Dracula

Dracula
By Bram Stoker (448 pages)
Bookish rating: 3.75

Enter spooky, evil-sounding laugh here. Can you believe I had never before read Stoker's Dracula? 'Tis true. And can you believe I finished the book around Halloween but never posted its review? 'Tis also true.

Stoker's gothic novel, Dracula, has generated a gazillion movies, TV shows, and related stories and books. Pour quoi? Because he does something masterful in Dracula. Suspense and horror? This is my favorite type of thriller--the type that has you tense and riveted, not grossed out by gratuitous ickiness that intends merely to shock.

Stoker writing during the Victorian era, we do have flowery speeches full of hyperbole and theatrical emotion. They can get a wee bit tiresome, but hey. That's Victorian lit.

Even if you don't like the thriller genre or anything remotely spooky, Dracula is a must-read for the well-read. It just is.

Torn: True Stories of Kids, Career, and the Conflict of Modern Motherhood

Torn: True Stories of Kids, Career, and the Conflict of Modern Motherhood
Edited by Samantha Parent Walravens (288 pages)
Published by Coffeetown Press
Bookish rating: 4


Torn is a compilation of essays of mothers, some of whom stay home, some of whom work, and all of whom have, technically, compromised in some way(s).

I read this book forever ago, often in snippets while nursing Lorelei, which shows how long it has been. I stalled on writing my review of it, because I wanted my post to be really good and really thoughtful. And maybe even a tad witty.

So, obviously, I never wrote it.

I also tired of bit of the working-mama topic and wasn't super fired up to write about it again. Don't get me wrong--working mommyhood is something I deeply care about. But I'm so busy BEING a working mom that writing about it gets back-burnered.

However, I'm trying to pull together my 2013 book list BEFORE April (which would be earlier than last year), so it's time to actually write this review.

I've read quite a few books about working motherhood, and one giant flaw they all have is that they're rather know-it-all while utterly failing to reflect the majority of working moms. I mean, high-powered executives are great and all, but with that power comes a lot of financial flexibility. I'm more interested in the schoolteachers and receptionists and accountants and nurses and mid-level office types than the uber successful. I have yet to read a working mommy book with a mommy writer who relies on daycare full-time.

Another batch of people who write with great exaggerated authority on working motherhood are writers. Heh. It makes sense, because they have the time and the inclination, but the thing is, writers who write for a living are not confined to a 9-to-5 job. Yes, working from home has its challenges, but again, I'm more interested in women who struggle to get to work on time because a clogged milk duct and disinterested nursing baby torpedoed the morning routine. Or toddler tantrums that make you run late. Or forgetting shoes for your kid and realizing it in the daycare parking lot.

I'm NOT interested in how to decorate a nursery attached to a corner office, or the suggestion that working from home 1 hour per day is reflective of working mommyhood at large.

So, with that preface, I think Torn is the best book currently available as far as really making an effort to really reflect motherhood and the different forms it can take. And it's not just working moms. Torn includes many essays from stay-at-home moms who explain how they made their decisions to stay home and how they feel about it. Yeah, it still leans a bit too far to the well-educated women, and the middle- and upper-classes.It does. But it's the best there is so far.

Perhaps obviously, the multiple points of view is the book's greatest strength, as the essays themselves range from okay to pretty good. Again, I would've like to hear more from more typical, run-of-the-mill moms who don't have particularly unique jobs, but I guess I'll have to write that book myself. This one will do in the meantime, and I'm glad it exists.

Torn's main theme is conflict and compromise when it comes to career and spawn, which--duh--you can gather via the title. That might sound negative, especially since we're talking motherhood (which of course is supposed to be the most important thing EVER), but "Torn" is a apt title. Lord knows it reflects MY working and mothering life. I spent a good year convinced I was ready to hop on over to the stay-at-home side, and I'm only recently thinking, for the first time since Lorelei joined our family, "Nah, working outside the home is the best thing for my family and me." Finally, my head and heart are aligned on working outside the home, and boy. Thank goodness. Because last year was freaking hell.

And . . . the baby (I mean, toddler) has woken up and needs her mommy. So, I post and just say this: Read this one. It's worth it.

Foreign Affairs

Foreign Affairs
By Alison Lurie (280 pages)
Published by Random House
Bookish rating: 4.5

My aunt suggested this book for the little online book club I participate in, and while she was unimpressed, I was impressed.

We follow English professors Vinnie and Fred to London, where they self-indulgently research literary obscurities, fully funded yet complaining about such funding (like most academics---can you imagine sabbaticals for normal people?! AND OMG HOW THEY WHINE!). Vinnie is in her 50s and unlovely, and Fred is in his early 30s are oh so handsome, and they both are connected to the same university English department back home in New York. In London, Fred and Vinnie each embark on a love affair (not with each other), and it's all presented INCREDIBLY by Alison Lurie.

Now, you know I loved a book when I include  quotes in my review. For starters, although Lurie is an academic herself, she has their lot pegged: "A unique person is exactly what Carissa is not, Fred thinks. She is a conventional, frightened academic: intelligent, granted; but forever anxious to seem even more intelligent. Whereas Roo---" (p. 40). As someone who, back in the day, spent (too) much time with anxious PhD English students in one of the best English depts. in the country, and as someone who currently deals with academics on a daily basis, I loved Lurie poking fun at how seriously these people often take themselves.

I also loved the depiction of Vinnie, who has one failed marriage under her belt and is independent to a rather selfish, self-absorbed (albeit endearingly) degree. The idea of having another person simply share her space is utterly distasteful to her: "And then there is the noise and clutter that's involved in having someone else always around, walkign from room to room, opening and shutting doors, turning on the radio, the television, the record player, the stove, the shower. Having to negotiate with this someone before you did the simplest thing: having to agree with them about when and what to eat, when to sleep, when to bathe  . . . Having to ask permission, as it were, to see her friends or hang a picture or buy a plant; having to inform someone every single damn time she felt like taking any action whatsoever" (p. 241).

I found the above quote hilarious, because it's true. How I managed to ever marry, and do so happily, is a mystery. Thank goodness Vinnie had no kids.

Foreign Affairs won the 1985 Pulitzer, deservedly. Though Auntie Cheryl thinks otherwise.