Last week I finished:
I held out on the popular Maybe You Should Talk to Someone for as long as I could. I wasn't particularly interested in learning about therapy, but numerous glowing reviews broke me down, and I sat down to read the book. I'm so glad I did. It really is a wonderful book about being a therapist, being in therapy, and how people can change their lives. This is Lori Gottlieb's memoir of being a therapist in/near Los Angeles, if I remember correctly. We meet several of her patients and listen in on their sessions. It is also the story of Gottlieb's therapy--yes, at the same time that she's giving therapy--while she tries to get over a very sudden breakup. This is a book about humanity and how people react to change as well as exact change in their lives. It takes you behind the scenes of therapy sessions, from both the therapist's and patient's perspectives, and it also gives a lot of information about the ways to dissect any given problem. It reinforces that people can change their lives, that reactions are more important than the precipitating act, and that happiness is always up to the individual. The patients Gottlieb gives us a peek at are quite interesting. There's the narcissist television producer, a young woman facing terminal cancer, an elderly woman who has numerous regrets about her past, and a young disengaged woman who can't stop making bad choices. And then there's Gottlieb herself who heads to therapy (she gets a referral "for a friend" from another therapist friend to avoid a conflict of interest) to come to terms with her recent breakup, but finds the problem is something much deeper. This is a well-written book about the human condition. It was engaging and never slow or boring. I enjoyed every page. My rating: 5 stars.
Camino Island is my third John Grisham book, and it's one of my favorites. I ended up trying it on audio because my last read by the author was a little disappointing (read my review of Calico Joe here), and I kind of wish I would have read this one in paper. The audio was great, but I would have enjoyed the unfolding over a longer period of time than the audio took. The story is this: a gang of thieves steals the original handwritten manuscripts of F. Scott Fitzgerald's books, including The Great Gatsby, from the library archive vaults of Princeton University. We follow the books underground to the rare books black market, where frustrated author Mercer goes to stay on Camino Island in Florida to work on her novel which was due to her publisher three years ago. There she meets rare books buyer/seller Bruce Cable and is asked to be a part of sting operation to find the books and return them to Princeton. This is the perfect summer read, light, suspenseful--plus it's a book about books. Working in a university library, I was especially interested in the heist and recovery aspects of the book, and I sometimes felt that all the time spent describing Mercer's summer on Camino Island was a very slow buildup to the resolution. Still, it was an enjoyable book, and I liked it a great deal. My rating: 4 stars.
I don't even know what to tell you about Dashiell Hammett's The Maltese Falcon. I listened to this one, too, but I'd have to give my listening a grade of "D". I was just not interested in the story from the start. I don't think I much care for that genre of 1930s hard-boiled mysteries where the men are all barrel-chested and manly and the women are all described in terms of their shapeliness and physical assets. There's way too much cigarette-smoking, drink-making, and emotional "coolness" for me. The leading man, Same Spade, has zero emotions, but the others were often overly emotional. The audio sounded like a radio play, with the secondary characters sounding like exaggerated cartoon villains and buffoons. The plot is simple: folks are in search of a bejeweled falcon statue from Malta that has spent time in various nefarious hands over the centuries. You don't know who to trust, and lots of folks get whacked. I have both watched the movie and listened to the book now and I still can't tell you who was straight, who double-crossed who, if the statue was recovered, or who ended up with it. And frankly, I don't care about any of it. I was absolutely unable to listen to and follow the story due to lack of interest. And frankly, it didn't take me long to decide I didn't care if I listened closely to this one. We read and we learn, and I learned this genre may not be for me. I shall move on without guilt. My rating: 2.5 stars
I love Sara Pennypacker's Clementine books, and when she finished that series, she started the Waylon series (Clementine makes an appearance in each book), of which Waylon! The Most Awesome of All is the third installment (my review of book two can be found here). Waylon is a budding scientist who wants nothing more than to take his dog Dumpster Eddy home, but since his mother is allergic to dogs, he must keep him at the local police station instead and visit him every day after school. In this book, Waylon's big sister, Neon, is producing an imaginative play about the life stages. Their father has the staring role. But when Dad needs to see someone in Hollywood to (hopefully) sell his screenplay on the same night as the play AND on the same night as Waylon's Science Expo where he has a chance to meet a much-admired scientist, someone will have to sacrifice for the others. Who will it be? In a secondary plot, Mom has been seen exiting another family's car, and she's been very secretive lately. What's up with that? This was a good continuation of the story, and I liked it. Waylon is no Clementine, but that's okay. We do get a resolution to the Dumpster Eddy sadness, but I hope that doesn't mean the series is over. I recommend this series (as well as the Clementine series) to young readers. I'd say these are about the third grade level. They're wonderful books, though they do sometimes include some liberal themes that you may or may not be comfortable sharing with children so young. In this one, the female principal shows up to Neon's play with her wife. It shocked me, but maybe it won't shock your third-grader. My rating: 3 stars.
I first read Poetry 180 in 2003 or 2004, and many of the poems in it have become fast friends. In fact, on this re-reading, I was amazed to discover the source of my familiarity of dozens of my favorite poems. It's so easy to forget where you first encountered a poem, but this book brought that back for many of my faves. Billy Collins is an excellent editor here, and his mission is achieved. As his poet laureate project, he put together a set of 180 contemporary poems that would be accessible for high school students, and he encourage schools to read one each day of the schoolyear either over the public address system or at morning assembly. He encouraged schools just to read the poem, not to talk about it, dissect it, or ask for reactions. His endgame was simply to get good poetry into kids' heads. He followed this collection up with 180 More. You can find the whole project, including a link to all 180 of the poems at the Library of Congress's website. There are so many great poems in this book. It really felt like going home. I didn't, however, give the book a 5-star review on re-reading because I was too familiar with the poems. This might seem unfair, but at least 2 of my stars are always given based on how much I enjoyed a book, and I didn't always enjoy reading this one because I knew the poems so well. Perhaps that's not fair in this case because the original presentation was so good I internalized the poems for the next 15 or 16 years, but there you have it. My review: 4.5 stars.
Five years ago almost to the day, I first read George Will's A Nice Little Place on the North Side about the Chicago Cubs baseball franchise and Wrigley Field. This is a love story, a fan letter, a trove of Cubs/Wrigley trivia, and tangent after tangent of baseball lore. The book came out before the Cubs broke their 108-year quest to win the World Series in 2016. How the city must have partied that day! I encourage you to read my original review here because it is much better than anything I can write five years later. Upon re-reading it, I was impressed by how well I articulated the magic of the book. I have to say I did not love this book as much upon second reading (Is it because they finally made it to the World Series in the meantime and I felt the story was finally resolved?), but perhaps some books are just better the first time around. My rating: 3.5 stars.
This week I'll finish:
I'm enjoying this re-read. I remember next to nothing from my first reading.
This week I'll be reading:
I. Cannot. Wait.
My Kindle re-read:
Kindle reading is pretty slow these days. Sigh.
My evening reads:
I'm enjoying all of these, and I'm making good progress on each--especially considering they're all July reads!
My next audiobook:
I was happy to see that a library in our system finally bought a copy of this one. I wanted to read it, but audio might be better for this one for me.
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