Chapter One Hundred Eighty-Four: Vinegar Girl

So Vinegar Girl, by Anne Tyler, is a modern retelling of Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew (one of my favorite Shakespeares, incidentally) from Hogarth Shakespeare, a publishing company committed to commissioning modern retellings of all the Shakespeare plays.  Many elements of The Taming of the Shrew had to be adjusted to make sense in modern context, and it was interesting to see how Tyler chose to do so.  I particularly liked her choice to reimagine the reason for Kate's marriage as a plot to get her father's research assistant American citizenship since his visa is about to expire.  While many people may dislike The Taming of the Shrew as an example of misogyny, I've never read it that way.  (I'll email a copy of my tenth-grade English essay to anyone who wants to know why, upon request, but basically I've always seen it more as a commentary on the importance of behaving kindly, for both women and men, although I can certainly see how it could be interpreted as a play about the proper (ie subservient) role of women.)  Anyway, Vinegar Girl is quite short and what it lacks in sweetness (not that sweetness is altogether lacking) it makes up for in humor.  I found the end both satisfying and slightly discomfiting--an odd combination, to say the least, but I won't say more for fear of spoiling the book.  If you enjoy The Taming of the Shrew, I definitely recommend checking out Vinegar Girl, or if you're just looking for fiction that's both entertaining and thought-provoking, give Vinegar Girl a try.

Chapter One Hundred Eighty-Three: Crosstalk

Okay, so it's actually been a month since I read Connie Willis's newest book, Crosstalk, and I really, really loved it!  But I wanted to wait just a bit to write about it to try to filter out my sheer giddy pleasure at reading it and say something even a bit sensible.  But why be sensible?  Let's be giddy just for a moment (or for most of this review) and reiterate that it's just the best book and that everyone should read it immediately!
Okay, now, to business.  Crosstalk is the hilarious tale of a young woman, Briddey, who in the very near future lets her boyfriend talk her into getting a new procedure done that allows the people in a couple to sense each other's emotions.  But as soon as she's had the procedure, Briddey finds to her horror that, instead of sensing her boyfriend's emotions, she's hearing the thoughts of one of her coworkers--and he can hear her, too!  And of course, chaos ensues.
I almost literally could not put this crazy, suspenseful and all too believable book down, devouring it in record time and thoroughly enjoying every second of it.  I haven't been so excited about a new book since J.K. Rowling's/Robert Galbraith's last mystery was published last fall--and when will the next one appear???--and that's about the highest praise I can offer to any book or author.  If you're looking for a funny book that will hold your attention and leave you feeling good, definitely read Crosstalk, and then recommend it to everyone you know!

Chapter One Hundred Eighty-Two: What the Dog Saw

This collection of Malcom Gladwell's essays for The New Yorker brings together some of the bestselling nonfiction author's favorite short pieces, ranging across topics as diverse as women's health, the Dog Whisperer, the history of hair dye in the United States, and ketchup (a more involved subject than you might at first suspect).  Whatever the topic, Gladwell was always able to gain and sustain my interest, and I picked up plenty of trivia factoids along the way.  (Did you know ketchup is so satisfying because it invokes all five major flavor groups?)  If you like short nonfiction, I'd highly recommend What the Dog Saw.

Chapter One Hundred Eighty-One: One Summer: America, 1927

Ever since listening to Hamilton, I've really been feeling I should brush up on my United States history, and Bill Bryson's One Summer fits the ticket.  While its focus is pretty narrow--the summer of 1927, as per the subtitle--Bryson didn't choose that summer at random, but because its events reflected or epitomized many of the larger historical trends of the times.  From prohibition to racism and eugenics, baseball to talking movies, the rise of aviation to the fall of the global financial system, Bryson weaves together numerous historical threads to paint an expressive (if meandering) picture of not just 1927 but the years leading up to it and the effects of some of its events on future years.  If you're looking for a highly focused history with a clear thesis, One Summer is not the book for you, but if you're willing to wander at a leisurely pace through the long, hot summer of 1927 and enjoy listening to stories that end up being more interconnected than they seem at first, One Summer offers an interesting glimpse into part of U.S. history--or at least provides a lot of trivia factoids!

Chapter One Hundred Eighty: Let's Pretend This Never Happened: A Mostly True Memoir

So I just finished listening to the audiobook of Jenny Lawson's first memoir, Let's Pretend This Never Happened: A Mostly True Memoir.*  I thoroughly enjoyed listening to this memoir, but first, an important fact about it: the cover features a taxidermied white mouse standing on its hind legs and wearing a cape and Elizabethan neck ruff, so if that scares you off, this probably isn't the book for you (although I'd still suggest giving it a try anyway because it's always good to expand your horizons).  What can I even say about Let's Pretend This Never Happened?  It's mainly hilarious (especially in the audio version, which features great sound effects (cow bells, staplers, crying babies, etc.) when appropriate and also because Lawson reads it herself, singing the title of each chapter).  Right, so Let's Pretend This Never Happened is definitely humorous, but it also offers up a nice balance of more reflective moments--it's not just Lawson mindlessly poking fun at herself or her childhood and family life.  (The key word in that last sentence was mindlessly--there's plenty of fun-poking, but never really just for its own sake.)  This memoir ranges from Lawson's childhood to her adult life (up till the time she wrote it, obviously, it's not like she tries to write a memoir of her future life, though if anyone could pull it off, it might be her), covering topics from taxidermy (duh) to her anxiety disorder to her time working in HR (hilarious!) to her attempt at being goth as a high schooler in rural, small-town Texas.  Basically, there's something for everyone in here!  But it's especially for you if you like memoirs of people with interesting daily lives, or humorous personal essays, or people who write with a really original voice.

>>Read alike: If you enjoy reading David Sedaris, definitely try Let's Pretend This Never Happened.



*You can find my thoughts about her second memoir, Furiously Happy, in a December 2015 post on this blog.  Her next book, You Are Here: An Owner's Manual for Dangerous Minds is coming out this fall, and I'm already on the waitlist at the library for it, so look for a future Jenny Lawson post, too.

Chapter One Hundred Seventy-Nine: The Night Circus

So I read Erin Morgenstern's The Night Circus about a month ago, before embarking on vacation (and actually ended up having a great conversation with the woman across the aisle from me on the plane when she saw me finishing it).  I don't know why it's taken me so long to write about it here, because I really enjoyed it and would definitely recommend it to anyone looking for a good solid fantastic love story about dueling magicians who just happen to be star-crossed lovers.  Set in the years around the fin de siècle, this story, told from multiple perspectives and not entirely chronologically, follows the movements of and main players in a literally magical circus.  The characters are vivid, the setting is engrossing, the plot is original--the whole book is really almost too atmospheric, but stops just short of being overdone and instead just creates this fantastic world that's a pleasure to inhabit for the course of the book.  (It reminds me a bit of The Swan Gondola--which I reviewed on this blog in August 2014--but where The Swan Gondola did go just that bit overboard in being atmospheric, The Night Circus gets the blend of atmosphere and action just right.  If you liked The Swan Gondola, though, do check out The Night Circus, and vice versa.)  I was so eager to find out how things would end that I couldn't read the last quarter of the book fast enough, and at some point I'd like to go back and re-read the book with a bit more of an eye toward its many details, now that the fever of wanting to know what will happen has been broken.  For an engaging and entertaining work of fantasy--or maybe magical realism is more accurate, actually--that combines intrigue and romance, take a look at The Night Circus.

Chapter One Hundred Seventy-Eight: Dark Matter

So I just, within the last hour, finished reading Dark Matter by Blake Crouch.  Not normally the type of book I'd choose on my own, I read it upon the strong and enthusiastic suggestion (exhortation, really) of a co-worker, and I see now why she was pushing it.  The first third or so of the book is... not slow, for sure, there's plenty of action--it's more that the stakes really aren't clear yet.  But at a certain point, everything shifts, and it's like [insert explosion sound effects here].  I'm not sure there are words to really describe it.  Then things get intense, and I was nearly late to work today and coming back from lunch because I was reading Dark Matter!  You have to be open to science fiction, and there's some fairly dark and violent stuff (but I generally steer clear of that sort of thing, and I was okay with this book), but if you want a book that will keep you guessing until the last page,  take a look at Dark Matter.