Everyday Goddess

"The Blue Star" by Tony Earley

I was that girl with the flashlight under her covers, still reading after bedtime. I had many loves: science fiction, fantasy, murder mystery, and, of course, the flimsy romance novel years. Oh, and I *loved* historical fiction. Specifically, I must have read the the Little House on the Prairie books a million times, and I was crazy about anything having to do with the civil war.

Now, while Hunky Actor Boyfriend laughed the first time he had to go to the young adult section to buy me something off my Amazon Wish List, most of the young adult fiction I've been reading in recent year is firmly fantasy genre. So my interest was peaked when Hachette Book Group asked me if I'd like to read The Blue Star by Tony Earley, which takes place on the eve of the U.S. entry into WWII. Could a young adult novel keep my attention without magic and dragons?

From the jacket:

Jim Glass has fallen in love, as only a teenage boy can fall in love, with his classmate Chrissie Steppe.  Unfortunately , Chrissie is Bucky Bucklaw's girlfriend, and Bucky has joined the navy on the eve of war.  Jim voes to win Chrissie's heart in Bucky's absence, but he war makes high school less than a safe haven and gives a young man's emotions a grown man's gravity.  When Bucky returns to Aliceville a fallen hero, Jim finds himself adrift in a once-familiar town where everything, including Chrissie, seems to be changing.

I'll note here that The Blue Star is a follow up to Tony Earley's first novel, Jim the Boy. It is absolutely a solid read on its own, however. I've not read Jim the Boy (though now I'd like to), but the character Jim is ten in the first book, and seventeen, I believe, in the second - so I imagine that they are quite different books and so much time has past that the second book doesn't rely on the first at all - at least not in any noticeable way if you haven't read the first one.

What struck me most as I read and enjoyed The Blue Star, was that it is a great book to read with your teen - because make no mistake, there are some heavy young adult situations here. I think historical fiction is important because it introduces us to the concept that people and their values and perceptions change over time. So Jim's relationships with his family and his friends, platonic and romantic, are of interest in that context. In particular, that he breaks up with his first girlfriend, and how that is perceived within his personal community is very interesting. There are also some heavy situations having to do with the war. And some fun situations having to do with teen love.

Now, while I didn't stay up all night to finish it, the way I would have if there was a dragon involved, I did enjoy The Blue Star, and I definitely recommend it for mature teen readers. It's a thoughtful book, and it definitely leaves you wanting more. I find myself with much affection for the characters, and I hope this isn't the last we hear of Jim Glass and Chrissie Steppe - because I'd like to see where their dreams take them.

Please note that I received the book discussed above for free from the publisher for my honest review, and I won't be sending it back. Also, just a reminder, if you click any of my Amazon links and then make a purchase, I get a percentage of the sale, and you make my day.

"Going Gray" by Anne Kreamer

I decided that my review of Going Gray: What I Learned about Beauty, Sex, Work,  Motherhood, Authenticity, and Everything Else That Really Matters was the perfect time to try my first video blog. Thereby trying out my new Flip Video Ultra Camcorder, crashing around in iMovie, and doing an update on my own gray hair. (NOTE: I had to get Quicktime Pro to get my video from the Flip Video to iMovie.)

Hope you enjoy!

Please note that I received the book discussed above for free from the publisher for my honest review, and I won't be sending it back. Also, just a reminder, if you click any of my Amazon links and then make a purchase, I get a percentage of the sale, and you make my day.

"Beginner's Greek" by James Collins

Is it cheesy to start a book review blog post with, "Holy crap, I loved this book"? Because holy crap, I *loved*  Beginner's Greek by James Collins.

And, well, I guess this description is true:

When Peter Russell finally meets the woman of his dreams he falls as madly in love as you can on a flight from New York to LA. Her name is Holly. She's achingly pretty with strawberry-blonde hair, and reads Thomas Mann for pleasure. She gives Peter her phone number on a page of The Magic Mountain, but in his room that night Peter finds the page is inexplicably, impossibly, enragingly...gone. So begins the immensely entertaining story of Peter and his unrequited love for his best friend's girl; of Charlotte and her less-than-perfect marriage to a man in love with someone else; of Jonathan and his wicked and fateful debauchery; and of Holly, the impetus for it all. Along the way, there's the evil boss, the desirable temptress, miscommunications, misrepresentations, fiendish behavior, letters gone astray, and ultimately, an ending in which every character gets his due. Both incisive and wonderfully funny, this is a brilliantly understated comedy of manners in which love lost is found again.

But while that paragraph accurately describes the story, it doesn't quite nail how I felt about the book, what I saw in it. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say I detect some Neil LaBute influences - in a book that is distinctly a romantic comedy. Neil LaBute meets romantic comedy! If you know me, you know I just died and went to heaven.

There is so much here for a kick-ass adaptation to film, that I tremble that some hack will pull out the good stuff and try to turn this smart, funny, clever, dark, light, romantic novel into fluff. James Collins - don't let it happen! If I'm right about the Neil LaBute influences, you should do whatever it takes to get to him; maybe he'll adapt and direct it! Seriously, that would rock. Have you seen Nurse Betty?

There's a lot here for an adapter to sink their teeth into. Starting with the order of things. Ironically, as much as I loved Beginner's Greek, I wasn't so hot on the prologue. I believe it's because I didn't find Peter as authentically written in his 20s as I did in his 30s, and I found myself unsure if I liked him right in the beginning, although I liked him more and more as the book went on. Which gets you thinking: If you leave the prologue as the opening, what little bit could you add to make the audience love him in the first five minutes? Or, do you move the prologue to a flashback and start right at the present? Plus, there's another important flashback a little bit further in, and just tons of cool character stuff, reveals, and surprises, some of which is going to need to be translated into the more visual medium of film.

But enough of my adaptation brain gerbils. The thing I loved most about this book was its portraits of how people settle, romantic relationshipwise, and why they make the decisions they do. So often when you read or see a romantic comedy, you think, but why is she with him (the wrong guy) in the first place? Here, that why is a big part of the book, and I don't think you can read it - at least I couldn't - without reviewing your own life and your own romantic choices.

It's a book about romantic choices, really. And perhaps the line between brave and stupid.

Add some truly funny and surprising sequences (though not everything surprising is funny, oh no) and an awesome mix of truly interestingly flawed characters, and you have what I truly suspect will be my favorite story of the year.

Here's hoping I can say that someday about the movie.

Please note that I received the book discussed above for free from the publisher for my honest review, and I won't be sending it back. Also, just a reminder, if you click any of my Amazon links and then make a purchase, I get a percentage of the sale, and you make my day.

"The Italian Lover" by Robert Hellenga

This review is way overdue, but I'm going to plead good timing in my defense.  Worried about the writer's strike?  Quality content slowly but surely running low?  Planning a funeral service for your Tivo?  Read The Italian Lover by Robert Hellenga!

And I'm not totally pulling that out of my ass; it's a novel about a bunch of folks who come together to shoot a movie in Florence.

Margot Harrington's memoir about her discovery in Florence of a priceless masterwork of Renaissance erotica - and the misguided love affair it inspired - is now, twenty-five years later, being filmed by an independent producer.  It's an exciting prospect, and Margot, with the help of her American lover, Woody, writes a script that she thinks will validate her life as an expatriate.

At the former convent where The Sixteen Pleasures - now called The Italian Lover - is being filmed, and throughout Florence, Margot enters dramas with the producer, cast, and crew that she could never have imagined.  Love affairs and marriages and even a divorce are witnessed and blessed, as her ideas about home, love, work, and art collide with the imperatives of commerce and the unknowable in other cultures and other people.

The brilliance here is that the book being adapted, The Sixteen Pleasures, is actually another book written by Robert Hellenga.  Which you'll be dying to read after you finish "The Italian Lover," if you haven't read it already. That may sound a little gimmicky, but it was actually really cool to know that I could go back and read the book the characters were adapting into a film. I think there would be a similarly enjoyable effect if you read that one first.

Ooo... I just realized that that would be a really cool adaptation to cut the two books into one movie that jumps back and forth. You know, I really need to write a couple adaptations because my mind just does it, and adaptations are like the greatest, most fun puzzle ever.

So of course, my favorite thing is that the book is completely authentic when it comes to filmmaking. I really enjoyed all the characters and the story and Robert Hellenga perfectly captured what it feels like to come together on a film project and how all the interpersonal stuff plays out in the middle of that giant machine. The producer in particular, Esther Klein, was my favorite character. The main and supporting characters are the writer, her new boyfriend, the producer (Esther Klein), the director, his wife, the lead American actress, and the lead Italian actor. It's very cool.

If I have any complaint about the book, it's honestly that I wish it was longer. After the shoot itself, I would have liked another whole fleshed out section rather than a conclusion (there's a French term I want here but I've no idea how to spell it). You know, as a filmmaker myself, I wanted the same detail to continue through post production. I wanted to know how post went and what happened. But perhaps that would have been too much for the lay person.

It was super enjoyable reading - not too fluffy, but smooth enough to tear through. Of course, I was glued to it because of the filmmaking, but also because the characters were really captivating. And I was pleasantly surprised at how the story built and unfolded - it had its tense moments and its joyous moments, just like filmmaking.

So, for your writers strike reading pleasure, I give you: The Italian Lover.

Please note that I received the book discussed above for free from the publisher for my honest review, and I won't be sending it back.  Also, just a reminder, if you click any of my Amazon links and then make a purchase, I get a percentage of the sale, and you make my day.

"Dead Boys" by Richard Lange

How often do you start a book of stories and then not finish?  I love short stories, but when dealing with a book full of them, there's no narrative drive to get you through them all.  It's too easy to read one and then move on, distracted, never to finish the entire book.

Well, I just plowed through a book of stories like I haven't since I read Kurt Vonnegut Jr.'s Welcome to the Monkey House in middle school.  Not to draw a direct comparison of content, of course, but just to say that Dead Boys by Richard Lange is a read-it-all-the-way-through book of highly digestible and delicious stories. 

From Amazon.com:

These hard-hitting, deeply felt stories follow straight arrows and outlaws, have-it-alls and outcasts, as they take stock of their lives and missteps and struggle to rise above their turbulent pasts. A salesman re-examines his tenuous relationship with his sister after she is brutally attacked. A house painter plans a new life for his family as he plots his last bank robbery. A drifter gets a chance at love when he delivers news of a barfly's death to the man's estranged daughter. A dissatisfied yuppie is oddly envious of his ex-con brother as they celebrate their first Christmas together.

Set in a Los Angeles depicted with aching clarity, Lange's stories are gritty, and his characters often less than perfect. Beneath their macho bravado, however, they are full of heart and heartbreak.

On the book cover there's a quote from Alice Sebold, author of The Lovely Bones:  "Lange's stories are knockouts.  Gritty, humane, and utterly urban."  That just about sums it up for me.  Perhaps oddly, what I felt while reading them was charmed.  Charmed by the dysfunction and the look into a wacky, gritty, dark, and dysfunctional L.A.  Full of characters who sometimes display surprisingly redeemable qualities.  Or at least think they do.

Here's where I warn you that I am a lover of dark dysfunctional characters.  Think Todd Solondz' Happiness and the FX series Dirt.

Which brings me to my only complaint, and it's chicken/eggy (which came first) - I kept thinking about Don Konkey from Dirt as I read.  Particularly, the story "Loss Prevention" is rendered basically unreadable by that comparison and coming right after "Love Lifted Me," which uses a similar character trait of, I guess, schizophrenia.  Of course, if you haven't seen Dirt, this won't bother you, but the two stories coming right in a row didn't sit well with me.

Luckily, the story right after those two, "Hero Shot" was my absolutely fav - no surprise, it's about an aspiring actor and how L.A. and the dream keep drawing him back despite little to no success.  It's unique in the collection in that most of the stories only glance the world of entertainment, if at all.  L.A. - the entertainment industry is always here - what does it mean to live so close and yet so far?  How does the glitter effect the underbelly?  Richard Lange's got some stories for you.

~

I am currently tearing through my next read, The Italian Lover.  It's about people making a movie in Florence called "The Italian Lover," and so far I am LOVING it.  Review to come end of the month, since it's not releasing until Sept. 24th.  Remember, if you buy at Amazon through my links, I get pennies, and pennies make me happy.

Please note that I received the book discussed above for free from the publisher for my honest review, and I won't be sending it back.  Also, just a reminder, if you click any of my Amazon links and then make a purchase, I get a percentage of the sale, and you make my day. 

"How Elizabeth Barrett Browning Saved My Life" by Mameve Medwed

It's official:  I can't read a book without adapting it for the screen in my head.  Does everyone do this?  No, surely they do not.

Well, I just tore through How Elizabeth Barrett Browning Saved My Life by Mameve Medwed, and as I'm reading I'm mentally staging it, rearranging it, casting it, and shooting it.  Oh, and totally enjoying it, too, btw.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning might have written about the length and breadth of love, but Abby Randolph has given up on all that, preferring to spend her time between her cluttered "needs work" apartment and an overcrowded antiques mart optimistically named Objects of Desire.  Yet Abby can't help but wonder what happened to her earlier passionate self...

Then the Antiques Roadshow comes to town, and Abby joins thousands of Boston's hopefuls at the crack of dawn, artifact in hand.  But there, among the carousel horses and bedraggled stuffed animals, Abby's rather squalid piece of porcelain gets the star treatment.  And from the moment the show airs, everything changes - friendships, her career, love affairs, even the way she views herself and others - as life comes rushing back at Abby Randolph full force.

I shouldn't have liked this book.  Today's romantic novels are generally full of heroines who have more in common with Cathy from the comic strip than me.  Add an 8th grade reading level, and I'm out.

But How Elizabeth Barrett Browning Saved My Life, defies such expectations with its fun, self-conscious humor, real emotions, and interesting characters.  Abby isn't like me, but she's plucky even when she's bumbling, and I liked her spirit.  And I enjoyed her adventures.

The ending seemed a bit unearned, but an earlier moment delivered in flashback was so fantastically and realistically painful that the book just had me.  It would be harder to earn that particular moment on the screen; easier to earn the one at the end.  Interesting.

Interesting, romantic, fun, painful, dramatic.  Simply put: How Elizabeth Barrett Browning Saved My Life.  I liked it.

Please note that I received the book discussed above for free from the publisher for my honest review, and I'm not sending it back when I'm done. Also, just a reminder, if you click any of my Amazon links and then make a purchase, I get a percentage of the sale, and you make my day.

"Certainty" by Madeleine Thien

Certainty by Madeleine Thien is a painfully confusing mess of deeply beautiful and wise passages.  According to the book jacket, "Certainty is a novel about the legacies of loss, the dislocations of war, and the timeless redemption afforded by love."  And I suppose that's true.

I'm not going to quote the rest of the front flap, however, because it's completely misleading in that it describes a story - But Certainty doesn't really tell a story in a traditional sense.  It jumps around from character to character in big, unwieldly, giant hunks of sections, and jumps around from time to time practically within paragraphs.  This makes it an extremely laborious and confusing read.  Very difficult to keep track of who's who.

The narrative through-line is so shattered that it's almost impossible to keep reading.  Certainly parts of the book are interesting, and moving, and even brilliantly written.  And often the characters are compelling.  There are some wonderful portraits of grief and snippets of story.  Buried, simply buried, inside.

I found myself thinking about film shorts vs. features.  Film shorts that play like a slice of life are often more accessible to a wider audience than slice of life features.  Slice of life, portraits, simply work better in shorter form.  Reading this first novel by Madeleine Thien, I have no doubt that her short stories, collected in the award-winning Simple Recipes, are amazing.  But her style here, in longer form, is ponderous, and I simply can't recommend Certainty at all.

As I've struggled to get through Certainty, books have been piling up.  Next, I'm diving into something I hope will be a faster read: How Elizabeth Barrett Browning Saved My Life that I got through the BlogHer Virtual Book Tour.

Please note that I received the book discussed above for free from the publisher for my honest review, and I won't be sending it back. Also, just a reminder, if you click any of my Amazon links and then make a purchase, I get a percentage of the sale, and you make my day.

My Daily Feminist Reader

My friend Amy asked that I list the feminist blogs I read, so here goes.  Read at your own risk!  Daily exposure to feminism may cause empowerment, frustration, and x-ray vision.

Now, I am far from an expert on the feminist blogosphere.  Hell, I've only been reading feminism for maybe two years now, if even.  Before that, all I had been exposed to is what I gleaned growing up in the 80s.

OK, so I think of my main reads as "the big three."  I don't know if they are the big three, but they're certainly my big three:

Pandagon

Feministe

Feministing

Did you know that you can link and subscribe to individual topics on BlogHer?  There's an RSS button at the bottom of each page if you want to subscribe.  And feminism & gender contributing editors Melinda Casino and Suzanne Reisman totally rock.

Feminism & Gender | BlogHer

Here are a few more feminist blogs I read regularly:

Bitch Ph.D.

Echidne of the Snakes

Masculinity and Its Discontents

Pam's House Blend  (OK, this one is actually LGBT)

Finally, there is a blog that was started to get you started reading feminism.  So I put it at the end, of course.

Finally, A Feminism 101 Blog

If you have a favorite feminist blog, please feel free to link it up in the comments.

"The Last Blue Mile" by Kim Ponders

When BlogHer Contributing Editor Kim Ponders offered to send me her new novel, "The Last Blue Mile" I couldn't resist reordering my reading queue the minute it arrived. 

The author of The Art of Uncontrolled Flight uncovers the proud and sometimes backstabbing world of the Air Force Academy in an exciting novel about why people commit to military life—and where they draw the line.

Brook Searcy thought she could handle it all. A freshman at the Air Force Academy, she's trying to survive Hell Week and stake her identity inside a place reluctant to shed its evangelical, male-dominated traditions. When a cheating scandal erupts, General John Waller must catch the culprit, and Brook finds herself closer to the heat than she realized. Both Searcy and Waller fight through the sometimes hilarious, sometimes sadistic tyrannies of academy life. But when a tragic accident divides the academy, they must decide whether the not-so-perfect world of the military is worth the sacrifice it demands.

Not since Pat Conroy's The Lords of Discipline has an author written so cogently about the world of military training. The Last Blue Mile is a telling narrative about the clash between identity and honor.

What I most loved about "The Last Blue Mile," was that it's very much a novel about perceptions and relationships between all the different kinds of people who make up today's military.  It's as much John Waller's story as it is Brook Searcy's.  And it's not about out with the old, in with the new, as much as it is about our similarities... and our differences.

It's a book about how we all deal with change, and what makes us stronger.

And all that wonderful theme dances around an interesting story that starts with a cheating scandal and builds far beyond it.  I loved the characters - so much strength balanced with their individual flaws.   I identified with Brook as a women working hard to  excel in a world that until recently was only open to men - And I identified with John as a fiercely ambitious person trying to find his way between his ambition and his family.

Also interesting was the look into the military and the Air Force Academy.  Kim Ponders provides an intimate perspective:

In 1989, she attended Officer Training School and was commissioned into the Air Force as a second lieutenant. In 1991, she became qualified as an air weapons controller on the E-3 AWACS and went to Saudi Arabia with Desert Storm and Operation Provide Comfort. She spent the next five years flying missions out of Saudi Arabia and Turkey, providing air supplies to the Kurds in northen Iraq and monitoring the Iraqi no-fly zone. These experiences formed the basis of her first novel, The Art of Uncontrolled Flight.

I really enjoyed "The Last Blue Mile" and as I was reading it, I was also thinking what a powerful book this is for older teen girls.  It definitely has some adult themes and situations, but then, many girls are dealing with similar issues.  I highly recommend it; it's a good read, and I suspect you'll be thinking about it long after you've put it down.

Next up - and I mean it this time - "Certainty" by Madeleine Thien.

Please note that I received the book discussed above for free from the publisher for my honest review, and I won't be sending it back. Also, just a reminder, if you click any of my Amazon links and then make a purchase, I get a percentage of the sale, and you make my day.

"Kiss and Run" by Elina Furman

A book review in three parts.  Because I'm that obsessed with self-examination, apparently.

Part One - Can't Catch Me...

Part Two - Kiss and Run Get This Book

And now, Part Three - 'Cause that's what you want when you're starting a new relationship - to be finishing up a three part review about Kiss and Run: The Single, Picky, and Indecisive Girl's Guide to Overcoming Fear of Commitment.  Awesome.

Now where was I...  Ah yes, I was just about to read the most chilling chapter of a self-help book ever:  "The Free Spirit."  Are you looking at me?

While the Free Spirit may be a ripe subject for films and novels, the real-world version is far more problematic.  Despite their haphazard and rebellious attitudes toward love, Free Spirits crave permanancy as much as they fear it.  They are deeply scared of commitment and tend to use wanderlust and independence as an excuse to ward off possible entanglements.  And there's the rub:  as much as the Free Spirit fears routine, boredom, and giving up her freedom, she also longs for a stable, loving companion who will support her life goals and passions.

People, I could pull quote almost this whole chapter.  Ah yes, it reminds me of my commitment-phobic days.  Yes, way back then when I was broken.  Ahem.

I'll pull out the one bit that spoke to me the most:

Many times women say they gave something up for their families or husbands when in fact they had their own issues to deal with.  Maybe they didn't think they were talented enough, maybe they got tired of living in a hut with no running water, or maybe the act of putting pen to paper or brush to canvas every day just got too strenuous.  When it comes to measuring how driven we are, the proof is really in the pudding.  So if there's no productivity or motivation, the work must not have been that important.

So how do you know if you'll end up like them?  Well, you don't.  There is no certainty or guarantee that a relationship won't undermine your personal life goals and that you will remain productive in your chosen field - unless, of course, you're truly motivated.  In that case, there's very little that can come between you and your life calling, since you'll fight tooth and nail to get the time and space you need to produce.  It's really up to you.

The most telling bit here is that even while reading this felt like twenty tons of brick being lifted off my shoulders - since I have no doubt of my ongoing motivation and productivity - a little voice inside me whispered, "Maybe it's a trick."

After all, how many times have you heard that the minute someone had a baby nothing else mattered?  All that business about "a mother's love" and how you can't understand until you've had a child.  It sounds like aliens taking over your body and changing who you are, and I, for one, have to fight complete panic when I think about it.  I mean, if nothing of who I am matters once I become a MOTHER, then please, someone tell me, why would I NOT run screaming?  I like me just fine right now, thanks.  I like Liz, the aspiring director.  I don't want to disappear with the amniotic fluid.

Oh, dear, did I just blog that out loud?  Let me get back into my recovered commitmentphobe voice.  In addition to reading this chapter and facing the things it had to say to me, about me, I have to also say that reading mommy blogs has calmed this particular fear in me quite a bit.  Some of those mommy bloggers are fantastically nutty, productive, and definitely still themselves post childbirth.  Whew!

OK, nobody log in and give me that "there's nothing like a mother's love" crap, or I'm going to freak the fuck out.

And there's other parts of the "Free Spirit" that were equally powerful to me to read.  I mean, I literally felt like noone had ever come out and said these things before, that I desperately need to hear.  Acknowledged that this is how so many of us feel; acknowledged what's going on in the career girl's heart and mind.

After surviving the "Free Spirit" chapter, I breezed through "The Damsel in Distress" - self-explanatory and not really me, and "The Player," aka The Casual Sex Lover - SO not me.  Last "type" chapter was "The Long-Distance Runner."  People who stay in broken relationships for too long that they got into precisely because deep down they knew it would be a disaster and they'd be able to bail and blame the disaster they knew was there all the time.

Yeah, been there, done that, don't do it anymore.

The final chapter is "Get Over It!"  And I have to say, it's good stuff, what Elina has to say at the end.  Practical advice I'm actually putting into practice.  I'll share just one I really liked, "Find Commitment Role Models."

If you're serious about making a commitment, it's important that you find a committed friend or a couple whom you respect and admire.  Granted, finding a cool couple that you can hang with can be difficult, but you'll have to try.  Whether it's an aunt, a family friend, or just someone you've met and are inspired by, try to spend time with them and find out how they've been able to make commitment look sexy, exciting, and, most importantly, possible.

I love that advice, because I find role models really powerful, and it also speaks to my feelings about the power of community to nuture relationships - something that is sadly so often missing nowadays.  I would even go so far as to say that just like you might ask someone to mentor you professionally, it's not out of the scope of possibility that you might discuss with a couple you admire what you're working on in your personal life, and your desire to use them as role-models.

So, to recap: Kiss and Run is a very good book, and Liz Rizzo is a *recovering* commitmentphobe.

Nice of the universe to bring me such a yummy boy to practice my recovery on.  Just goes to show you:  The universe, sometimes she's in your court - just when you need her to be.

Please note that I received the book discussed above for free from the publisher for my honest review, and I won't be sending it back. Also, just a reminder, if you click any of my Amazon links and then make a purchase, I get a percentage of the sale, and you make my day.