You are currently browsing the monthly archive for June 2011.
I usually blog about the novels and nonfiction books I read and never mention the other formats I read. I read the newspaper every morning (print when I’m at home and online when I’m at school), and I always look forward to reading my dad’s backlog of Vanity Fair (the bottom three in the picture above) when I get home for winter and summer breaks. The rest of the magazines in the picture are the backlog of The Next American City, a magazine dealing with urban planning and urban issues, which was a birthday gift from my parents.
This was my first week of calculus and the stress of this class has kind of robbed me of my drive (and time) to read books. The only reading I’m really in the mood for has been magazines, newspaper, and ‘chick lit’, but at least I’m still reading!
Becky Brandon (née Bloomwood) is now a wife to Luke and mom to two-year-old Minnie but she is still a major shopaholic. However, the thrill of shopping at Harrods has been dampened by Minnie’s wild behavior, and Becky is becoming worried that her daughter’s spirited behavior is actually due to her being spoiled by Becky, Luke, and Becky’s parents (who Luke and Becky still live with).
In addition, a huge financial crisis has hit the United Kingdom and Luke’s company is in jeopardy. Becky desperately wants to cheer Luke up so she decides to throw a surprise party. Knowing Becky, it should come at no surprise that the costs start to spiral out of control, and now she’s facing having to admit to her husband what she’s been up to.
I was looking forward to reading about Becky as a mom and those parts of the book did not disappoint. Little Minnie is quite comical although I’m sure I would be quite stressed out if I had to babysit her for an hour. (About as sure as I am about how Becky and I could never been friends in real life.)
The most disappointing part of this book was the relationship Becky has with Luke. She’s afraid to correct Minnie’s behavior because she’s convinced Luke will send Minnie far away to a boot camp. But not only has he already told her he wouldn’t do, but she spends a lot of time talking about the relationship he had with his stepmother — a woman he adores for being there for him rather than the mother that walked away from her. Luke is also not there for most of the book. I understand he’s supposed to be a high-powered executive chained to his Blackberry but this was just ridiculous!
Book Mentioned:
- Kinsella, Sophie. Mini Shopaholic. New York: Dial Press, 2010. Print. 418 pgs. ISBN: 9780385342049. Source: Library.
Lara Lington’s new business is falling apart after her business partner refused to come home from a holiday in India. Her personal life is in shambles after her boyfriend, Josh, broke up with her six weeks ago without warning or explanation. And to top it all off, she’s being haunted by the spirit of her great-aunt Sadie described as “a feisty, demanding girl with firm ideas about fashion, love, and the right way to dance”. Sadie is demanding that Lara find a missing necklace that had been in Sadie’s possession for more than seventy-five years because Sadie cannot rest without it.
I find Kinsella’s novels to be the perfect summer read — light, fun, enjoyable. But I had a hard time getting into this particular read. I found Sadie to be abrasive and hard to like due to her nonstop screaming into Lara’s face whenever she wanted something.
There is also a lot going in with this novel. Lara is trying to reestablish a relationship with her ex-boyfriend, to find a missing necklace, to salvage her business, and to date an American at the request of her deceased great-aunt. Some story lines were more interesting than others; some story lines distracted from the overall plot. The second half of the novel moves much quicker than the first half, but it was enough to salvage my overall opinion of this book.
Others’ Thoughts:
Book Mentioned:
- Kinsella, Sophie. Twenties Girl. New York: Dial Press, 2010. Originally published 2009. Print. 435 pgs. ISBN: 9780385342032. Source: Purchased.
At the conclusion of this book, Fallon states that through her stories she hoped to create a window into the world of military families. She “wanted to capture the moments that lead up to a deployment as well as those that follow a return” and focus “on the families that wait at home and try their best to stay intact, try their best to find everything they need within those guarded gates” (pg. 222). I think she accomplished her goal. I was introduced to a world I know very little about, given the opportunity to visit the world behind the barbed wire gates separating Fort Hood from the rest of Texas.
Her short stories present the complex relationships women have with their deployed (and returning) husbands. There is the woman brought back to the States after the Kosovo War and fails to conform to expectations of Army wives. There is the woman who thinks her husband is having an affair and the man who thinks the wife he left behind has moved on. The reader slips into their lives and then glides right back out into the world of the woman next door, the woman down the street, or the man halfway around the world.
But this slipping in and out is also the downfall of this book. You never find out what happened to the woman who abandoned her kids the night before her husband returns from Iraq or the man who returns home on leave to find his wife in bed with another man. The connections you start to form with these characters are ignored in favor of presenting yet another condition military couples may find themselves in. I would have much rather had Fallon focus on one woman’s story and tell it so well rather than throw so many characters at me.
One thing I found interesting was that she never portrayed a women going off to war and leaving behind a man. Fallon does a good job of slipping into the heads of those men deployed and of the women left behind, but she never attempts to present what life is like for women deployed and men back in the United States.
Others’ Thoughts:
Book Mentioned:
- Fallon, Siobhan. You Know When the Men Are Gone. New York: Amy Einhorn Books, 2011. Print. 226 pgs. ISBN: 9780399157202. Source: Library.
Bassanio, a young Venetian of noble rank has squandered his estate and wishes to travel to Belmont to woo the wealthy heiress Portia. He approaches his friend Antonio, for the money needed to cover these expenses, but Antonio does not have the money on hand. He promises to cover a bond if Bassanio can find a lender, so Bassanio turns to the Jewish moneylender Shylock and names Antonio as the loan’s guarantor.
When Shylock calls in the loan, Antonio does not have the ability to pay him and Shylock demands payment in the form of a pound of flesh. This particular play is where English gets both the phrase “a pound of flesh” and the accusatory saying of calling someone a Shylock.
It also can be read as incredibly antisemitic; Shakespeare presents Shylock the Jew as a ruthless, blood hungry person who cares only for his own monetary gain. He is essentially incapable of forgiveness because he is not a Christian, according to some characters in play. These stereotypes were typical of Elizabethan England.
But Shylock also has one of the more eloquent speeches from Shakespeare’s plays, in my opinion. It’s a speech I recognize originally from two movies about the Holocaust — “The Pianist” and “Schindler’s List” when SS Lieutenant Amon Göth quotes it when discussing whether to turn in his Jewish lover to the death squads.
“Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions; fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, heal’d by the same means, warm’d and cool’d by the same winter and summer as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that.” (Act III, scene I)
However, I cannot say that I particular enjoyed this play. I never liked a single character in the entire play as almost all of them lack intelligence, depth, or any redeeming qualities. The final scene when Portia and Nerissa reveal that they disguised themselves as the lawyer and the law clerk has been done before in other Shakespeare plays. I just wasn’t very impressed.
Book Mentioned:
- Shakespeare, William. “The Merchant of Venice”. New York: Washington Square Press, 2004. Originally published 1598. Print. 288 pgs. ISBN: 0743477561. Source: Library.
