This book was badly written on every conceivable level, which is unfortunate because it's an interesting idea. It follows Frankie McGrath as she volunThis book was badly written on every conceivable level, which is unfortunate because it's an interesting idea. It follows Frankie McGrath as she volunteers for service as a combat nurse in Vietnam and then returns home to San Diego. Frankie spends two years as a surgical nurse, but when she gets back to the US no one wants to hear about her service, or even acknowledges that there were women serving in Vietnam. The narrative extends all the way to the 80s and Frankie's trip to DC to see the dedication of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.
Even though this is 470+ pages long (!), the book tries to do way too much. Frankie is an avatar instead of a character: every conceivable plot element happens to her over the course of a decade. Her actual service in Vietnam is the best part, and it still feels like the author is speeding through it. Frankie meets someone, and then on the next page they're closer than friends, bound together by months of work. When she's home (and in the throes of addiction, naturally), the book jumps entire years to get to the next traumatic event. The other characters are also archetypes in service of the plot. Frankie makes friends with two nurses on her tour. One has pictures of horses pinned up over her bed (she loves horses). The other has pictures of Malcolm X (she's Black). Like, what are we doing here??
I was also surprised by how technically poor the writing was. The author spells out exactly what's happening on each page. Characters constantly give each other "sad looks" or "sad and compassionate looks." Letters home start with, "I can't believe another Kennedy has been assassinated." It feels "discordant" that Frankie can go to a party while the war is still going on. It all feels wooden and silly, like the author is completing a history class assignment to write a story that includes all these beats.
The first part of this book is three stars, the second part is barely two stars, and the ending is one star (view spoiler)[like how many men can you reasonably resurrect from the dead?? (hide spoiler)]. With all of that said, though, I did like is that the book is set in Coronado. I like books set in San Diego and this one delivered. You can orient yourself in time by the progress made on the Coronado Bridge. Is Frankie taking the ferry and musing on the eventual bridge completion? Or is she driving over the bridge itself? This is the history content I am looking for....more
This is everything that I want from a celebrity memoir: it's funny, fast-paced, and gossipy. The whole book is really about Leah Remini's relationshipThis is everything that I want from a celebrity memoir: it's funny, fast-paced, and gossipy. The whole book is really about Leah Remini's relationship with Scientology, which gives it a good narrative focus while still allowing for sections on her career and family. She starts with her entrance into Scientology as a child (her mom dates a guy in the church and they end up in the Sea Org!), and then takes you all the way through her exit from the church after Tom Cruise's wedding (described in incredible detail). I've never seen any of Leah Remini's work, but it doesn't really matter because her life story is so bonkers. I inhaled this book, and then watched clips from her failed 90s sitcoms while eating ice cream. I highly recommend this as a weeknight activity....more
This was a TRIP. If you read this as a memoir, it is quite fun, with the right balance of wacky stories that give some insight into Matthew McConaugheThis was a TRIP. If you read this as a memoir, it is quite fun, with the right balance of wacky stories that give some insight into Matthew McConaughey as a person. If you read this as an "approach book" for Matthew McConaughey's life philosophy, it is totally incoherent. I read the Kindle edition of this book, and the search returns 60+ instances of the word "greenlight." I still do not understand what a greenlight is, and I am pretty sure that Matthew McConaughey doesn't understand it either. Regardless, this book was fun, and I made my long-suffering husband listen to me read parts of it aloud.
What's crafty about this memoir is that it actually isn't very personal. McConaughey spends a lot of time on his personal interior life, and the stories that he shares that involve other people are fairly surface level (excepting his exchange trip to Australia). He'll state something like, "I became dissolute and hedonistic as an extremely handsome movie star living in Hollywood. Anyway, I knew something needed to change," and then he'll go into the transformative trip that he took as a result. He goes over the big news stories of the last twenty years - the estrangement of his mother, the naked bongos - but it seems like they're included primarily because he can't exclude them. I came out of this book understanding how he has wrestled with his spirituality and his life's purpose, but not so much understanding the context in which he did that (if that makes sense?). I think this is an incredibly shrewd way to write a memoir as a celebrity. You can expose your own weirdness - talking about wet dreams that inspire international trips - but you don't have to really talk about the animal of your celebrity and what it does to you.
I do really admire his apparent willingness to live life on his own terms. The fact that he just wandered around the country in an RV for long chunks of time, podcasting out of the front of his van, is interesting and not what I would have expected. The spiritual trips and realizations are not up my alley, but I liked that he was consistently trying to find balance in his personal and professional lives (even if that looks different for him than it does for us normal people). And it is, of course, gratifying to reach the end of a memoir and see that the writer has achieved what his younger self always wanted.
I would be remiss not to mention: - The wet dreams. I could not stop laughing reading about these. - I skimmed/skipped all transcribed journal entries after I was done with half the book. Life is too short. - The violence that pervades his entire childhood is insane. He writes about it fondly. Like when he goes absolutely berserk on a bouncer, he equates that to becoming a man. I can't wait for my own son to knock out my husband with a piece of drainpipe. - I need a fact checker on that tree house. - I loved all the Dazed and Confused stories, even though I don't even like Dazed and Confused!
I read this for a book club, and I think it's the perfect book club book. I can't wait to talk about it!...more
This book is a nice message on top of a very flimsy backdrop. If you take the story at face value and connect with the characters and/or romance, it'sThis book is a nice message on top of a very flimsy backdrop. If you take the story at face value and connect with the characters and/or romance, it's certainly possible to enjoy yourself. Personally, I had a difficult time getting a grip on any of the characters, and the background flaws were so big that I couldn't overlook them. It's also funny that the book's message is "you can't decide if someone is equivocally good or bad!", and then it sports a cast of cartoonishly evil villains and perfectly righteous good guys. None of it hung together for me.
The element I could not get past was Lucy (the six-year-old Antichrist, the son of the Devil). It feels like Lucy was thrown in here partially to provide endless fodder for funny doomsday lines and partially to make a point. The point is supposed to be that children deserve our love and consideration regardless of the circumstances of their birth. But .... he's the Antichrist??? If DICOMY is sure that his father is the literal Devil (? how do they know this), then the Antichrist will trigger the end of the world (??) and cause the end of life on Earth (???) so ... I am kind of with the villagers on this one. Someone should probably have an eye on this situation! It just feels cutesy with no actual thought put into why, exactly, someone would be concerned about the presence of the Antichrist. I don't say this from a Christian perspective, as I don't really have one of those. I just feel like if you are explicitly going to try to repair the reputation of the Antichrist, you should try a little harder to figure out the rules of your world!
That central problem sums up my reaction to most of the book, which was a lot of "wait .... what?" I also found the romance pretty boring, which is rough because I love a chaste romance. I did find it funny that (view spoiler)[any guy who shows up on the island is automatically a romantic option for Arthur. This man just hangs out, waiting for DICOMY to send him more hotties! (hide spoiler)]....more
I really liked this book, which is easy to read and full of fun food facts. It takes eight different flavors - from black pepper to Sriracha - and traI really liked this book, which is easy to read and full of fun food facts. It takes eight different flavors - from black pepper to Sriracha - and traces their origins in American cuisine to how they're used today. Lohman spends the first part of the book hand-waving about how these eight flavors are the ones that really define American food trends over time. She doesn't prove that point, but she does pick eight different flavors that have compelling and interesting backgrounds. The breadth of the stories in the book really speaks to the immigrant populations that came to America in different eras. By the end, I was convinced that each of these flavors does have its own American story - some of them surprising! - and I really liked seeing the transformation of tastes over time.
My favorite facts from the book:
- Black pepper was so popular in Revolutionary era America that it was used in everything, including cookies. If you went to Martha Washington's house, she would serve you black pepper cookies. And nothing would have vanilla - it would have rosewater instead.
- Imitation vanilla extract is more potent for baking at high heats (as you do with cookies), so it makes the most sense to use imitation. Probably good, because 95% of the world's vanilla is artificially produced! If you do get whole vanilla beans, grade B have the best flavor. (Grade A look the best but are more watery.)
- The first chili powder was created by a German immigrant in New Braunfels who wanted to sell chili in his saloon. Chile con carne is time intensive if you have to grind the chilies yourself. You can still buy the original chili powder today - Gebhardt's Eagle Chili Powder.
- Soy sauce was widely available before the American Revolution and difficult to acquire afterwards. American cooks started making imitation soy sauce out of mushrooms and tomatoes. The tomato-based sauce is, of course, ketchup, which is derived from the Indonesian word for soy sauce, "ketjap." (!!!!!!)
- The first Japanese manufacturing plant to open in the US was a Kikkoman factory!
- I had no idea what MSG actually was before reading this book. It was discovered by a Japanese chemist who studied in Germany, and he envisioned it as a way to make healthy food taste better. American companies started adding MSG to canned or processed food instead, giving it a poor association with prepackaged food. Then it was essentially shelved in the US until the early 2000s, when celebrity chefs started cooking with it. "Umami" wasn't recognized as the fifth taste until 2000....more
City of Girls is a fast-paced and enjoyable book about a theater company in 1940s New York. But the structure is so bad!! Protagonist Vivian Morris wrCity of Girls is a fast-paced and enjoyable book about a theater company in 1940s New York. But the structure is so bad!! Protagonist Vivian Morris writes almost 500 pages to explain to an acquaintance, Angela, how she knows her father, but 75% of this book is tangential information about Vivian's lengthy sexual exploits. The "Angela" conceit is very bad (I highlighted a couple places where it made me laugh out loud), and it's even worse considering that (view spoiler)[Angela is 70!! It's so oddly condescending for Vivian to write to Angela like this woman would want any of Vivian's insights about youth (hide spoiler)]. Vivian Morris is the Ted Mosby of the 40s and this book would have been better without Angela in it. You can't change my mind!!!
This was a great book club book. I do feel like I ended this with more questions than answers, though. For instance: (view spoiler)[
* What does it mean that Vivian spends her life having all kinds of sex with all kinds of men, but the only true and deep relationship with a man in her life is the one where he is unable to touch her?
* What does the book want us to think about Edna's dressing-down of Vivian after the threesome? It verged on too cruel for me (though understandably so). Are we supposed to think it's all warranted? Does Vivian think so?
* Does the book want us to think Peg and Olive's disappointment in Vivian when she comes to them about Frank is warranted? I don't think I agree with the "field of honor" being applied here.
I just have a lot of questions about what the book wants the reader to take away, and I think it's because of Vivian's constant editorializing to Angela. The instance with Edna stands out in my mind - Vivian says she now recognizes the hypocrisy of sending away Celia and Vivian after the scandal. I don't agree with this, really. Edna's the star of the show and she can decide how to deal with her own marriage. Are women judged more harshly for promiscuity? Of course, but I don't think that's really what's at stake here. (hide spoiler)]
Ultimately: enjoyed a lot, would have enjoyed more if it had been centered in the 1940s, do not need to read any more WWII narratives (somehow they keep sneaking in!!!!! (view spoiler)[I skimmed all of Frank's story. I just can't do it anymore (hide spoiler)]), and this particular way to write an epistolary novel should be shot into the sun. Also, Mom - if you're reading this review - you won't like this book....more
I read all 532 pages of The Nightingale in less than 48 hours. It's an engaging story that covers the German occupation of France, an aspect of World I read all 532 pages of The Nightingale in less than 48 hours. It's an engaging story that covers the German occupation of France, an aspect of World War II that I knew very little about, and I liked that it follows two very different sisters as they react to their circumstances during the war. But while this is certainly very readable, it felt like Kristin Hannah was trying to do far too much, which dampened the emotional heft and made the story feel less authentic. This covers the entire duration of the war and checks every single possible box for a World War II book, which means it even includes a significant tonal shift in the last part when (of course) the story goes to Ravensbrück. It seems like there was a real opportunity to write something unique and more narrowly focused on the experience of French women under occupation, but that doesn't happen here.
What does happen is the story of sisters Vianne and Isabelle. Vianne lives in the French countryside with her husband and daughter. Her husband is promptly conscripted, and Vianne lives out the war with two different Nazi officers billeted in her home. I found Vianne to be the more interesting of the two, and thought the way that she reacted to her circumstances was not always admirable but was probably closer to reality. I liked the portrayal of the uneasy relationship between Captain Beck and Vianne, and was genuinely surprised when (view spoiler)[Beck dies. I thought this was going to go the easy route of "he's a good Nazi after all!" Of course, the tropes immediately return when we get a violent Nazi who gets off on repeatedly raping Vianne, so you win some, you lose some (hide spoiler)].
I had a much harder time with Isabelle, who is frankly tiresome and one-note. As the younger sister, she skips back and forth between the countryside and Paris, where she joins the underground Resistance against the Nazis. She is exasperating throughout the entire novel, and it's amazing that she manages to live past 1939. Her plot lines also felt like huge missed opportunities. (view spoiler)[Isabelle very easily joins the Resistance and suffers zero consequences up until the enormous tonal shift in the last third of the book, where her father sacrifices himself to save her. She apparently runs a route helping downed Allied pilots escape from France on foot over the Pyrenees, but this is described exactly twice - the first time and the time that she is captured. She also has an absolutely terrible love interest, Gaëtan, who - we are supposed to believe - watches over her efforts to join the Resistance in order to test her mettle. The most frustrating thing about Isabelle is that she never, ever thinks about what she's about to do. In order to advance her character, or something, the author will belatedly throw in a, "Isabelle realized she could be walking into a trap. Shouldn't she be more careful?" but of course, it works out, so she never has to actually change her behavior. I could not believe that she hid a downed pilot in her sister's barn. I was with Vianne on that one. (hide spoiler)]
I think this could have been much better if it focused on a narrower time period or a narrower swath of the war - either the sisters on the home front, Isabelle as a key part of the Resistance, or just a year in the life. The descent into the third section of the book, with (view spoiler)[Isabelle brutally tortured and Vianne brutally repeatedly raped before Isabelle is literally put into a concentration camp (hide spoiler)], feels significantly different than the first part. Does that mean these storylines didn't happen in reality? Of course not, but I doubt they all happened to the same people. It just felt like every single possible story for a WWII book was thrown in here and mashed together, and it defied reality at several points.
I will say that the ending of this book is really good, with some caveats. This is the rare historical fiction book where the framing device is done well and adds to the story. (view spoiler)[I loved that the sister telling the story turned out to be Vianne - I assumed it was Isabelle through most of the book because of Vianne's fertility issues, but thought it was more poignant with Vianne as the survivor. I did not love Gaëtan saying he named his daughter after Isabelle. Okay, dude! You continue to be the worst! (hide spoiler)]...more
I'm genuinely surprised by the good reviews for this book. There's some decent nature writing in here, but that's coupled with a ridiculous, hackneyedI'm genuinely surprised by the good reviews for this book. There's some decent nature writing in here, but that's coupled with a ridiculous, hackneyed plot and some of the worst dialogue I've ever read. It would take almost complete suspension of belief to truly buy into Kya's character or any of the events of this book.
For instance: (view spoiler)[* Kya's entire family leaves her, at the age of six, alone in a swamp with an abusive father. I could understand this perhaps from the older siblings, at a stretch (who don't know that she is the only one left), but every single person leaving her there?
* The appearances of Tate and then Chase are incredibly silly. I could accept one boy showing up in the swamp and trying to get to know Kya, and it would make sense for that boy to be Tate given his affinity for the marsh. But two of them? And these are the only people, in the entire time that Kya is in the marsh?
* How is Kya able to have conversations or function in social settings if she spends the formative years of her life alone in a swamp, hiding from her father?
* I'm sorry ......... we are supposed to believe that Tate teaches Kya to read, and without any formal schooling or any association with the outside world, she starts reading complicated works of nonfiction and science? You can say whatever you want about the value of the school that Kya would have gone to, but she has had zero experience of the world or people outside of the marsh. How is she able to put any of that into context or understand it?
* We get it. Kya is hot. She is SO HOT that the playboy of the town is mysteriously drawn to her and spends literal WEEKS romancing her. This is definitely something that Chase did and something that happened. (hide spoiler)]
On top of all of that, the dialogue in this book is atrocious. Kya - who, again, has never been to a school and has had conversations with a maximum of four people after she turns seven - somehow speaks perfect, literate English, holds conversations with aplomb, and expresses ideas like "My mother, too, was a victim." Her friend Tate, educated in the school system, speaks similarly, and yet the star quarterback and scion of a rich family, Chase, speaks like a caricature of a country bumpkin and barely ever utters a word that isn't riddled with dialect. I suppose you could argue that the expression of the ideas is one thing and that the ideas themselves are another. Alas, the dialogue between the two lawmen assigned to the murder case is like someone writing the script of a Law and Order episode by memory 10 years later, with a healthy amount of "Dagnabits!" thrown in. It's truly quite bad.
The reveals at the end of the book are tough, too. (view spoiler)[LOL at Kya as Amanda Hamilton, and LOL at this courtroom scene that attempts to draw all of these threads together into something resembling a theme. I'm not even going to address the idea that Kya killed Chase. (hide spoiler)] Get out of here....more
This book was dreadful. It is terribly written and relies on "twists" that make zero sense to move the plot forward. There are some glimmers of intereThis book was dreadful. It is terribly written and relies on "twists" that make zero sense to move the plot forward. There are some glimmers of interesting ideas, like the relationships between Miranda and Amber or Amber and Claire, but the execution is so laughably silly that it falls flat. I skimmed about the last third to see what happened and was even more offended by the ending. (view spoiler)[Are we supposed to believe Claire is alive? Why have the bracelet come in on the bottle? It's just another inane "twist" that doesn't actually mean anything. (hide spoiler)]...more
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