A Semi-Kinda-Sorta Book Review: MWF Seeking BFF by Rachel Bertsche - March 1, 2012

I spent part of last weekend being both sick in bed and reading (in between helping out with the kid, of course - no sick days for mamas, especially with a kid with CP, but my husband really did largely take over yesterday when the DOOM came over me). And what was I reading? MWF Seeking BFF by Rachel Bertsche. I had read about this book...somewhere...and put it on my to-get-from-the-library list. I could REALLY identify with the idea of wanting new friends while living in a new city and not knowing where to start.

Background: I moved to Atlanta knowing just one person (and her husband and the Margarita Friday crew), and while she and I are still very close and I adore her, she lives a bit far from me and we don't see each other all that often and I stopped going to Margarita Friday once I got pregnant (and the group kind of splintered after that, though I still am in touch with several people I met through it). I've built my social circle from scratch, more or less, but lately I've still been feeling really lonely and craving that mysterious BFF-ness that Bertsche muses on throughout the book.

Now I will tell you that I finished the book thinking "Why, I'd make a PERFECT friend for Rachel!" And we do have a lot in common - agnostic Jews! writers! the magazine connection! (She worked at O, I was a Sassy intern!) I love New York so much! I love last-minute plans too! But uh...yeah, before I sent off a gushy love note (though I may have sent a love tweet) I realized that on top of the whole rather big, obvious problem of that I live in Atlanta and she lives in Chicago (a city that shows up so often in my life that I do think I'm destined to live there someday), there are other issues like my being 10 years older and having a kid with special needs and and...and about a million other things (though if she ever were visiting Atlanta, I bet we'd have fun and I'd take her to touristy stuff AND my favorite cupcake shop). What I think I really was connecting with was that Bertsche writes in a warm and engaging way that really made me WANT to be her friend. If I hadn't liked her so much from the outset, I don't know if I would've been so captivated by her quest. But I did and I was.

I am no stranger to the friend pickup. One of my close friends here became my friend because I asked her out. Seriously. I told her at a mommy-and-me-type event that I liked her purse (because I did!) and then the next week, when I saw her again, I asked her to lunch. We clicked and for a while we met up every single week for kid events followed by yapping over lunch at the same place - the waitress knew us, brought our drinks out immediately, and even gave our kids T-shirts. Both of us have crazy lives (she has a second kid now and a complicated schedule, I have therapies to coordinate and a different complicated schedule) and we don't see each other as often anymore - but for a while that tactic was successful. (I should try it again.) Other friends of mine here are also from the early days of parenthood (some I met at the new mom group when our babies were 2-6 weeks old - and happil,y even after the diagnosis, many of us stayed friends and our kids still play together) or were mutual friends of someone else or were from various other parts of my life. And there are online friends who I haven't met yet but who are local and we keep saying we'll get together (you know who you are!). But I think I need to branch out a bit. I'm feeling inspired. We'll see how it goes. I don't have the time for 52 blind dates but maybe I can finagle two or three?

On that note, however, I have known for a long time that I'm a bad judge of character. Many times in my life I've tried to cultivate a friendship that went sour in a way that I realize was always there but that I'd ignored (sometimes my fault, sometimes his/hers, sometimes both, sometimes nobody). I had very few friends as a kid and was the outcast, the bullied, the loner who was eager to please. I think I've held onto that - I want EVERYONE to like me and I don't always know how to manage that since that's just not always how it works. If that makes any sense at all.

I also am learning that just because I'm a mom and you're a mom doesn't mean we'll get along (anyone can be a mom, it just makes SOME conversations easier. Sometimes. Sometimes it actually makes things much, much worse.). Just because my kid has CP and your kid has CP (or special needs of any kind) doesn't mean we'll get along (as I noted in my last post, CP is a hugely broad term - and it's not like only certain kinds of people have kids with disabilities - I wouldn't want to be friends with certain political candidates, for example, ahem ahem). Those are two things I looked for for a while as friend criteria. If either/or is there, that's awesome (I would love more friends with kids with special needs, to be honest, and I do like my friends-who-are-moms very much, whether they were moms before, during, or after we became friends), but I can't just rely on that. Lately I've been getting along really really well with childfree people - which is a whole blog post in itself actually. Watch for it... But this all means that I don't know WHAT makes someone an ideal friend for me these days.

In any case, I'm going to try to keep my head up and my eyes open and move forward toward maybe finding one or two new friends. Or maybe I'll try to rekindle the friendships that have fallen by the wayside. Or both. I'm not sure. Something needs to change or start. That I know.

Book Review: The False Friend by Myla Goldberg

Years ago, I read and loved Bee Season by Myla Goldberg. I mean, who didn't, right? It was a gorgeous book - slow, dreamy, with what I recall as a gut-punch ending. Then Wickett's Remedy came out - and I just couldn't get interested in it, although I have no good reason for that, it's probably amazing and I should pick it up. But the False Friend hooked me back with its jacket blurb, its cover art, and the first few pages that I skimmed in the bookstore. I was so happy to find another lovely book from Goldberg, and now I really do need to go back and read Wickett's Remedy.

I always feel silly summarizing plots of books for people. I look back or think back a few days later and realize I forgot to mention some critical part of the story that would surely have sucked the person/people right in. So forgive me if you read the book after reading this review and think "She's so totally wrong." As I saw it, this book was about the way girls are mean to girls, it was about how we grow up and try desperately to leave our pasts behind but how things somehow manage to chase us and catch up, it's about whether memory can be trusted, and it's about relationships - boyfriend/girlfriend, husband/wife, sister/brother, mother/daughter. There's a plot - complete with a bit of a mystery - but there are also characters and interweaving stories. It's just...splendid.

I know authors often have Google alerts set up about themselves. So hey, Myla, if you see this - first, I know someone who was in your writing group when you were writing Bee Season. Nifty. Second, I'm fairly certain that this book was set in a reimagined Binghamton, NY, and I just loved that. The street names were the same (Beeth-oven!), and you mentioned Spiedies. And since that's where I went for undergrad, I was extra charmed by the setting. 

It took me weeks to get through this book - my life kept taking me places other than curled up in bed with time to read, and there was too much going on in the story for me not to give it my full attention. But it was so worth it. Go read it.

Book Review (but not entirely): Road Map to Holland by Jennifer Graf Groneberg

I am always, always looking for books that I, as the mom of a girl with what I lovingly call "issues," can connect with. Books about moms like me, moms who were surprised by a diagnosis or just tripped up by a change in life's plans. Books that are not overly religious or encouraging me to simply make the best of it. Books that acknowledge that sometimes life sucks and sometimes things aren't sunshiney and that you just can't always look on the bright side. Two that I had found up to this point were My Baby Rides the Short Bus (essays about having a child with special needs written by moms that I could identify with very strongly - I LOVE this book) and Schuyler's Monster (the story of a girl who cannot speak written by a father who tells it like it is, both good and bad). In both of these books, the child or children being discussed were not the same as my kid, but the emotions were often the same as mine, and the parents had similar world views to mine (at least sometimes). And I felt that once again in Road Map to Holland.

I found my copy of Road Map to Holland at a discount bookstore and picked it up with little to go on other than a vague recollection of seeing something about it somewhere. Sure enough, it's referenced in the back of My Baby Rides the Short Bus, and that reference even notes that the title may be offputting. Why, you may ask, would someone not be into that title? Because while the Welcome to Holland story is lovely, it's sometimes overused or turned into a one-size-fits-all tale for anyone with a child with special needs. I have my own take on this story, and maybe I'll share it in a future blog post. But it resonates with many people, and it helped Jennifer Groneberg, and I respect that.

This is the memoir of a mom who is thrown for a loop a few times in the early days of her childrens' lives. She needs an unplanned emergency C section for her twins. As a result, they're preemies who have to spend time in the NICU. And then she learns that one of them has Down syndrome. And she has to navigate all of this while also taking care of her older son, her husband, and herself. The emotions were raw and real. The talk of the alphabet soup of acronyms was spot on. The discussion of the avalanche of information available, overwhelming and helpful at the same time, was perfect. The struggles with what ifs and whys and futures...yes. And so while my daughter was not a preemie nor does she have Down syndrome, I still could identify with this book as the mom of a girl who caught me entirely off guard. It's a beautiful book, full of love, but it doesn't mince words and it's incredibly honest. It's going in my pile, with the other two books I mentioned above, to look at when I need a boost. "Hope is the note of all our songs," Groneberg writes, and I want to write that over and over and over. (I also found that Groneberg hasn't updated her blog in about a year and a half - I hope she comes back to it, because I really want to know what happened since she last updated!)

And because I know how Google spiders work, and because I'm always looking to connect with other parents who are like me, and because maybe you found this post via some helpful keywords, I'll give a bit of background on my own kid just in case. (And maybe someday I'll do a bigger post about all of this.) All things considered, my pregnancy was relatively uneventful. She was born just past full term. I had a wonderful natural birth. We left the hospital early. I began nursing her within an hour of her birth, and we never had any major issues (and still don't). We had no inkling anything was amiss until she was six months old (first-time parents and all that), and we didn't receive a diagnosis until she was about 13 months old. She has mild cerebral palsy, but we still don't know why. She's hypotonic rather than hypertonic (with some mixed tone). Her prognosis is bright, with doctors and specialists telling us she will walk and talk, sooner rather than later. She races around with a walker right now and has a few words and signs - and some definite opinions about her world. And we're still figuring her out, day by day. And I'm an indie funky crunchy mom who never stopped being any of those things. I don't fit into most support group settings - I'm too loud or too crunchy or too out-there or my kid isn't disabled "enough" or doesn't have the "right" kind of disability for the group. But that's OK - I'll find my own support team the way my kid has found hers. 

So there you have it. Book one of 2011 - I'm hoping to read 100. I tried to make Great House by Nicole Krauss my second book of the year, but I just couldn't get through it - too dense, too twistyturny, and not where my head is at right now. I told you I rarely read fiction, though, and I can respect that this book IS beautifully written. But I won't finish it, alas. I think book two is going to be something light and ridiculous - watch for a review. Maybe.

Book Review: The History of Love by Nicole Krauss

I rarely read fiction anymore. My time for reading is limited, what with the whole special-needs kid thing (plus, if I'm honest, the Internet-is-distracting thing, a fact I'm not entirely proud of), and I prefer nonfiction. Books I can learn from. Books that keep me interested from beginning to end. Books about real people doing real things. I've never liked mysteries, for example - I just want to know WHO DID IT ALREADY. And yet, I'm a passionate reader, and I do love a good story, it just has to be special. The History of Love by Nicole Krauss was special.

I'm not sure if I can do this book justice beyond saying the above - that this was one of those rare fiction books that sucked me in and kept me turning the pages. It's several threads woven into one big tapestry. It's stories over here and stories over there that suddenly come together in a big A-Ha moment. And the writing. The writing is beautiful. The writing is what I loved best - the stories were fascinating, the characters were fully drawn, but the general tone of the writing was simply lovely.

You want a brief synopsis? A man lost his family in the Holocaust and came to America to find the love of his life had also been lost, though in a different way. A young girl wants to know what's going on with her own family, which has been falling apart for some time. A young boy wraps himself in religious fervor. A man is wracked with guilt over a choice he made years ago. A man finds out that things are not what he thought they were as he was growing up. A woman makes a decision that changes the course of history. And it all connects together, but not in the ways that I ever expected. 

And for me, easily distracted these days, the segmented story kept me interested and enabled me to occasionally (reluctantly) put the book down for a bit while I tended to more important matters. In the end, the payoff was totally worth it all, even if I felt like I probably should sit down and draw out a map of the story, complete with arrows and dashed lines and notes. Basically, you need to add this book to your to-read list right now. (And while I'm not currently in a book group, I think this would be a great choice for one.)

I've begun reading Krauss's second novel, Great House, although I've only had time for a few pages. So far, her writing seems to have retained its magical quality. Maybe tonight I'll shut down the computer and dig in for an hour or so.

According to my poor record keeping of 2010, I read approximately 45 books this year. I fell short of my usual goal to read 50, but I also read many, many picture books many, many times. I didn't officially count those, but trust me, I was reading even when I wasn't reading. I expect this trend to continue through 2011...

Happy New Year!

List Week - Fifteen Fabulous Books - December 17, 2010

Fifteen Fabulous Books I Read in 2010 

(that may or may not have actually been released in 2010)

(though I think most were)

(links go to my reviews, either on this blog or elsewhere) 

(not all books I reviewed made it onto this list, FYI)

(I behaved myself and didn't link to Amazon with affiliate links anywhere in this post)

(obligatory "in no particular order" statement)

1. Rat Girl by Kristin Hersh. (memoir)
2. The Butcher and the Vegetarian by Tara Austen Weaver. (memoir-ish, stunt journalism/a year-long project, food writing-y)
3. This Lovely Life by Vicki Forman. (memoir) (heartbreaker)
4. Home Cooking by Laurie Colwin. (food writing/memoir) (totally not from 2010)
5. When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead. (YA) (deserved the Newbery) (that link goes to the Washington Post, and no, I didn't write for it this year)
6. Dawn Light by Diane Ackerman. (Diane Ackerman-y) (essays on nature)
7. Bright-Sided by Barbara Ehrenreich. (Anti-Self-Help? Exposé?)
8. Confessions of a Prairie Bitch by Alison Arngrim. (memoir) (hysterical) (and sad)
9. Room by Emma Donoghue. (fiction) (sorry Book Lady!)
10. Moon Rabbit by Natalie Russell. (picture book) (follow link to page 16)
11. Baxter, the Pig Who Wanted to Be Kosher by Laurel Snyder. (picture book) (Laurel FTW)
12. The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin. (stunt journalism/year-long project) (surprising)
13. The Secret Life of the Lonely Doll: The Search for Dare Wright by Jean Nathan. (biography) (OMG)
14. Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer. (Amazon says "food science, animal rights, fauna" - I don't know what to call it - memoir/exposé?)
15. My Baby Rides the Short Bus: The Unabashedly Human Experience of Raising Kids with Disabilities (essay collection) (this book changed my life)

Currently reading the History of Love by Nicole Krauss. I'll write a review here when I finish it, which hopefully will be sometime this weekend. The full list of books I read in 2010 can be found on my Shelfari page. Lesson learned: Mark each book with a date, whether actual or arbitrary, so I know which books belong to which year, because the site won't do it for me.

I'm looking forward to the new Jean Auel in 2011. (I lied. That's an Amazon referral link.) If that makes you think less of me, so be it. I sometimes have the urge to flash around all my credentials - master's degree! relevant undergrad degree! career in book publishing! professional writer! short stint working in a children's bookstore! - and then I think, hey, sometimes I just want to read fluffy foofy stuff and not be judged. It's like how musically I have accepted that I can love Heavenly and Britney Spears, Bat for Lashes and Lady Gaga, Janelle Monae and some of the new Deerhunter album. One dimensional is so me-at-15... So in 2011 I shall stop being defensive about my choices (which I've been working on anyway for, oh, ten years or so) and just be.

Book Review: The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin

 

When my neighbor and friend Paula Bloom raved about the Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin and offered to lend it to me (she'd recently moderated a webinar with Rubin for This Emotional Life/PBS), I admit I was a bit apprehensive. It wasn't that I didn't trust Paula's suggestion, it was that I wasn't sure what to expect from this book (and I had - and still have - a pile a mile high of books I need to get to already). Paula's copy was wonderfully tabbed and highlighted - so much so that I couldn't resist the lure of the whole sparkly package, so I dove in. And I found that I loved the book and can't stop talking about it.

It's another "I took a year and did something and wrote about it" book - but really, I love these kinds of books, and Rubin herself notes that she didn't know she was being trendy when she started her project. I had wondered if it was going to be a self-help/foofy/I-am-your-guru type book, but far from it, it was a regular woman - a mom, a writer - dealing with her own personal situation. It's a simple idea, actually; Rubin took a year and devoted it to figuring out the idea of happiness and how to make her own life happier. Each month she tackled an angle of her life and focused on just that - family, friendship, spirituality, hobbies - and analyzed what she could do, how she could do it, how well she did it, and whether it actually helped her be happier. She doesn't shy away from admitting when she doesn't quite do something perfectly, or when she struggles with her goals - and that was what made me warm up to the book.

She's also all about lists - great truths, secrets of adulthood, personal commandments, people who inspire her - and seriously, by now if you've read a few of my blog posts you may know that I love lists. I make them on the backs of envelopes and in TextEdit and...just everywhere. On my hand sometimes! And in the spirit of this book, I give you my little list of...

Marla's True Rules (A Work in Progress)

- Never argue online with a friend of a friend.
- Sometimes it is better to just walk away.
- If you've put someone in your past on purpose, it's probably best to keep him or her there.
- Anything worth having is worth researching first.

And because I'm "Being Marla" (as Rubin keeps saying she tries to "Be Gretchen), I can also say that I don't always follow my rules. But I try!

Rubin has a blog and an online toolbox and a bunch of other resources for those wanting to start their own projects. I don't know if I'll go that far, but then again, it is almost 2011 - a great time for starting a project like this. (Yeah, this would be a great holiday gift-y book or a January 1 get inspired-y book.) Check it. Read it. Buy it at a local indie bookstore. (sidenote: I saw another indie bookstore going out of business - this one in Chattanooga, TN - and it hurt my heart, so protect your local indie!) Be happy.

PS Hey there, Gretchen Rubin, if you happen to find your way here via Google Alerts or back links or just randomness, I have to tell you that my favorite bit was when you noted you've kept your copies of Cricket magazine. I kept all of mine for years, and then my mother made me throw away many of them (which broke my heart) - but somewhere, somewhere in a box at her house or mine, I kept the first issue (bought at a used bookstore when I was around ten or so), the 100th issue, the 10th anniversary issue, and a few other special ones. And I have the Cricket cassette. I just wanted you to know that.

K-cups, Black Friday, and more - November 26, 2010

My daughter had this week off from preschool, so there's been precious little time for blogging. Here's what I can tell you:

• Still enamored of my Keurig brewer. The best prices I've found on K-cups are at Bed, Bath & Beyond with a coupon (so they come out to about $7.50-$8.50 for a box of 18 cups). I still haven't used my B2G2 coupon for Keurig.com (you'll get one too if you register your brewer there) but I have a bunch of things in my shopping cart - mostly chocolate-based coffees, unsurprisingly. I plan on going to BB&B with a fistful of coupons in the next few days (I also want a storage unit for the cups - I love the drawer that goes under the brewer) and getting a box or two there. 
• I tried iced coffee with the machine, by the way, and it worked just fine. There are a million other ways to make iced coffee, this one's just fast and easy. Brew over glass of ice, the end. I don't think I need a special iced-coffee K-cup for this, but maybe down the road I'll try one. I do want to try the iced Southern sweet tea K-cup though...
• I noticed that the Solofill is going to be available via Amazon in mid-December. This reusable cup for the Keurig brewer seems to be garnering the best reviews, so I'll be grabbing it with credit from Swagbucks for sure.
• I did very little Black Friday shopping. For the past two years I've hit CVS on Black Friday for all the freebies, but this year I had no ECBs and the weather outside was nasty and my kid had a terrible, sleepless night (she had a string of great nights followed by way too many nights full of hours of screaming, kicking, and crying) that made us all groggy, so I skipped it. What did I buy? A limited edition scent from Rockin' Green cloth diaper laundry detergent (I love this stuff and wish I'd started using it sooner! My diapers no longer have the stinkies! I've used Soft Rock and Funk Rock so far - I ordered Classic Rock in Sugar Ray Plum this time) and a set of towels on lightning sale from Amazon.
• I set up a coupon code for my Etsy store for the first time. This one's only for Facebook fans of my shop, so head on over there. I'm sure I'll create a code or two for my blog readers as well...
• Zipper pulls are back in stock at my Etsy store, by the way. So far I've only listed breastfeeding-themed zipper pulls, but cute animals and fun designs are on their way soon.
• Next week is my second craft show of the year - and I'll have brand new art (from Piddix!) for the mirrors I'm bringing.
• I'm finishing up the Happiness Project and plan on having a review for the blog very, very soon. (Short review: Love it!)
• I'm looking forward to going to Publix in the next few days and stocking up on Gardein - dorky, but true! It's on BOGO at $4 (so $2 each) and I bought 20 $1/Gardein coupons on ebay for $1.50 - totally worth buying coupons in this case!
• Alas, I couldn't find the Gardein faux-turkey meal this year, so I had a Tofurky for Thanksgiving. It's OK, I just really wanted something new and exciting this time around. I have to say, though, that I love an open-faced Tofurky-and-gravy sandwich. I was disappointed that this year's meal kit didn't have the dumplings and instead had a chocolate cake. I loved the dumplings!
• Tell a friend about my blog, would ya?

Book Review: The Great Typo Hunt by Jeff Deck and Benjamin D. Herson

It's a cold, rainy day here in Georgia, and I'm thinking that this book review may wind up being very unhelpful for those wondering if they should read The Great Typo Hunt: Two Friends Changing the World, One Correction at a Time. These boys picked a subject near and dear to my heart; just a few days ago, I put proofreaders' marks on a sign at my daughter's school proclaiming "Volunteer's Needed," and I pointed out "Kid's Eat Free" to the girl at the counter of a local pizza place. If I could, I totally would've joined their quest across the country, my own little correction kit slung across my shoulder, fixing typos wherever I went. In a nutshell, I absolutely loved the premise of this book and the overall story behind it. Loved it.

I'm just not sure - and I openly admit that this could also be my jealousy and bitterness shining through - that this needed to be a book. Do all blogs with great stories need to become books? Is there a way to reward great writing and great stories financially in another way? Will blogs with great stories attract the same audience, in both size and quality, that the printed word attracts? Do all of these questions run counter to my belief that printed books trump e-readers any day of the week? But can't we also agree that a book is static while a blog is living, and that stories like this may continue beyond the confines of the covers? And why is it that when I stop and think about other blogs-to-books that I've read, I can't think of any that I actually disliked or felt were undeserving of the leap? (Like, oh, I don't know, this blog could totally be a book. Somehow. About smoothies and book reviews. Or something.)

Let me explain further. I felt like sometimes there were points where the story of the typo-correcting road trip was fleshed out more than necessary. I felt like sometimes there were points where the history of language and grammar bogged down the flow of the story. I felt like sometimes I wanted to just hear about the typos being corrected without the grammar lesson. But again, I'm jealous and bitter, and I also have a master's degree in this stuff, so I've already learned it. Not everyone has.

So maybe my blog-to-book thoughts aren't general after all; they're specific to this book.

I think I would have preferred to have read about TEAL (the Typo Eradication Advancement League) in its original blog form. But then I also would've missed out on the whole getting-in-trouble-for-fixing-a-sign-at-the-Grand-Canyon part of the story (which I loved reading) and a lot of the behind-the-scenes drama.

I'm stumbling here because a) I am terrified that I've made a typo somewhere in this entry that will be pointed at and ridiculed (but I am imperfect), and b) I am pretty sure that at least one of the book's authors will see this since he follows me on Twitter and my blog post titles are posted on Twitter and...well, I'd click if I saw my (imaginary) book reviewed on a blog too. Um, hi. Underground Atlanta is bizarre, you should've come to Decatur! I love Somerville! Manch Vegas FTW!

Here. Let me sum it up for you. I liked this book, I questioned the general "blog to book" concept. Its/It's makes me STABBY, and incorrect apostrophes make me cry. I don't think typos make little towns more charming and I don't think language is evolving to such an extent that you can make up spellings whenever you want. I have a limited attention span now that I have a kid and I did finish the book (that doesn't always happen anymore) so that should say a lot.

A mere $1 plus shipping gets you this fabulous one-inch button, which I designed.

Book Review: Room by Emma Donoghue

Room by Emma Donoghue

Oddly enough, I came across this book via a post on Oh No They Didn't, which is really a celebrity gossip site. Someone thought that the trailer for this book (by the way, video trailers for books amuse me greatly) was worthy of a post. I clicked and was intrigued. The book has been on my library request list for a bit, and I finally got to pick it up yesterday. I read the whole thing in about three hours, unable to put it down.

The book, as you may already know because it's on various bestseller charts and is getting lots of press, is told from the perspective of Jack. Jack lives in Room with Ma. And we find out that Ma was kidnapped when she was 19 and has been kept in Room ever since. She's now 27, Jack is five. All Jack has ever known is this Room, and Ma works hard to make sure he doesn't question his living situation. She also makes sure he's educated and doesn't let him watch too much TV, using it as a tool only when necessary. And as I said to a friend who had already read the book, 200+ pages set just inside Room would probably be a bit much...but I'll refrain from giving you any true spoilers.

Jack talks and thinks like a five year old. A five year old who has never been outside and who has no concept of what's real and what's not. He's the traditional unreliable narrator in that respect. So it might take you some time to get into the rhythm of his world (I jumped right in, but I'd also read a bit about the story ahead of time). It's worth it though. And I had to read a section of about five pages midway through reallyreallyreallyfast because it was so intense. But there were times when I did wish the camera would swing away from Jack and show me other parts of the world, or where I wished Jack would overheard just a few of the conversations he simply reports are muffled. I always want more detail though.

This isn't a happy book, but it's also not gory or graphic. It's a fast read and a haunting one. I can't stop thinking about it, since it's unfortunately based on a few true stories. And it made me cry, but not for the reason you'd think. (I can't tell you or I'll spoil it for you, but there was a scene that is very close to my heart.) So yes, I'd say this is worth picking up if you can. I rarely read fiction and I liked it, so that should say something. Now I'm going to run back to the Great Typo Hunt, which I had started but put aside, to cleanse my palate.

And no, I guess I'm not giving you a full on review of Medium Raw after all. Here are my brief thoughts:

• It was disjointed and uneven, with some chapters telling far more interesting stories than others. I skipped a few.
• Parts of it were weirdly redundant within a few sentences; where was his editor?
• I loved reading about his attempts to turn his kid off of McDonald's.
• I was less interested in the autobiographical bits and the where-are-they-now pieces.
• Bourdain has a way with words that always sucks me in. I can't help it.
• And I'm a vegetarian who reads his work and is always amused at his vitriol. But I appreciated his honesty in how he reacted to a vegan asking him for support just after returning from a war zone.

Book Review: Rat Girl by Kristin Hersh

Rat Girl by Kristin Hersh

I am pretty sure the first time I became aware of Throwing Muses (at least in a conscious way) was around 1990, when a friend (an older guy in a cool local band - he was friends with my dad!) made me a mix tape to introduce me to music beyond my top-40 worldview. Hate My Way was on there, and he called it one of the best pop songs he'd ever heard, if I remember correctly. (The tape also included everything from Shonen Knife to the Sundays and it changed my life, as did the zines he sent me.)

Since then, I've been a fan of the Muses, of Kristin solo, of the Breeders, of Belly, of Tanya Donelly solo. (I like 50 Foot Wave too, yes, but they're not entirely my style.) I've seen Kristin perform solo many, many times, and she's simply mesmerizing to watch. Love her. Love her lyrics, love how she stares into space in a trance while she sings, love her energy. (I've also seen the Muses, Belly, and Tanya perform, and I've met Kristin and Tanya - both wore my tiara - click the links for more about that...)

Digression: The last time I saw Kristin perform was at Criminal Records in Atlanta. I was barely pregnant, not really showing but feeling like I was already giant. And a little girl pointed at me and said "Baby!" and her mother looked kind of terrified and horrified. I was ecstatic and let the mom and the girl know that yes, there was a baby in there...

In any case, I wasn't surprised to find that Kristin Hersh's memoir is intense and profound and also really, darkly funny. It's based on a diary she kept when she was 19, during a time period in which she was diagnosed as bipolar, was hearing voices and songs (she says she doesn't write the songs, they just swirl around her until she writes them down - which mostly seems...less than pleasant) and then became pregnant (which changes how her songs channel themselves and how she interacts with the world). The story is interspersed with flashbacks from her childhood and with Muses song lyrics that are relevant to the narrative. This book is a bumpy ride through chaos and out of it, and it offers an incredible insight into such an amazing musician. And it's simply a great story - particularly when she's discussing her friendship with actress Betty Hutton, when she's describing the ridiculousness of recording the band's first EP, and when she's thinking about hiding a snake in a bag in her lap. And as a mother myself, I loved reading about her pregnancy and how she handled it. (She's now a mom of four.)

I'm getting gushy. It's hard not to be fangirly about this book, in a way. It's like she invited me into her house for a few hours and said "let me tell you about this transitional time in my life" and then spilled it all. I could totally hear her gravelly voice telling the whole thing. Oh and I know I said it before, but it's WICKEDLY funny - a funny book with a not-so-funny core. I love that. And I don't feel like I'm doing this book justice with this review so just trust me on this one -even if you've never heard of Kristin, you just need to grab Rat Girl by the tail and immerse yourself in it. Meanwhile, I really need to buy Crooked: An Album (which is sort of a book too) when I earn enough Amazon gift cards from Swagbucks. Or maybe sooner. Yeah, probably sooner.

Kristin makes money by offering her music up for free and requesting donations, by touring, and by being awesome. Do check out http://throwingmuses.cashmusic.org and http://kristinhersh.cashmusic.org/ see what I mean.