The Last 5 Books I’ve Read

You were wondering, right?

Watership Down by Richard Adams

I wanted to show the cover of my copy so that you would know why I’ve never gotten around to reading this book before.  It just looks so…Dune.  My dad gave me this book (his copy?) when I was younger and I just never tackled it.  So I decided to go for it, and Erin and I read it as part of our bicoastal book club…and I could not put it down.  Love love loved it.  The balance of epic hero tale (a la Lord of the Rings) and rabbits (a la Animal Farm) just really worked for me.  I love a good protagonist who gets put down and fights back and comes through it.  I love a happy ending.  I love a story that moves, and keeps me turning pages.  I sat backstage every night for a week reading this furiously with a flashlight, despite how the light bulbs kept burning out and the angle of sitting hurt my back and I should have been working.  So good.

A text conversation with Erin as she neared the last third of the book:
Erin: OMG why didn’t they kill the patrol??
Me: Good guys never kill the bad guys if they have a choice.
Erin: But now there has to be a big battle.
Me: [LOL] What did you think the last 100 pages was for??

Recommend recommend recommend.

Thin is the New Happy by Valerie Frankel

I know the title is kind of a turn-off because it sounds like she’s advocating losing weight as the only thing to make you happy.  But actually the point of this memoir (by a woman who’s written something like 14 fiction novels) is that after 30 years of on-and-off dieting, she needs to fix whatever is under the surface and causing her to treat herself this way.  While reading about her struggles with her mother and how screwed up her body image is, I realized that while I too had to deal with occasional comments from my mom growing up, I didn’t have it nearly as bad.  Nor did I, apparently, get as screwed up.  Also, some of her boyfriends say things to her that I can’t imagine hearing from Drew…so maybe I’ve just gotten really, really lucky.

I just picked this up at Target because of the bright colors, but I found it to be really thought-provoking.  Several people asked me about it based on the title, looking ready to rip apart the statement “Thin is the New Happy,” and I found myself waxing athletic on the actual message of the book and what I was taking away from it.

Skeletons at the Feast by Chris Bohjalian

I should really figure out how to pronounce his last name.  This was a birthday present from Drew, who dutifully noted that I’ve been working my way through Mr. Bohjalian’s oeuvre.  This was one I hadn’t picked up yet because every time I read the back, I got intimated by the setting – WWII, Holocaust, and all that.  But I got sucked in by this book, the way I have by all of CB’s books, and I wasn’t really surprised.

The 3 main characters are: an 18-year-old German girl and her good-people farming family, who are being squeezed between the Russians and the Germans as the war crescendoes; her 20-year-old British POW lover; and a young Jewish man who has managed to stay alive by killing bad guys indiscriminately and impersonating soldiers whenever necessary. 

It’s a love story and a war story and a morality tale and an adventure story all in one.  They’re Germans, but they’re not bad guys, but Anna has to figure out where she stands and how she can stand up for what she believes in.  (If she can stop having crazy sex with her hottie Brit for one second.) 

I tore through it and enjoyed it immensely, although often got all cringey at descriptions of war crimes. [Shudder.]

The Catsitters by James Wolcott

I just grabbed this up at the library because I liked the cover.  It’s about a bachelor living in New York City, and when he catches his girlfriend cheating on him (worse yet, she forgot to feed his cat while he was away for the weekend), his best friend who lives in Georgia coaches him over the phone on how to A) manipulate and torture her until she’s ruined for other men, and then B) be the perfect guy, no longer a “bachelor,” now an “unmarried man.”

He’s an actor, so I got little glimpses of the actor living in New York City, which was fun, but not as in-your-face as Christopher Bram’s Lives of the Circus Animals.  I didn’t have to tiptoe my way through constant theatre in-jokes or “show business” remarks.  I really empathized with the main character, and I adored his cat Slinky.  I sort of thought I might cry at the end of this book.

One thing I wasn’t expecting – it’s from 2000 or 2001, so there is mention of “email” and “cell phones” as things that not everyone automatically has. That made me check the copyright date.

Time of my Life by Allison Winn Scotch

Jen Lancaster told me to read books by Jennifer Weiner, Beth Harbison, and Allison Winn Scotch, so when I trooped off to the library, I dutifully picked up books by the latter two (I have read a lot of Jennifer Weiner, and for me, it’s kinda hit-or-miss).

Um, hello, is this not essentially the “novel” I was writing when I was in high school, which is me waking up as a 20-something with the perfect life?  Here are the differences between my untitled novel and Time of my Life:

-AWS actually wrote her book, and mine consisted of a compelling opening, and then mostly just outlines of how my perfect life would be.
-TOML is about a woman going to sleep in 2007 and waking up in 2000, the person she used to be, and how she uses this opportunity to explore the road not traveled.  My book was just me wishing my perfect future life.
-This book is really good and people seem to really enjoy it.  Whereas mine was really only enjoyed by me.

It was a little predictable and a little too neatly wrapped up, but I liked this story and read it in an evening and then a morning.  Fun read, and I am definitely going to pick up more of her stuff.

I kind of fudged this “5 books” thing because I wanted a range.  Other books recently read include: John Irving’s The Fourth Hand and Beth Harbison’s Shoe Addicts Anonymous.  Books currently being read include Kristin Chenoweth’s A Little Bit Wicked and Aimee Bender’s The Girl with the Flammable Skirt (short stories of the super artistic type, like nothing I could ever write but I enjoy reading them now and then).

Enough talk, I’m a-wasting my reading time.