My Boyfriend's Back: True Stories of Rediscovering Love with a Long-Lost Sweetheart, by Donna Hanover (2005)
It's hard to resist this kind of thing: High school sweethearts break up, marry other people, and then come back together in the end. Sweet. This book is a whole bunch of that. Too bad it's not better written.
The writing is choppy, disorganized, and repetitive. Sometimes I would think I was accidentally reading the same section over again--but no. Other times I thought, "Yes, but where is she GOING with this?" Stories of her own reunited relationship are mixed randomly with other people's stories, psychological analysis, and general comments. I think the problem may have been too little meat: the author only had a few connecting points to make between stories, but she felt she needed to fill up more space than that so she kept going.
The points themselves are lightweight. The author brings in psychologists to explain why reunited couples feel the way they do, but it's stuff I believe we could have figured out for ourselves, things like "They have a shared past" and "They already know they have a connection." Well, duh.
Still, it's fun to read about the couples, even if their stories are not rivetingly written. I expect that single women all over the country are searching for old boyfriends now. And the book includes a wise cautionary section about how people may have changed, or how you shouldn't just fling yourself into the abyss for the sake of an old dream. Then it gives some more examples of how great it worked out when people flung themselves into the abyss for the sake of an old dream.
Big plus: a "then and now" photo section in the middle of the book. Too bad there weren't photos for all the couples, but perhaps not everyone had photos from "then." And couldn't the photos have been in order? I had to look through most of the section each time, searching for the couple I was reading about.
To sum up: Great idea, but needed more work--and maybe a different author altogether.
We Are All Fine Here, by Mary Guterson (2005)
I took this book off the library shelf three times and put it back twice. Something about the cover made me think I might not like it: something about the layout, something about the font, something about the hot pink--these things made me think I shouldn't bother with the book. Luckily, it was a slim-pickins day at the library and I took it because I couldn't find much else.
I don't know if it would be helpful to tell you the plot, because reading the book flap didn't draw me to the book. It's your basic tale of female mid-life dissatisfaction: child is a distant teenager, husband is interested in someone else, old boyfriend seems like he would have been a better choice. Things get more interesting when Julia, our mid-life female, sleeps with her husband and her old boyfriend within days of each other--and then realizes she's pregnant. Still, the plot is not what made me like this book.
Here is a sample of what I liked: "I always cry at the doctor's office. I know I'm paying for it, but still, I feel so cared for. I'm aware of how pathetic that sounds. Pretend I didn't say it."
Also, the little quizzes, separate from the plot: a scenario, such as a wife receiving a sex tape from her husband, and then you choose (a) This is a good gift; (B) This is a lousy gift; or (C) This isn't a gift at all.
Also, the scene where Julia tells her friend Gwen that she's pregnant, and Gwen "more or less pees her pants and has to run home across the street to change."
Things take a sad turn toward the end of the book, but there is a feeling that it will eventually be okay. Sad, but also okay.
The Long Goodbye, by Patti Davis (2004)
Several years ago, I read another book by Patti Davis, The Way I See It, in which she throws such a bratty tantrum about her supposedly abusive parents I felt like raising a hand to her myself. The author regrets her previous book, and that's nice. But it's clear she's still an intense and difficult person.
Her love for her father is clutchy and possessive; her stories seem to exclude other family members. She sees him now as the font of all wisdom, dispensing such unique gems as that a horse can sense your fear. She laments that she wasted so many years when she could have learned so much more from him. He was a great guy, it's clear, but pretty much ANYONE'S relatives can tell you this stuff.
Her new relationship with her mother makes me nervous. Many of the conversations she reports sound like she towers over her mother, telling her how to feel and be.
The theology is a mixed bag, God-of-Our-Fathers snuggling comfortably with Maya mythology and Sufi prayers. The spirit of her pet dog comes back to comfort her and teach her about grief.
I will say this: Patti Davis is a very good writer. I have complained in the past about authors who use eye-rollingly poetic words: "eyes the color of thunderstorms," "hair the color of sunshine," etc. Patti Davis uses beautiful language that--and this is the key, smelled-like-a-summer's-day writers, so pay attention--also makes sense. She may be self-absorbed, but at least she can communicate what she's feeling and thinking. There is even a pleasing side to her self-awareness when she talks about her regrets: as if she has spent a great deal of time evaluating where exactly she went wrong and coming to intelligent conclusions that would satisfy anyone.
In short, don't read this book looking for stories about Ronald Reagan. Read it only if you are interested in Patti Davis.
The Baby Name Wizard, by Laura Wattenberg (2005)
This is an exceptional baby name book. Many name books are lists of names with meanings and origins, and those are nice too, but this is the kind of baby name book you'll read for fun even if you have no baby to name. If you leave this book out in your living room, friends will come over and start browsing through it, reading excerpts aloud. It's a fun book.
Each baby name has a "snapshot"--a sort of summary. The "Style" category is elaborated on in larger sections later in the book; I skipped the snapshots and read those first, then went back to the snapshots. Here's a sample name:
*****
KRISTEN
Popularity: #226
Style: '70s-'80s, The -ens
Nicknames: Kris, Kristie, Krissy
Variants: Kristin, Kristina, Kirsten, Christen
Sisters: Lindsay, Erica, Danielle, Katrina, Heather
Brothers: Derrick, Jeremy, Corey, Justin, Brett
Every possible form of Christine was a hit in the '70s and '80s. One of the biggest was Kristen, which sounds so much like a Scandinavian girls' classic it's hard to believe it's a modern creation.
*****
Plus there's a little graph next to each name, showing its popularity over the last 100 or so years. My favorite part is the suggested sibling names. Those are generated by a computer model the author designed to choose names similar in style. It's a fun way to get ideas: you might start with a name you like, and then find that the sibling names give you more ideas; then go look at the snapshots for those sibling names and you'll get still MORE ideas. And all your friends will be looking up their own names and exclaiming when they find their siblings' names listed.
I highly recommend this book for anyone interested in names, whether or not you happen to be breeding at the time. And it would make a super-keen gift for anyone expecting a child.
The Sweet Potato Queens' Big-Ass Cookbook (and Financial Planner), by Jill Conner Browne (2003)
Even though I liked the first two Sweet Potato Queens books, I put off reading this one because it didn't seem like it would be interesting to read a cookbook. (1) It's not just a cookbook. (2) Even the cookbook parts are interesting to read.
I don't know how anyone can resist these women. Can they really be having this much fun? And these recipes--my god, the butter alone should be killing them off left and right, and that's before we even get to the bacon. And Cool Whip. And Twinkies.
The Best of Clarence Day, by Clarence Day (1948)
When I am reading the first half of this collection, I am reading one of my favorite books. Not so with the second half.
The first half includes two volumes, God and My Father and Life With Father. These short stories offer snapshots of a man; the skillful writing makes him fascinating and funny. Father is formidable, a man with a stormy temperament who considers himself the only truly rational being. He begs to inform Mother that he is not a wild animal. He declines to be party to a church fundraiser. He explains his views at great length and at great volume.
The second half includes Life With Mother, This Simian World, and selections from Thoughts Without Words. Mother is better in the first half of the book, as a foil for Father; without Father, she is not interesting enough to carry the stories. I found This Simian World boring; each time I read this book I try to make myself read that part, but I never make it all the way through. Thoughts Without Words are primitive drawings with mediocre poems and aphorisms.
Bitch Creek, by William G. Tapply (2004)
Stoney Calhoun is 38, but when he's working at Kate's Bait & Tackle shop he tries to play up the old-man-saying-"ayuh" thing that goes over so well with Maine tourists. Stoney dates Kate with the permission of Kate's husband, and Stoney lives with his dog Ralph in a house he built himself. Stoney has a complete set of memories from the last 5 years of his life--but earlier than that, all he has is big gaping holes and little fragments. Five years ago he was released from an alleged hospital after 18 months of treatment for being allegedly struck by lightning. He's been told that his parents are dead and he has no other family, so he starts over in Maine, where things feel home-like to him. Every few months he gets a visit from a mysterious man in a suit, who wants to know if Stoney has remembered anything from his former life.
Then someone close to Stoney is killed, and someone is trying to kill Stoney as well. Since he doesn't remember his old life, he doesn't know if this might be connected to who he used to be. He finds he has a knack for detective work, and wonders if he that was his former profession; he uses this knack to figure out what's going on.
I'd thought that by the end of the book we would have the solution to two mysteries: the solution to who was trying to kill him, and the solution to his former life. We solve only the former. Here is my review: if this is the first in a series of books starring Stoney, in which we will gradually learn more about him, then this rocks. Amnesia makes a great subplot, rewarding the regular reader and keeping things interesting. But if this is a stand-alone book and we never get to know more about Stoney's life-before-5-years-ago, then that sucks.
The Same Sweet Girls, by Cassandra King (2005)
This "group of women friends" book relies heavily on soap-opera gimmicks: one woman was forced as a teenager to give up a baby, one was abused and even locked away by her crazy psychologist husband, and so on. It's the "always cancer, never a cold" approach to fiction writing: the author is unable to make everyday events resonate with her readers, so instead she sledgehammers them with high drama. It makes for entertaining reading, but there's more adrenaline here than substance. Many plot points are left unresolved: will she ever find her baby? will her son ever find out the real story about his abusive father? will her husband take her back? Furthermore, most of the women seem to intensely dislike each other; I'm not sure why we're supposed to buy the concept that they're dear friends who get together decade after decade.
Baker Towers, by Jennifer Haigh (2005)
It's hard for me to get interested in a book when I hear it's set in a mining town, or in the war-torn South, or anything else that seems like it might be historical and depressing. And that's so silly, because usually the setting is almost irrelevant to the story of people having relationships and heartbreaks and families and troubles, which is what I do enjoy.
This book is set "in a western Pennsylvania mining town in the years after World War II." But the important part is that it's about the five Novak children and what they do with their lives. We start reading about them the day their father dies, when the youngest child, Lucy, is still a baby, and the oldest, George, is a soldier. By the time the book ends, Lucy is grown up.
George marries the wrong woman but finds ways to turn his miseries into philanthropies. Dorothy, next eldest child, moves to Washington but has a never-fully-explained breakdown and spends the rest of her life a little off-center. Joyce, the middle child, gives up her intellectual potential and comes back home to take care of the family when no one else does. Sandy, second-youngest, plays around and never settles on anything. Lucy, the baby of the family, struggles with her weight and the loss of both her parents, and with the mysterious world of boys.
Once I made it through the first few pages, this was the sort of book I was eager to get back to. I felt satisfied with the characters and their lives.
The Guinness Book of Me, by Steven Church (2005)
This book held great appeal for me. Not only is it a memoir written by an extremely cute guy (think Vin Diesel turned sensitive writer/husband/father), but it's a themed memoir, built around the author's interest in the Guinness Book of World Records. Fun.
Soon, though, I began to feel restless. This didn't seem to be a memoir of the cute guy at all, but instead chapter upon chapter about the author's brother Matt and how inadequate the author felt compared to him. I wasn't particularly interested in Matt. I persevered, however, and soon understood where the author was going with that theme. There's still too much of it, but I get it now.
Because feelings of inadequacy and awkwardness pervade the book, I would like to address one thing I wouldn't normally address in a review. The author points out that "for some reason" people think it's okay to call him "big guy," even though he would never call another man "fat guy" or "little guy." Here's the reason: in our culture, "big guy" is a compliment (as long as "big" is not being used as a euphemism for "fat"), whereas "fat guy" and "little guy" are not. I agree that comments by strangers on a person's physical appearance are inappropriate, but there seems to be general agreement (however ill-advised) that it's acceptable when the comments are complimentary. If a guy is good-looking and muscular and 6'4", it's hard for people to avoid commenting on it, even though they should. I myself slipped in the first paragraph and again in the second ("the cute guy"--how degrading, as if that's the most important thing about him), and I think the previous sentence has to be considered a third slip.