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.