The Nesting Place

The Nesting Place: It Doesn't Have To Be Perfect To Be Beautiful
By Myquillyn Smith (198 pages)
Published by Zondervan
Bookish rating: 3

This book reads like a blog, mainly because it's based on a blog and packaged into a book. Nothing wrong with that, but the prose meanders, the themes are all over the place, and the book lacks a cohesive arc to make it less . . . . blog-like. Overall, though, I think reading it was time well-spent. Hear me out.

The premise is that you can decorate your house or apartment, even if it's less than perfect, or even crappy. I buy into this approach, particularly as someone who decorated several crappy apartments to the hilt, and I really liked Smith's deliberate inclusion of RENTERS in the conversation. Why wait for your dream home to bust open a can of paint? Home is where you and yours are, so make it pretty already!

I am also on board with Smith's assertion that decorating is a type of homemaking (oh yes, I just used that 1950s term) that carries a lot of value. Sure, it's literally valuable when your stellar decorative eye allows you to stage your house and obtain a higher price when selling. But more importantly, a nicely decorated house gives off a certain FEEL that makes you and your family feel solidly at home.

The good: Smith provides some basic good ideas for getting started in decorating and banishing the fear that goes along with trying something different, new, or (gasp!) bold. I agreed with her argument that you can't worry about ruining a crappy piece of furniture you don't like. That resonated with me, as I had an old $15 side table from Wal-Mart that I wanted to spray paint with some extra silver spray paint I had lying around. Chris didn't see the point of ruining perfectly good wood, but I thought silver would look much more girly in the girls' playroom. And you know what? It turned out great.

I also liked Smith's idea of repurposing what you already have in your house---can a table be moved to a different room, can a collection of framed art get more decorative mileage in the foyer, can the reject furniture get spruced up with fabric and paint? This, my dears, is a very low-cost way to really MAKE a home, and make it your own. So, gold star to Smith for that.

Finally, Smith made a good point that I'm definitely guilty of: Stop insulting your own house or décor. Dozens of people have heard me lambast our banister, and I've been guilty of apologizing for carpet stains to my mother-in-law, or tabletop crumbs leftover from the kids' breakfast to an unexpected visitor. Doing this reinforces the myth that everyone else's houses are perfect. Besides, I'm extremely lucky to have a large, newly built, nice house. My DREAM house. Pretty much everyone who visits comments on it. What on earth am I accomplishing by loudly declaring to all who will hear, "I effed up the stain color choice on the banister! Don't judge the banister, I already know I screwed it up! Craaaaaaaap!"?

However, I did wryly smile when Smith tsk-tsked that complaining about our houses was insulting to the husbands who provided them for us. Apparently, women don't pay mortgages in Smith's world, but hey, I'm not surprised that sentence worked its way into a book published by Zondervan.

Decorating-wise, Smith's aesthetic is unlike mine---I find hers very cluttered, to the point that it seems like a lot of her decorative shit would just be in the way of actually functioning in the home. Sometimes "eclectic" is really just crap. But hey, it's her house. I like quirky only up to a point (my limit is my 1923 typewriter that sits on the writing desk in the office), and I would no sooner hang a hockey stick on my living room wall than I would put up a fake Christmas tree. But if you live in a house full of boys who love hockey . . . and you don't MIND a hockey stick on your wall? Makes perfect, homey sense.

Also, as someone who lives in an arguably cookie-cutter house (i.e., in a development), despite the fact that I personally selected each shade of tile grout, or that we changed the floor plan and bumped out the kitchen and added crazy things like TWO dishwashers, I do tend to sense my home falling into a certain predictable blandness. That said, I've gotten a very fun boost from a local shop that refurbishes old furniture, which has given me several unique (and cheap!) pieces that defy the matchy-matchy we often fall into. For example, a farmhouse-style small dresser for the guest bedroom, which fit perfectly with the patchwork quilt my mom made us for our wedding, or the pale pink, Victorian-style nightstand for Charlotte's room. (Chris has asked me--dead serious--whether we need to add a category for this shop on our monthly budget. Equally serious, I said "YES." It's a good thing it's only open once a month.)

Rumor also has it that this might (!) be the year I finally get formal living room furniture (yeah, I don't buy Smith's argument that ALL your furniture can be hand-me-down crap). Of course, this might be contingent on me selfishly denying Emma a fenced backyard.

(Wouldn't a beagle just dig out? I ask you.)

The bad: I found Smith's writing style bland and trying-to-be-witty-but-coming-up-short. At times, she could be cloyingly . . .  I don't know . . . wholesome or something. I just like more spice in the prose I read, I guess.

Also, the all-over-the-place nuggets of advice and themes and topics I mentioned earlier. That's annoying and worth losing a star.

Like I said, though, reading this book was time well spent. I took a closer look at my decorating and now want to tackle recovering a crappy ottoman doomed to the basement soon, and I want to look into reupholstering the glider (currently a perfectly acceptable shade of khaki) into something bold. I was also smugly reminded that opting for the bold, lime-slash-olive green chair in the sitting area of our room was a genius move.

So, in the end: recommended.

Snobs

Snobs
By Julian Fellowes (288 pages)
Published by St. Martin's
Bookish rating: 4

We all love comedies of manners, right? Especially when they mock the British.

Honestly, pretty much everything I know about about England has been gleaned from countless lit courses, gazillion of books, TV, and movies. My point is twofold: First, I don't think I can be considered an anglophile if I've never even been to England. Second, I'm in no position to snicker in recognition of those aristocratic and wannabe aristocratic social rules, because I don't know the rules in the first place.

But really, who does?

And really, what does it matter?

This is so much of Fellowes's brilliance. From the point of view of an outsider, Fellowes narrates the saga of too pretty Edith, a reasonably well-to-do woman who marries an earl, mostly for the title and wealth. Edith's friend, telling the story, observes the nuances of class and status almost like an anthropologist. And it's hilarious. I had to read ever so slowly, because so much hinged on the ironic writing, the wry observation, and dialogue layered with meaning.

Plot-wise, Edith's downfall as she realizes charity planning committees in the country are not as fun glamming it up in London causes the novel to sputter a bit too long as the Edith and Charles (the earl) have to decide their marital fate, but overall, this book is a big fat winner. Recommended.

The Grief of Others

The Grief of Others
By Leah Hager Cohen (384 pages)
Published by Riverhead
Bookish rating: 4

The Ryrie family suffers the loss of an infant child within 57 hours of its birth. In short, we open with heartbreaking tragedy, the depth and angst of which is quietly portrayed in the maternity ward---a contrast so fabulously painful to read, I was in tears by page 2.

For better or worse, the novel begins with this severe drama; the rest of the story explores how each member of the family copes with the loss. The characters are flawed, a tad narcissistic, and . . . struggling. Cohen's writing is gentle and unassuming and profound. She's one of those authors who can take small pieces of characters and give a wonderfully complex reflection of him or her.

Some criticism? Cohen focuses too much on the dad. Perhaps because I'm a mom who has birthed two babies, I lost interest in him at times and wanted her to get back to the mom.

Overall, Cohen's choice of title is an apt one. Here, she explores the distance that grief generates in people, even in those who have suffered the same loss. The fact that it's so personal, so weird, so difficult for others to "get." I say this as someone who has never lost too horribly.

Recommended.

The Year of the Gadfly

The Year of the Gadfly
By Jennifer Miller (374 pages)
Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Bookish rating: 4

A budding, precocious, and weird adolescent journalist--Iris--moves to a new posh school and tackles a long-standing mystery there. A secret society enacts vigilante justice, exposing scandal on teachers and students. Iris, fancying herself as a ballsy journalist, sees it as her duty to figure out what the heck is going on.

The voice of Iris is fresh, unique, and hilarious. We readers get to wryly sit back and watch the workings of her mind---intelligence beyond her years, matched with the emotions of an adolescent. Her narration is charming and disarming. And funny as hell.

The intricacies of the plot are secondary to the overall writing. I loved Miller's youthful, light-hearted, and non-labored style. She has a great tone that slides under the more self-conscious snark of older writers who achieve the same level of snark, but with far less charm.

Recommended.

Let It Snow: Three Holiday Romances

Let It Snow: Three Holiday Romances
By John Green, Maureen Johnson, and Lauren Myracle (352 pages)
Published by Penguin
Bookish rating: 3.5

Who doesn't love Christmas? And who doesn't love young adult (YA) lit? Well, this girl loves all of the above, so when my good friend Lauren said, "Hey, YA Christmastime literary BUBBLEGUM," I was sold.

In this collection of three stories (actually, I'd call them "novellas," but the book's marketing team didn't consult me), we get a fun, interconnected saga of a big fat snow storm, hormones, and teen angst. And a Waffle House. Oh, to be young again . . . 

As is the plight of such collections, you get some good mixed with the bad. I thought the first story by Maureen Johnson was great. Super funny, adequately angst-y, solid YA tone. John Green's tale was equally good: absorbing and fresh and witty. Lauren Myracle's was LAME LAME LAME. She brought the entire collection DOWN, and to end with her story just made the book end on a flat, uninspired note. Myracle utterly lacks the wit and YA tone that drives the genre. After reading Johnson and Green, her story felt like it was written by a PTA mom trying to be "in tune" with young folk. I'd imagine the editorial people did their best to clean up her so-called "YA" sludge, which makes me wonder what she actually submitted for the publication, but I definitely have no interest in reading her other work. Bummer.

Overall, a worthwhile read: Cozy up to a fire and bask in the first two stories, which can stand alone on their own. Then skim or skip the third.

The Wolves of Andover

The Wolves of Andover
By Kathleen Kent (300 pages)
Published by Little, Brown
Bookish rating: 4

The Wolves of Andover is one of those books I read with less attention than it deserved. Read in snippets as I waited in Mom-related waiting rooms and before falling asleep at night, I wasn’t at my most discerning.

Whatever. It’s a good book. Set in Massachusetts in the 1600s, it follows the evolving relationship between Martha, a girl sent to live with her fussy cousin as a servant, and Thomas, a man who fled to the colonies to escape certain death after the English Civil War.

For some reason, the English Civil War repeatedly fails to suck me in when I read historical novels. But Kent is a talented writer and handles what apparently is my least favorite war quite nicely.

Kent has a good, believable eye for historical detail, and she hits a good balance of readability and dialect. I’m not the biggest fan of dialect-heavy dialogue, but she’s effective. I can “hear” the characters speak with what I’m imagining our colonial or Welsh accents.

Characters are fascinatingly complex and human, even the high-maintenance cousin (and really, how fussy can you really be in the 1600s?). And I loved that our heroine, Martha, is a prickly, sort of bitchy gal. I get it.

A solid, historical novel, creatively, almost eerily, imagined. Recommended.

Royal Pain

A Royal Pain

By Rhys Bowen (320 pages)

Published by Berkley Mystery

Bookish rating: 4

There’s really only so much you can write about the second book in a slightly (but only slightly) fluffy mystery series.

What to write? Well, the second book in the Royal Spyness series is, delightedly, a solid one. The heroine of virginal Georgie is adequately uppity, satisfyingly original, and, well, the dame is witty. And really, it’s fun to real about the (mostly) fictional British royals in the early 1930s. It’s a time period not often explored for topics other that The (capital T) Great (capital G) Depression (capital D).

So, plot. Our heroine continues to make her way in London (secretly) cleaning houses when the queen asks her to host a Bavarian princess with  the aim of distracting her prince-son from the oh so American Mrs. Simpson.

Of course, some murders take place, this library book having the blue “mystery!” sticker on it with a dude (Sherlock?) with a spyglass and all. Mostly to make the plot work, I suppose, the queen instructs Georgie to get to the bottom of the mystery, as she distrusts her “plodding” police force. So, there you go.

Overall, Royal Pain is another fun romp through historical London. I enjoyed it enough to pick up the third book whilst (see how the brit talk is affecting me?) at the local library branch, so obviously it checked the necessary boxes for enjoyability. Hardly a ringing endorsement, but whatever. Recommended.

Gentlemen and Players

Gentlemen and Players
By Joanne Harris (422 pages)
Published by William Morrow
Bookish rating: 3.75

Have I mentioned my affinity for prep school dramas? Well, that's pretty much the reason I read Harris's Gentlemen and Players, which consists of chapters intended to mimic a game of chess. However, as someone clueless about chess, this symbolism is lost on me.

The plot: At St. Oswald's, a boy's prep school in England, a disenfranchised boy, the son of the porter, decides to bring the school down. Meanwhile, the aging Latin teacher is digging in his heels, refusing all change, from whiteboards to email.

The good: Harris has a natural, free-flowing writing style that is highly readable and effective. It's nothing extraordinary, but it's good enough to get the job done. In the last quarter of the book, she tosses out some major plot twists that I truly did not see coming. So, kudos for that.

The bad: Although I realize many pages must be devoted to setting a particular stage, this book could've been shorter. I mean, the administrative tasks of teachers are simply dull and boring. I'm not saying that they made up 100 uncessary pages . . . but they might have.

So, bottom line? I like the book enough, and it tossed me some juicy surprises. But overall? I wasn't particularly wowed. Quasi-recommended.

The Salt House

The Salt House: A Summer on the Dunes of Cape Cod
By Cynthia Huntington (183 pages)
Published by University Press of New England
Bookish rating: 3.75

This in this memoir, Huntington lives in a little shack on a dune in Cape Cod for a summer. Granted, she has to share it with her surly boyfriend, but she's a freaking WRITER and she has day after day after day wide open to her. No wonder she gets books written.

Anyway, if you can get past your initial jealousy of a young person living on the beach with zero responsibilities, you'll find a super perceptive, lovingly written piece of autobiography that carefully studies the writer's creative process as well as the surrounding environment. Although I admit I got bored with so! many! descriptions! about freaking birds. Yeah, they're interesting WHEN YOU'RE ACTUALLY AT THE BEACH, but water fowl just aren't as interesting to someone reading in an armchair while the children wail about who got the pink cup.

I started this book during our week at the beach, and it's definitely a more appropriate book to read during that openness that comes with beach living. Granted, I was on the Carolina coast, not Cape Cod, and I'm smugly certain that Cape Cod has nothing on my beautiful Carolina coast, but salty air and sand IS pretty universal.

Recommend for a summertime read.

Dracula in Love

Dracula in Love
By Karen Essex (384 pages)
Published by Doubleday
Bookish rating: 4

Quick, before Halloween comes, read this atmospheric reinvention of Bram Stoker's Dracula! This was such a fun book to read, with all the delicious spookiness of the season. And you know what else? Despite being SO FREAKING OVER vampires, Essex's tale has a fabulous originality about it--a lack of cheap sensationalism or teen angst (our heroine is, after all, a the very proper Mina, a girls' school instructor of impeccable purity and virtue--enter Dracula [bwhahahaha]).

Essex takes Mina from the original Dracula and though she is indeed (initially) portrayed as the ever so proper schoolmistress who seeks only a good husband (Jonathan Harker) and a warm kitchen full of happy children, Essex explores Mina's simmering sexuality and erotic desires, which of course gives her the popular Victorian term "hysterical." The tension between Mina's desire and her belief in propriety is expertly portrayed. Poor, poor Mina.

Dracula himself is very complex and fabulously drawn. Heck, by the end, I sort of wanted a vampire of my own to pursue me across centuries.

Dracula in Love is an absorbing, moody novel that delivers on every level. Totally recommended for some autumn reading in front of a fire, preferably with a glass of something red.

The Haunting of Cambria

The Haunting of Cambria
By Richard Taylor (304 pages)
Published by Tor
Bookish rating: 3

Meh. This spooky(ish) ghost story has good elements: distinctive place (the California coastal town of Cambria), haunted house, tension and build up. I also like that the main characters didn't waste half the book arguing about whether or not an old house was haunted. Yes, the effing thing is haunted, they agree in the beginning. It was kind of nice and unusual. Ghost story disbelief is something I've tired of.

Theo is our main character, and he's a douche canoe. Totally unlikable. I've never advocated characters being LIKABLE, but what Taylor was attempting to get across as wit and humorous was just trite, sexist bull. I don't think we met a single female character whose cup size wasn't part of her description. Theo's character, beyond being generally douche-y, just never clicked or became believable. I certainly didn't care what happened to him. In fact, I found myself wishing he'd get swallowed up by that which haunted the dang house.

Overall, not really recommended. For spooky October thrillers to get you in the mood for Halloween, you can do much better. Like Dracula in Love, which I just finished and will review next!

Her Royal Spyness

Her Royal Spyness
By Rhys Bowen (324 pages)
Published by Berkley Prime Crime
Bookish rating: 4

Huh. I was unexpectedly charmed by this first book in a historical mystery series in which we follow the penniless yet royal Lady Victoria Georgiana Charlotte Eugenie in the 1930s as she dodges engagement to a hum-drum royal and decides to make something of herself in London.

But, it being the 1930s and Georgie having a skill set for nothing, making a go of London is a challenge. Fortunately, someone shows up dead in her bathtub and she has a mystery to solve.

The mystery is fun and not the most intricate or mystifying of whodunnits, but the mystery holds up perfectly fine and the writing is snappy, witty, and just plain fun. A bit of a narrative romp for the anglophile in each of us, eh?

And really, I'm quite excited to read the second book in the series, which tells me Bowen generated a dang good book. Recommended.

The Testament of Mary

The Testament of Mary
Colm Toibin (81 pages)
Published by Scribner
Bookish rating: 4.5

This novella re-imagines Mary in what will certainly be deemed blasphemous by many. Rather than the image of Mary as statue or stained glass or ceramic nativity figure that we all know and recognize, Toibin writes her as a PERSON. This Mary as a person, someone whose self has been so erased as to literally deify her (in truth, I've always sort of admired the Catholics having such respect for a WOMAN--I'm always struck by it during masses which are of course at weddings and that of course have an open bar afterward. I looooooooove Catholics.) But here, Toibin goes into the head of Mary as a mom (less "holy mother," more MOM) who doesn't believe her son is any more special than any other Jewish boy and deems his crucifixion "not worth it."

I loved Mary's narration. Proper Protestant that I am, Mary is one of those more unknown and mysterious Biblical figures to me. A womb and a birth canal--that's what we tend to reduce her to, no?  That and her role as official weeper. But really . . . I've always been dying to know . . . what was she really thinking?

And so Toibin gives his imagining of it, and it's very poignant, beautifully written, and in some ways, daring.

Recommended.

2013 Book List. No, Really.

Last year, I lamented the shocking fact that for my annual book list, I DIDN'T POST IT UNTIL APRIL. What could be worse than THAT? 

ANSWER: Waiting until Oct-freaking-ober. LATE October.

What can I tell you about the books I read during 2013? Well, at this point . . .  not a whole lot. In many cases, they've faded into the back of my mind and clumped together. 

But 2013 had some standouts. Little Bee, Room, Beauty Queens, A Year of Biblical Womanhood, and Caleb's Crossing were very good, often for totally different reasons. Any, after 9+ months of incremental fussing, I give you the book list of 2013.

1.      Dark Road to Darjeeling       

Deanna Raybourn      

Mystery/historical fiction
Rating: 3.75

2.     Blind Descent 

Nevada Barr   

Mystery 
Rating: 3.25         

3.      The Milk Memos:How Real Moms Learned to Mix Business with Babies-and How You Can, Too
Cate Colburn-Smith and Andrea Serrette     

Parenting        

Rating: 3.5

4.      The Winter Palace      

Eva Stachniak

Historical fiction   
Rating: 4     

5.     Envy   

Anna Godbersen        

Young adult/historical fiction

Rating: 4

6.      The Winter Sea           

Susanna Kearsley       

Historical fiction        

Rating: 4

7.      Unexpectedly, Milo    

Matthew Dicks          

Contemporary literature         

Rating: 2.5

8.     Torn: True Stories of Kids, Career & the Conflict of Modern Motherhood   

Edited by Samantha Parent Walravens         

Parenting          

9.      Splendor         

Anna Godbersen        

Young adult/historical fiction
Rating: 4

10.  The World Before Her

Deborah Weisgall       

Contemporary literature         

Rating: 4

11.  A Gate at the Stairs    

Lorrie Moore  

Contemporary literature         

Rating: 4.25

12.  Little Bee        

Chris Cleave   

Contemporary literature         

Rating: 5

13.  Habits of the House    

Fay Weldon   

Contemporary literature/historical fiction

Rating: 3.75

14.  Any Day a Beautiful Change: A Story of Faith and Family   

Katherine Willis Pershey        

Autobiography/religion

Rating: 4

15.  Room  

Emma Donoghue       

Contemporary literature         

Rating: 5

16.  Only God Knows Why: A Mother's Memoir of Death and Rebirth    

Amy Lyon

Autobiography/religion

Rating: 4

17.  Beauty Queens           

Libba Bray     

Young adult   

Rating: 4.25

18.  Summer House           

Nancy Thayer 

Contemporary literature         

19.  Revenge of the Radioactive Lady       

Elizabeth Stuckey-French      

Contemporary literature         

Rating: 4

20. Maine       

J. Courtney Sullivan   
Contemporary literature         
Rating: 4.5

21.  A Likely Story: One Summer With Lillian Hellman   

Rosemary Mahoney   

Autobiography/biography

Rating: 3.75

22.  Untold Story   

Monica Ali     

Contemporary literature         

Rating: 4

23.  Wild Meat and the Bully Burgers       

Lois-Ann Yamanaka  

Contemporary literature         

Rating: 3

24.  The Unseen    

Alexandra Sokoloff   

Thriller

Rating: 3.75

25.  Who Will Run the Frog Hospital?      

Lorrie Moore  

Contemporary literature         

Rating: 4

26.  A Year of Biblical Womanhood          

Rachel Held Evans    

Religion/women's studies
Rating: 4

27.  Long Live the King     

Fay Weldon

Historical fiction        

Rating: 3.5

28.  Dracula          

Bram Stoker   

Victorian literature     

Rating: 3.75

29.  Caleb's Crossing        

Geraldine Brooks       

Historical fiction   
Rating: 4.5