Book loot

Clothes+shoes, I can actually resist. Food, I can, too (I just choose not to). But with books I am utterly and entirely powerless. 

1. The Corrections, Jonathan Franzen

Jonathan Franzen's exhilarating novel The Corrections tells a spellbinding story with sexy comic brio, and evokes a quirky family akin to Anne Tyler's, only bitter. Franzen's great at describing Christmas homecomings gone awry, cruise-ship follies, self-deluded academics, breast-obsessed screenwriters, stodgy old farts and edgy Tribeca bohemians equally at sea in their lives, and the mad, bad, dangerous worlds of the Internet boom and the fissioning post-Soviet East.

2. Here Comes the Bride: Women, Weddings, and the Marriage Mystique, Jaclyn Geller 
Tempt a woman with a truckload of wedding gifts and social approbation, says Geller, and she's more than happy to forget that matrimony is the last institution she should want to join, given its patriarchal history. Geller examines modern marriage in a lively, accessible book that's one part academic analysis and three parts rant. As friend after friend rushed down the aisle, however, she began to examine why marriage is so revered that it automatically trumps a close, platonic friendship; the excitement of multiple sexual relationships; or a solitary, contemplative existence. Determined to find the answer, Geller pores over husband-hunting manuals and wedding guidebooks, and even poses as a bride at Bloomingdale's bridal registry, where the crystal pitchers, silver fondue dishes and Limoges soup tureens, she confesses, have tremendous allure.

3.Darling?, Heidi Jon Schmidt 
The cover of this delightful second collection features a Rorschach blot that manages to suggest both a human heart and a plucked chicken both fitting metaphors for Schmidt's main characters. They are women (mostly) whose relationships to love and loved ones are full of longing, disappointment and hilarity; even when the women are vulnerable, they're defiantly so.

4. The Robber Bride, Margaret Atwood
Petite Tony teaches the agressively male subject of military history and has a talent for speaking backwards; actually, she's not. Charis eats only vegetarian fare and consults crystals. Boisterous, stylish Roz runs her own company and drives a BMW. These three women would seem to have little in common, but they're held together by a single thread: Zenia, a lying, charismatic femme fatale who at one time or other stole the men in their lives. But Zenia is dead, blown to bits in Beirut, and can hurt them no more. Or so they think. until the day a still-seductive Zenia walks into the restaurant where they are having lunch. As in Cat's Eye, Atwood takes feminism one step further, showing women as victims not only of society but of themselves.

5. Bare Blass, Bill Blass
Nonlinear in format-Blass skips from telling of a 1949 prize he won for designing a gingham dress with a patent leather belt, to a 1971 fashion show in Fort Wayne, Ind., and then back to his role serving in the armed forces during WWII-the book has the feel of a scrapbook of memories, which is indeed delightful when one considers the colorful life Blass led. Originally from the Midwest, he moved to New York at age 17 and eventually became one of fashion's biggest names. Written in the first person and peppered with snapshots of Blass with Pat Buckley, Nancy Kissinger, Nancy Reagan, Gloria Vanderbilt and others, Blass's memoir is at once a tribute to the designer and, as he writes, "a typical American success story."

6. The Law of Love, Laura Esquivel
Mexican novelist Laura Esquivel leapt to international fame in 1993 with Like Water For Chocolate. Her new novel strives to replicate the impact of that work with multimedia innovation in style and structure. This translation by Margaret Sayers Peden comes with a CD of arias by Puccini and Mexican danzones, and 48 pages of striking color illustrations by Spanish artist Miguelano Prado. The text by Esquivel is part science fiction, part new age spiritual journey, as she chronicles the efforts of 23rd century "astroanalyst" Azucena to find her twin soul.

7. Her Husband: Hughes and Plath – a marriage, Dianne Middlebrook
Astutely reasoned, fluidly written and developed with psychological acuity, the work is a sympathetically balanced assessment of two lives that flamed brightly with the incandescent fire of creative genius. And she effectively demolishes Hughes as the demon who destroyed Plath, stating that during their marriage he displayed "a high level of tolerance toward what other people considered... antisocial, crazy... behavior"; she also writes that Plath's emotional breakdown was a recurrence of the clinical depression that occasioned her first attempt at suicide in 1953. In the end, the book is most valuable in interpreting Hughes's sources of poetic inspiration and emotional behavior, and in providing a balanced assessment of the legacy of a troubled marriage and the works of art it engendered.

Reviews from Amazon

All things Jane

I gave up on my Tudor-themed reading list on because I just couldn't bring myself to keep on reading Philippa Gregory. I so wanted to love her but, I'm sorry to say, I found her books lacking.


Moving on, these are the books I'm reading at the moment:

The Austenite in me thought it was time for a reread of Emma and while reading it, I found myself drawn to these other books. I wasn't purposely going for a Jane-themed reading list, but I guess that's what happened. Even Jane Eyre found itself in the mix! I hate it, by the way, when people confuse Jane Austen with the Brontës and vice versa! 

I often wish my life would morph into a modern-day Austen novel and true enough sometimes I really think it has! Just the other night my boyfriend was giving me a scolding that so eerily reminded me of those that Mr. Knightley gave Emma. But no, Jane's not very kind to silly drama queens like me, is she? In her novels, some of them end up married to rakes! I better stick to reading.   

Elegance by Kathleen Tessaro

The protagonist Louise Canova is what we will all grow up be if we let ourselves go and if we make too many compromises. (*shudders*)

At 32, she is mousy, overweight, depressed, routinely ignored by her husband and stuck in a dead-end job. Her wardrobe is as drab as the rest of her life and her one female friend, if you can call her that is selfish, envious and just toxic to be around. Admit it, we all have/had friends like that; I recently got rid of mine.

This book will resonate with any woman who’s ever felt like her life has gone off-track. I’m going through a career cul de sac myself but if there’s one thing I’ve learned from Chick Lits (and Lit in general), is that great triumphs await me in the next chapters. Antagonists will get their due. I will get a great haircut; perhaps even lose a bit of weight.

 Louise’s wake-up call comes by way of an old book she found in a second-hand bookstore. (Yet another reason to trawl bargain-books bins, you never know what treasures you will find!) A Guide to Elegance by Genevieve Antoine Dariaux, a French style expert, is a real book and Dariaux is a real person. This-book-within-a-book bit was really interesting, especially since Tessaro had lots of excerpts from Dariaux’ Elegance.

Following the book’s advice, Louise joins a gym and revamps her wardrobe. But, alas, self-help books can only do so much. Through her own gumption and with a little help from her friends, she leaves her closeted-gay husband, gets a better job and eventually finds love with a younger, but otherwise awesome, man.

Sigh, happy- happy, like all endings ought to be. I find this book darker than most Chick Lits I’ve read. Particularly in the parts where Louise recalls her childhood and family life with a suicidal mother and the abortion she had as a teen.

I know all the arguments about Chick Lits and its trashy sister, the romance novel. But the way I see it, girls SHOULD read Chick Lits and romance novels, because – let’s face it – they won’t listen to their mothers. How else will they learn to NOT waste their 20s on undeserving men and bad wine? As for the unrealistic notions love it supposedly espouses, allow me to quote Mme. Dariaux: "never be seduced by anything that isn't first-rate."

Another take-away lesson from this book: never let yourself become a beard, unless you’re fine being stuck in a sex-less and passionless marriage with a man who has better tastes than you. If that’s the case, then go for it and best wishes.

When I grow up I want to be Tammi Taylor

I died a little when Friday Night Lights ended its run after five amazing seasons. I never thought I could love a high school football drama this much. But it really is one of the most brilliant TV shows ever created.

Fortunately for the many rabid FNL fans out there, plans are currently being drawn up for another Friday Night Lights movie that takes off from where the series ended. Kyle Chandler and Connie Britton will be reprising their roles as Coach Taylor and Mrs. Coach.

The show’s premise was based on H.G. Bissinger's non-fiction book of the same title, which chronicles Permian High's quest for state championship in the small football-obsessed west Texas town of Odessa.

It was adapted into film in 2004, which was really, really good, but since it was based on the real-life 1988 Permian Panthers football team, don't expect Tim Riggins (Taylor Kitsch) or Luke Gafferty (Matt Lauria) to make an appearance. It did have another beautiful male specimen: Garrett Hedlund. (third from left) Sigh.

Incidentally, Connie Britton played the really minor but memorable role of the coach's wife in the first movie too. She got to show off her acting chops in the TV series as Tammi Taylor, the best TV mom in history, y'all. Her words of wisdom, spoken with her charming Texas drawl, alone makes the show worth watching.

My best friend found the book for me at a bargain book bin. I cannot wait to start reading it. I just need to get some pressing work-stuff out of the way… Don’t you just hate how real life gets in the way of reading?