is in any way bad, and in fact I was fed that way, and I'm the most secure, adventurous eater I know.

It has influenced me to give Sasha pieces of food now and then to see what she does with them - like turkey cold cut in the grocery store, piece of cantaloupe, green bean from my plate at dinner. That's fun and I think it's good for her to experiment. But if the book were more rigorously researched, I'd have better reason to omit cereals and purees - which for now I am not.



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Review: Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In

Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In by Roger Fisher

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



This book was pretty good. I read it to help solve some conflict in my personal life, and though these techniques and ideas were geared more towards business and politics, some of the concepts were helpful. It's from people who worked on Harvard's Negotiation Project.

The two things that I remember most are first, separate the people from the problem. The authors advise sitting on the same side of the table - literally - and listing out interests rather than positions. That is, what are the things that are important to you in this negotiation, not where you are in the negotiation. There are a lot of good examples that illustrate the difference between the two and I came to really appreciate it.

The second thing that I remember the most was to list out a huge brainstorm of solutions before negotiating. Just come up with every possible idea and solution and make a big list of them and don't eliminate anything to start. Very helpful.

Interesting read.



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Review: Honeymoon in Tehran: Two Years of Love and Danger in Iran

Honeymoon in Tehran: Two Years of Love and Danger in Iran by Azadeh Moaveni

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



This book made my list from the New York Times, and I read it in the Adirondacks this summer. It's another one I wish I could give 3.5 stars to - pretty good, but not great.

Moaveni is am Iranian-American journalist who returns to Iran to cover the rise of the new president, Ahmadinejad. While there, she meets another Iranian-American, falls and love, gets pregnant, and gets married (in that order). This book is a combination of a memoir and a journalist's view of what was going on in Iran during the early 2000's.

I enjoyed the parts of the book that were memoir more than those that were historical or journalistic. I was most interested in learning about the political climate in Iran though Moaveni's experiences, rather than through the dryer journalistic sections. Iran once again became extremely conservative and ruled by strong religious leaders, and her depiction of her own personal civil liberties lost on a daily basis was far better reporting than any of the other sections she wrote.



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Review: Defending Jacob

Defending Jacob by William Landay

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



Meredith recommended this book to me and it came up on my library queue. I wish I could choose 3.5 stars...it was pretty good but not great.

The story follows Andy Barber, assistant DA in Boston, whose son is accused of murdering one of his classmates. Andy believes his son is innocent, but all the evidence starts to point to the boy. The story is told through a combination of narrative and court documents, which was a nice touch.

I thought the characters were pretty compelling - the love Andy had for his son, and the relationship between Andy and his wife in particular. The story read quickly and was a good mystery. However, there is a major twist at the end that really made the book. Without it, it would have been just another murder mystery. I appreciated the twist but didn't think it raised the book to an amazing level.



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Review: The Art of Fielding

The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



Meh. Mom recommended this book to me; I thought it was on the low side of OK. It is the story of a successful high school baseball player, the college baseball captain who recruits him, his college president, his roommate, and the relationship all these characters have.

The characters were really well-written - flawed but likeable. And I enjoyed the first two-thirds of the book, finding it a compelling story and enjoying the complexity the author created across many of the characters' relationship.

However, the rest of the book was not as good. I thought it was pretty tedious, with breakdowns and disappointments, and a few twists and interactions I just didn't find that credible. Though lauded on the jacket as a great American novel, I didn't get that from it. Just Meh.



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Review: A Good Indian Wife

A Good Indian Wife by Anne Cherian

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



I took this book out of the library just based on the cover, no knowledge or reviews of it. It was pretty good, albeit predictable.

The story is about an Indian man who comes to the US and becomes a successful doctor. He is assimilating into American life when his family tricks him into going back to India and forces (guilts?) him into an arranged marriage. His new wife comes to the US with all sorts of dreams and beliefs about marriage, but is dismayed to find that nothing is as she had expected. The book is about how they reconcile their lives and marriage.

I like the book and it kept my attention. However, I didn't think it was anything unique. It was a well-written novels with typical caught-between-old-and-new themes.



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Review: And the Mountains Echoed

And the Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hosseini

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



I enjoyed Hosseini's previous books (The Kite Runner more than A Thousand Splendid Suns) so I was excited to read this one too.

It was pretty good. It follows several interconnected families and people in Afghanistan from before the war through current times. As some family members leave Afghanistan, the narrative follows them to Paris, Greece, and the U.S., but the real story is how one decision made several generations ago continues to haunt people.

The writing was really good - Hosseini managed several voices from several characters, sometimes narrating an entire chapter by a minor character to demonstrate a particular point of view. He left clues and foreshadowing in several chapters, but deftly - such that I didn't know he was doing it until a later event occurred.

Overall, well done.



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Review: Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption

Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption by Laura Hillenbrand

My rating: 5 of 5 stars



This was a great book. Jo recommended it to me, stating that it was "as good as Middlesex" which is high praise indeed.

The story is about a former Olympic athlete named Louis Zamperini who joins the Air Force. When his plane is shot down over the Pacific, he survives on a life raft for a month before being captured by the Japanese.

I really enjoyed reading this - it kept my attention and I looked forward to getting into bed each night to find out what was going to happen next. I learned a lot about how terrible POW camps in Japan were, and I was amazed at how resilient Zamperini and his fellow soldiers were when stranded at sea.

The character development was excellent, as was the research. I also appreciated how Hillenbrand followed the story past Zamperini's return home, and ended the book with an update on how each of the main characters was doing, or the circumstances of their deaths.

Wonder if I would like Seabiscuit as much.



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Bookstore: "Bookstore" in Lenox, MA

Today we were in Lenox, MA with Dave & Avi for Fathers' Day weekend.  We spent a few minutes walking around Bookstore, a lovely little store that smells like old books and was just the right amount of disorganized.

While I had taken Sasha into Barnes and Noble in the past to get something for myself, it was the first time I was in a bookstore with her and thinking about how important it is for her to see books, be read books, and grow to love books.  They didn't have a lot of kids' books for her age group, although I did notice some Corduroy books. I couldn't find the original - I have to order that for her soon.

State of Fear by Michael Crichton

Web bought this book at our library's book sale before a trip he had a few weeks back.  He loved it, so I took it on my last business trip.  Sadly, I did not love it.  In fact, I barely liked it.

This book is about climate change.  It follows the unlikely adventures of a lawyer who is representing a philanthropist who is donating a large sum of money to an environmental charity.  However, soon they are thrust into a chase around the globe after eco-terrorists who are seeking to make an environmental point about global warming.

I didn't mind the far-fetched plot; the escapism of a Michael Crichton book is why I choose it.  However, Crichton used the book - excessively - to the detriment of the story - as a platform for poking holes in global warming.  In barely-disguised dialogue among characters, Crichton debated the science behind climate change.  It was distracting - suddenly I was reading Sophie's World rather than Jurassic Park.

Disappointing.

The Patron Saint of Lost Dogs by Nick Trout

I noticed this book at Barnes and Noble, then requested it from the library.  It's about a man named Cyrus who goes back to his small hometown in Vermont after his father's death to close down his veterinary clinic.  Except that would be a short book - instead, Cyrus ends up entangled with various people in town and finds that it is not easy to just "close down" the clinic.

There are some funny characters in this book, including certain animals.  The author is a doctor at Angell Memorial, so I'm sure he drew upon his experience to create some of the characters.  At times, Cyrus feels like a character from an Alexander McCall Smith book - very smart in a small-town way, figuring out clever connections and solving petty crime.

However, I didn't find this book quite as quaint as a McCall Smith book - in fact, I didn't think the book was as quaint as it thought it was.  While I enjoyed the stories about the animals and played along with some of the connections and mysteries, (AND respect the heck out of a vet who writes a novel) I didn't love the book and I didn't find Cyrus a compelling protagonist.

The Milk Memos by Cate Colburn-Smith and Andrea Serrette

This book was great - it's a semi-autobiographical account of several women who meet while pumping breastmilk at work at IBM.  It mixes information and tips about breastfeeding and pumping with excerpts from a journal they kept together while pumping.  I think some of the characters in the book were real, and others were composites of women the authors got to know.

A quick read, I enjoyed this book while I was feeding the baby.  While there weren't that many new tips in the book for me, I did like feeling like I was part of a larger community of pumping moms.  It was also a good inspiration for the business trip I recently took.

Probably not a book anyone would like unless they are in this situation, but I am so I did!