Goodnight Nobody, by Jennifer Weiner (2005)
Oh, no she didn't. No, she did not name her protagonist "Kate" when fully HALF THE AUTHORS IN THE WORLD have already done so. Surely not.
A common comment for me to make about a book is that I enjoyed it whenever I was actively reading it, but that if I put it down I had no urge to get back to it. This book was the opposite: I was always eager to get back to it, but as soon as I started reading I was disappointed afresh. Variations of the verb "to schlep" are used more than once. There is so much boring description of what characters are wearing: slouchy boots, boot-cut wool pants, suede EVERYTHING. There are well-intentioned but nevertheless grating generalizations about stay-at-home moms: they are either freakily perfect slim/highlighted Stepfordesque creatures who completely sublimate their own personalities beneath a layer of crafty-crafts and tofu snacks, or else they're sweatpants-wearing hapless slatterns, bored and frantic for diversion, making slapstick social errors. We are meant to identify with the latter, which is hardly flattering.
The plot takes turns being either too bizarre or too formulaic: it never hits that sweet spot of surprise and believability. Oh, shall I tell you what the plot IS? It is that a bored homemaker, Kate, is the one to find the murdered body of a fellow homemaker. Because Kate is so unstimulated in her homemaker environment, she gets involved in trying to solve the case. If you're going to read a Jennifer Weiner book, try In Her Shoes or Little Earthquakes instead.
Meridon, by Philippa Gregory (1990)
It was a relief to finally finish this, the third book in the Wideacre trilogy. All three books are what reviewers are forced at knifepoint to refer to as "page-turners," but the plots are so CRAZY. People are always being manipulated by bad people into doing things they would never want to do--and then they try to fix it and end up digging themselves way deeper. And often they have this weak, listless reaction to all of it, like they're powerless even to say the word "no," let alone take out a horse whip and kick some evil ass.
At least in this third book, there is less rhapsodizing about The Land, The LAND, the glorious land unlike any other. I couldn't identify with that feeling that a bunch of grass and dirt and bugs was somehow superior to everyone else's bunches of grass and dirt and bugs.
I can't say much about the plot without dropping spoilers about the first and second books. If you've read the first and second books, you know what this book is about: it's about Sarah, and where she ends up, and what she does about Wideacre. And if you haven't read the first and second books, you have to read those before this one anyway, so what do you need a plot summary for?
The ending of this long story is satisfying if predictable--and I would have felt cheated by an unpredicted ending.
Torch, by Cheryl Strayed (2005)
By the time 38-year-old Teresa Wood learns she has cancer, she has only 7 weeks left to live. This is not really a story about her final weeks or her eventual death, but rather about the changes her death brings to her family: her "we don't need a piece of paper to be married" partner, Bruce; her college-age daughter, Claire; her high-school-age son, Joshua. It's a sad and satisfying book, the kind where sometimes you want to kick the characters in the face for being such dumbheads, but mostly you just feel sorry for them and wish they wouldn't keep going in that direction, or else glad that they seem to be pulling it together. I guess I'm not in a big rush to recommend it to all my friends, but certainly it is a quality book.
Digging to America, by Anne Tyler (2006)
If you like the same Anne Tyler books I like, you will like this one as well. It is the type that has interesting character studies and an overall uplifting story, as opposed to the type that makes me feel as if life is not worth living.
Which Brings Me to You, by Steve Almond and Julianna Baggott (2006)
Here is what I notice about these two people we're supposed to assume are soulmates. That when they first meet, they get along only when they are all hot and heavy. That when they continue their relationship by letter, they get along only when each person is talking about himself/herself. That when they meet in person again, they don't get along until they start getting hot and heavy again. (I'm sorry, is "hot and heavy" an eye-rollingly outdated term? Please substitute "hooking up.")
I am not, in general, in favor of "gimmick" books. This one's gimmick is that most of it takes place in letters, including postmarks. I admit that as I got into each letter, and got past the point where it felt like a letter and into the part where it felt like a story, I was absorbed and interested. But I cared not one teensy whit for either of these two people, with all their "why do we say disheveled and never sheveled"-style cleverness, and their dumb obvious puns, and their irritating salutations, and their belief that somehow pure ugly honesty of the tell-it-all variety is going to make their relationship work beautifully as opposed to coming back to bite them both in the butts after the sexual chemistry dies down a little and each one of them flings out things like, "Oh yeah? Well YOU'RE the one who had feelings for your SISTER, you PERV!!"
Both John and Jane (gimmicky names alert) have good stories to tell, and tell them well. As soon as they start mooning around about honesty, and "being real," and about how damaged they are, and about how bad they've been, and about how relationships work, and about how you and I have something that doesn't come along every day, I just want to slap them and then throw up on them.
Also, a nitpick: if your car's brakes aren't working because you're sliding on ice, the emergency brake will not help. The emergency brake is for if your brakes fail for some other reason, like they malfunction or a tennis ball gets stuck under the pedal. I speak from bitter experience.
Possible Side Effects, by Augusten Burroughs (2006)
I loved it. He's so funny. He seems like he must be an impossibly difficult, neurotic, damaged person, but his writing makes that seem....cute.
My Latest Grievance, by Elinor Lipman (2006)
I loved this entertaining book about an intelligent, smart-mouthed teenaged girl and her intellectual professor parents living on a college campus in the dorm's "housemother" apartment. When a vivacious-to-the-point-of-mental-instability former flame of the girl's father appears on campus, everything gets in a scandelous uproar--but the family continues to discuss the nuances of every single word and action. My kind of folks.
26a, by Diana Evans (2005)
I don't like books written from the point of view of someone going crazy.
She Got Up Off the Couch: And Other Heroic Acts from Mooreland, Indiana, by Haven Kimmel (2006)
I've read two other books by Haven Kimmel, and loved both. Perhaps because I loved those so much, and went into this one so happily, it took me a little while to get into it. Once I did, though, I was as delighted with it as I was with the first two. I don't think I should tell you much about the book, because as soon as I started to say "small-town coming-of-age memoir" you'd abandon the whole idea. (In a preface, the author says how sick she herself is of such things, which endeared her to me even more.) It really ISN'T that, anyway. You know what it is? It's a book of essays, some funny and some moving, with the feeling of fiction because it doesn't seem like anyone's real life should be so interestingly and amusingly written about.