Unexpectedly, Milo

Unexpectedly, Milo
By Matthew Dicks (352 pages)
Published by Broadway
Bookish rating: 2.5

I realized that this is the first book I've read this year (so far) that was written by a GUY. And the author's last name is, um, Dicks.

Insert middle school snickering HERE.

Anyhoo, in Unexpectedly, Milo, we meet Milo, a home health care worker, who has some form of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) that he has managed to keep secret pretty much forever.

Milo finds some videotapes in the park, watches them, and begins a road trip to find someone mentioned in the tapes.

The plot is thin, but thin plots only bother me when the writing is crappy.

The writing is crappy. Okay, not entirely crappy, but . . . not great.

Dicks is an over-writer. Every sentence, paragraph, and scene feels like he takes it too far--like the reader is to moronic to get the point, or (perhaps more accurately) Dicks's writing is too weak to be particularly compelling, so he must continually drive a point home. With lots and lots of words.

The narration overanalyzes too much, and in a tedious way that is, well, tedious rather than OCD-ish. Backstory and prior events are blatantly retold or excessively reiterated, wasting my time as a reader.

Frankly, the only reason I gave this a 2.5 (and not 2) was due to Dicks's description of Milo's "demands"--his compulsions that made him slightly more interesting.

Overall, a meh sort of novel. Not particularly recommended.

The Winter Sea

The Winter Sea
By Susanna Kearsley (527 pages)
Published by Sourcebooks, Inc.
Bookish rating: 4

The Winter Sea is a quasi-historical novel, jumping between 18th-century Scotland and the Jacobites aiming to restore King James to the throne, and current-day drama in the same place--a castle, Slains, on the Scotland coast where an author, Carrie, researches her next novel. As she dwells near Slains, she finds herself writing her novel as though she has her heroine's memories.

Kearsley gives an absorbing sense of time (both time periods, that is) and place, and you can just hear the cadence of a Scottish accent (and not just from the SUPER Scottish folk) in her writing and dialogue.

The drama is broad and sweeping, and the romance avoids total cheese. Plots twists genuinely surprised me, and the last quarter of the book was particularly well done.

Not a perfect novel, though: Carrie's voice was a tad generic for me, and there were A LOT of information dumps, where modern-day historians and experts just "dumped" massive amounts of history and context on the reader, in the guise dialogue and conversation. Kearsley could've gotten away with some of this and flown under the heavy sigh radar, but it happen so often that I got kind of annoyed. These information dumps also made it difficult to stay connected to the story and determine which historical details I needed to remember.

But a very good, read-by-the-fire sort of book. This was my first Susanna Kearsley novel, and I plan to read others. Recommended.

Envy

Envy
By Anna Godbersen (432 pages)
Published by HarperCollins
Bookish rating: 4

Envy is the third book in Godbersen's Luxe series, a historical young adult series that I'm a little embarrassed to enjoy to the extent that I do. The story is bubblegum, the characters are jerks and seem to be modern-day folks put into pretty ball gowns and white ties with tails, but you know what?

I totally love reading these books.

Envy is, actually, very well written. Godbersen conveys a very clear sense of time and place, from Manhattan to Florida (our characters take a little jaunt south in book 3.) True, I'm not super comfortable with the "young adult" designation, as the characters, three books in after all, deal with marital strife and their conniving reaches new levels usually saved for your grandma's soap opera, but at the same time, it being 1900 in Manhattan, the characters are, well, teenagers. Folks got married off very, very young.

The fact that the series ranks among the New York Times bestsellers tells me that, pragmatically,  the young adult genre has plenty of room for the Luxe series. So there's that.

One quibble: In Florida, Godbersen makes much of the fact that on the beach, people wear their historically accurate "swimming costumes" with chaperone patrolling the beach for any impropriety. And yet, after evening drama, there two separate instances where a heroine runs, angst-filled, onto the beach or grass, and Godbersen describes sand or blades of grass between toes.

Proper attire, I assure you, demanded stockings. Even in Florida. This was 1900, y'all.

The series includes one final book, and you're kidding yourself if you think I don't have book 4 on my nightstand. Envy is a strong third book, easily carrying us with lots oomph to book 4. Recommended.

The Winter Palace

The Winter Palace
By Eva Stachniak (440 pages)
Published by Batam
Bookish rating: 4

If you're a fan of royal intrigue but a smidge tired of Henry VIII and his merry wives, The Winter Palace delivers an entertaining story of Russia's (German-born) Catherine the Great's rise to power.

Told through the viewpoint of an orphaned palace spy, young Varvara, we see Catherine's story, and Varvara's story, too. This was a book club book, and some group members got miffed that the story was really Catherine's and thus told too distantly by Varvara, and they also argued that the relationship between the two women wasn't believable (for the record, I bought it as believable).

As I told the groupies, I didn't have much of a problem with these two (potential) flaws, and maybe it's the fact that I have so little time to read these days (5-month-old, 3-year-old, and a full-time job--need I say more?),  so temporary imaginative flights into imperial Russia with its sleighs and ornate gowns and spies were enjoyable enough for me to overlook possible shortcomings (and if this is the case, my literary criticism quality just plunged). Or, maybe I just disagree with them.

Overall, a good book. Yes, it gets a little aimless as we wait for the coup, and this novel being steeped in an actual royal coup means we have a lot of history to get through, which doesn't always lend itself to the most desirable plotting or pace. But the novel is written well, the language is lovely, and aside from some of the "then this happened" aspect of the history, I found The Winter Palace absorbing and worth reading.

So there.

The Milk Memos

The Milk Memos: How Real Moms Learned to Mix Business with Babies-and How You Can, Too
By Cate Colburn-Smith and Andrea Serrette
Published by Tarcher (384 pages)
Bookish rating: 3.5

I think a 3.5 rating for this book is on the generous side, but you know what? NO OTHER BOOK THOROUGHLY TACKLES THE TOPIC OF BREASTFEEDING AFTER RETURNING TO WORK. And, well, women work. Women with children. Women with breastfed children.

In fact, after a little innocent Web surfing or parenting-book reading to gather some tips on mixing work and breastfeeding, I found--repeatedly--the solution to all my breastfeeding problems: Don't work! Or, work from home and keep the baby home with me (and don't actually work!) Yes, the breast-feed-at-all-costs approach to reality.

You've got to be *#@!ing kidding me.

So, yay on publishing this book. It accepts that you work, doesn't try to talk you out of it (like the only other book about breastfeeding + working available), and there's an aura of honesty that this book contains that other working-mom books tend to gloss over, probably because it's uncomfortable: Some days, being a working mom--especially a mommy of an infant--are heartbreakingly difficult.

That said, this book could have been much better. Premise? A bunch of moms at IBM share a custodial closet where they pump milk, and they write cheesy jokes and notes back to each other in a notebook.

Some things bugged the poo out of me:

1. Like every other working mommy book I've read that claims to understand what MOST working mommies take on each day, this one's authors have: (1) a nanny, or (2) a husband who's a stay-at-home dad. THIS IS NOT REALITY. Don't tell me you know what a daily grind is until you've juggled daycare drop-off/pick-up, bottle packing, etc. Oh, and without a nanny or house husband to clean and sanitize all those pump parts and bottles. Frankly, this trend is so clear-cut, I kind of wonder if it's only those working moms with that sort of flexibility who have the time to write a how-to book on working mommyhood. Well, that's just freaking great.

2. The authors CLAIM that nobody should ever make you feel bad if you supplement with formula. And yet? One of our smug authors (I forget which one--they have completely non-unique voices) announces how she made it a! whole! year! without! a! single! drop! of! formula! For a book that claims to be rah-rahing on working mothers killing themselves to continue breastfeeding while working, and when supply so often simply cannot keep up with demand, especially with a pump that cannot perfectly imitate an infant suckle, this completely pissed me off. Working mothers are a sensitive lot, and the sole reason the author didn't edit out that line was to announce to the world, "Look at me! BEST MOM EVER!" The formula-is-okay inclusion was obviously mere lip service. As someone who is unlikely to get through the rest of this week without the freezer stash of milk running out, and for whom formula supplementing is an impending certainty, this bugged me. Short of waking up in the middle of the night just to pump (which I'm not willing to do), there's not a damn thing I can do about my supply. And yet . . . FAILURE! Thanks for the pep talk, ladies.

3. I believe it is the same author from above who writes annoyingly about how precious breastfeeding her baby is. How every second is treasured, even at 2:00 a.m.. Again, I seriously doubt that the majority of women feel that way. Or, maybe I'm a crappy mom. I would rather sleep than breastfeed ANY DAY. In fact, Lorelei sleeping through the night has significantly reduced my supply. I can't think of a more thrilling reason to mix that bottle of formula! Anyway, there is this weird tone that assumes you, working mommy, long to hold your suckling infant at your breast all the live-long day. But some of us don't. I like the evening nursing just fine, and if I'm telecommuting and don't have to fear spit-up on my work clothes, the morning session is reasonably sweet. But overall, especially if one factors in the awful early weeks? Breastfeeding is something I dutifully do, often resentfully.

Overall, the book accomplishes what it's supposed to: acknowledging that working while breastfeeding has its share of logistical challenges that aren't as simple as, what our (male) pediatrician suggests, returning calls while pumping. A lot goes into breastfeeding while working, and Milk Memos gets that.

Mostly.

Blind Descent

Blind Descent

By Nevada Barr (336 pages)

Published by Berkley

Bookish rating: 3.25

This is the fourth in a mystery series with an outdoorsy heroine, Anna Pigeon. I haven’t read the first three books, and I probably won’t.

Anna, a claustrophobic forest ranger (see, I told you she was outdoorsy) gets guilted into descending into the deep bowels of the earth in New Mexico’s Carlsbad Caverns as part of a rescue mission to free her injured friend.

“Not an accident” mutters said friend, and that plus a death make Anna’s sleuthing, well, necessary. Okay, see, that’s the trouble with mysteries: You have to suspend A LOT of belief.

No matter. I’m a mystery fan. Barr creates a nicely paced little novel here. Characters, including Anna, are better developed than your average commercial fiction usually sees. In fact, though written in the third person, the clipped tone—which the reader assumes mimics Anna’s personality—is quite no-nonsense, a tad rough-around-the-edges, and tom boyish. It grated on me, but it also pretty much worked.

Barr is a good enough writer—Blind Descent is, ultimately, a success. At times, she over-writes descriptions and drama, which removes the reader from the story and makes her aware that she’s reading, but I also have little patience for forced isn't-the-world-oh-so-beautiful writing.

Overall, and enjoyable, different-than-my-typical-book sort of read.

Dark Road to Darjeeling

The Dark Road to Darjeeling

By Deanna Raybourn (400 pages)

Published by Mira

Bookish rating: 3.75

In this, the fourth installment of the historical Lady Julia Grey mystery series (an unfortunate phrase that makes these books sound like commercial crap when they’re really something quite better), newly married Julia and her detective spouse, Brisbane, end up in India for yet another murder mystery.

In true Raybourn fashion, the prose is elegantly written with a dash of sass. I like it. It’s the main reason I keep reading the series. The mystery is complicated enough, and I was wrong about the murderer, so there’s that. However, some part of the book failed to completely deliver for me. Perhaps it was moving the setting to India—spicing things up with some exoticism isn’t the worst idea ever, but the thing is, I liked the settings in England. They were part of the draw of the series for me. Moors, abbeys, country estates. I’m obsessed with Dowton Abbey for a reason, you know.

Second, now that Julia and her brooding Brisbane are now married, a good deal of romantic tension between the two is gone. Raybourn obviously was aware this would happen, so she entered some marital strife. But not too shockingly, arguments and huffiness between married folk is a lot less interesting than the cat-and-mouse, sexily ramped up tension of maybe getting together. Alas, ‘twas book four. Raybourn had to do it. I don’t fault her.

Overall, not my favorite Lady Julia Grey book, but I still liked it enough. I’ll read the fifth. And if you haven’t read any of the previous books in the series, I do recommend them (the first is Silent in the Grave).