A Positive Update on The End of Your Life Book Club

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about a book I'm not loving.  The End of Your Life Book Club by Will Schwalbe seems like a book I'd absolutely adore and read in one day.  It's well written and about books for crying out loud!  What's not to love?  But, I haven't connected with it.  I've been forcing myself to read a page here and there just to get through it.  Finally though, I've hit a spot that really clenched my heart.  I'm about 30 pages from the end and without spoiling anything, the main character mother is on hospice care.  Things have gotten seriously real with her cancer and suddenly I've found the emotion that had been lacking. Will and his mom (Mary Ann) have read John Updike's book Tears of My Father: And Other Stories, a collection of short stories.  Will asks her which was her favorite story.  She says, "the first one".  It deals with death, which is currently hanging over her head like a velvet curtain. She directs Will to read this passage about a 55th class reunion:

This passage truly resonated with me.  I don't think any of us, once we are out of what we'd consider the prime of our lives, thinks of ourselves as any less than prime.  I know in my own head, I still feel like I'm 17, or maybe 21 or even 27, which was a very good year.  I imagine that will continue as I age, and frankly, I kind of like that idea.  The idealism of a room full of the rather aged still feeling like round cheeked beauties is lovely.  I also like that I've finally connected with Mary Ann, a truly remarkable woman who until this point in her story has felt at least an arms length from me.  At last, I feel I've really seen something very personal about her, about how she feels about her stage of life.  I know now that these final 30ish pages will fly by, and when all is said and done I may look back on the book as a whole with affection.

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The Dilemma of Not Enjoying A Good Book : A Review of The End Of Your Life Book Club

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Do you ever pick up a book with great reviews that seems like your cup of tea and then not like it?  I'm reading a book right now that I really ought to love.  It got great reviews, it's about a topics I'm interested in - books and relationships - but it just isn't clicking with me. In fact, it makes me slightly uncomfortable.  The End of Your Life Book Club by Will Schwalbe is the well written memoir of a man whose mother is dying of cancer.  He accompanies her to chemotherapy, and as they have always done, they talk about what they are reading.  Before they know it they feel they have formed a de facto book club, deciding what to read together so they can discuss it.  The book reveals the remarkable life of the mother who is a high energy soul, traveling the world working to help refugees and making friends everywhere she goes.  I would really like to be totally into the whole story, but it's told in such a matter of fact manner that's making it difficult to connect.  These are interesting people, but I'm kind of bored by what should be a compelling read. It's terrible to say a son's writing about the end of his dear mother's life is dry, but it is.  I feel shallow for saying it, but the book is not what I hoped it would be.  Perhaps I didn't fully realize it was a memoir. Possibly I expected a work of fiction?  It reminds me of a really long article from The New York Times.  That isn't necessarily a bad thing, but I think I'll be happy when I finish.  If you decide to read it (or already have), I'm interested in your opinion.  Do you have a different point of view that might make me take a second look?

Book Review: The Tragedy Paper by Elizabeth Laban

I tried posting this on Goodreads, but it wouldn't save the whole review.  I guess my paragraph was just too long or something.  (Not really.  Sometimes that site is wonky...)  So, I'm posting my review here and I'll redirect anyone who is interested from there.  :D

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My review:  I picked this book at the library based on three factors - it was on a shelf of books nominated for a Beehive Book Award (best/favorite books in Utah), it had an interesting title, and good cover design.  ( Hey, I was there with my three kids, I didn't exactly have the luxury of pouring over each book, deciding which to choose for myself.) When I got home, I read the inside jacket and wondered what I'd been thinking.  A teen romance?!?!  Jennifer Weiner gave it a glowing review?!?!  I hate her books!  I did eventually open it and was surprised.  It wasn't terrible.  It was fairly well written. I liked the device of one boy telling another his tragic love story remotely, and the characters were okay for a teen romance.  However, it was a really slow read.  I had to force myself to finish it.  So, I didn't hate it but I won't rush to find another like it.

Review: Jane Austen's Emma

I give Emma two of five stars because I reserve a one star rating for truly dreadful books like 50 Shades of Gray.  
Emma was not that bad.

 Before she began the novel, Austen wrote, "I am going to take a heroine whom no one but myself will much like."  Boy, she nailed that one.  Of all the uninteresting drivel... I've read IKEA directions with more compelling characters than the spoiled and manipulated Emma. This book has all the plot action of a flat EKG. I had a hard time getting in to Pride and Prejudice, but once I did I truly enjoyed it. I hoped it might be the same with Emma, so I kept trudging through. (It took more than a month to force myself to read this book.  Highly unusual for me.) Not once can I say I enjoyed this book.  Not once can I say I was charmed by the supposedly charming Emma, that I enjoyed her continued confusion and humiliation, nor did I enjoy any of the other "delightful" characters.  I found them quite flat.  I will not be in a hurry to read more Jane Austen.  

If you still want to read Emma for yourself, you can find it on Amazon:

Review: Inkheart by Cornelia Funke

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Synopsis from the School Library Journal:  Grade 4-8-An inventive plot and memorable characters will draw readers into Cornelia Funke's fantasy (Scholastic, 2003). Twelve-year-old Meggie and Mo, her book binder father, are fleeing their old enemy, Capricorn, when they arrive at Great Aunt Eleanor's book-lined villa in Italy. Though the three of them are brave and wily by turns, their cruelly-powerful nemesis manages to find them and their copy of the book, Inkheart. That's when Meggie learns about her father's extraordinary ability to read book characters into life, and the events that caused her mother's disappearance when Capricorn emerged from the title book. Meggie, Mo, Eleanor, and a host of friends and enemies go through plot twists that involve captures, escapes and, finally, an end to Capricorn's reign of terror. At the heart of it all, is the power of story and family love. Barbara Wysocki, Cora J. Belden Library, Rocky Hill, CT Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

What did I think?

(I would be remiss if I didn't preface this review by acknowledging the fact that this book has been translated from German.  I recognize than some of my points of displeasure may disappear if I could read it in it's intended language.  But alas, I don't speak German.)

I've been reading this book with my eleven year old as a bedtime story and ironically, I haven't found it a good read aloud.  (It's ironic because the plot revolves around reading aloud.)  When I started reading ahead by myself though, the story started moving faster and engaged me more.  A rather complex set of actions with out a lot of exposition or character development made this a difficult book for me to really get in to, especially only reading 15 or so minutes at a time with my daughter.  It is a very good story though, with an interesting premise (my daughter and I have had a good time theorizing which characters we'd try to read out of a book if we could and wondering if they'd be as appealing in real life - would we still like know-it-all Hermione if we had to hang out with her?) but it felt like the ending was rushed and tied up in a neat bow when that' not really how such a story would end.  I know there are two more long books in the series so this is not really the end, but I still would like this book to have it's own more substantial ending.  After all, these characters have just passed through hell.  They deserve more than a swift and glossy return to happiness.  All in all though, I did enjoy the book and think I'll encourage my daughter to either read ahead without me or set aside extra reading time because reading in longer stretches really did make a difference for me.  

Favorite Thing:  The premise.  It's lots of fun to consider being able to "read out" bits of books.

Least Favorite Thing:  There's very little character development.  They all seem to be malleable depending on the situation and a couple of the characters are pretty interchangeable.

Review: Jerry Spinelli's Jake and Lily

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I've read a lot of Jerry Spinelli's excellent work.  I have yet to meet a Spinelli book I don't like, and Jake and Lily is no different.  Spinelli likes switching among his characters voices to tell his stories, and it's a fun way to read and really get the whole picture.  In this case, we hear from twins, Jake and Lily.  Their grandfather gives them each a notebook and asks them to write their story.  In places they are very connected and finish each other's sentences, but in others they are distant and we see their divergent thoughts as Jake reaches for his own identity, forcing Lily to find herself, too.  Spinelli revisits familiar themes of individuality and connectedness, and while not as movingly done as in Maniac Magee, or Wringer, this is still an entertaining and insightful look at finding ones own way in life.  I especially liked the comment my 10 year old made after she read it: "Jake had to figure out for himself why Lily didn't like (the bully)."  She didn't know it, but she just got an introduction to the idea that people have to make their own mistakes and learn things on their own terms if they are to learn them at all.   Over all, I'd recommend this book to upper elementary or middle school age readers.