What do you need to know to fake having read Jonathan Franzen? How should you go about picking up the cute guy browsing the biographies at your local indie bookstore? Which book should you buy for your obnoxious mother-in-law? What books should you feature on your living room bookshelf if you want visitors to know what a quirky hipster you are?
The answers to these questions and more can be found in the snarky homage to literature and the current literary scene that is Lauren Leto’s Judging a Book By Its Lover.
Book Review
I spent most of my reading time this week totally absorbed in The Casual Vacancy by J.K. Rowling. I’m calling this a post of “casual thoughts” rather than a review because I read too many reviews of the book before I read it to really have intelligent or articulate thoughts of my own. It feels more like my response to the book has been deeply impacted by both my love for Rowling’s Harry Potter series and all of the reviews I’ve read of the book so far.
In the 2008 recession, three-quarters of the 7.5 million jobs that were lost were lost by men. Women occupy just over half of the jobs in the United States, and more women than men are earning college degrees. The world has we know it, the world shifting to a post-industrial economy, is slow reforming itself to better suit women than men – at least that’s the argument that Hanna Rosin tries to make in The End of Men.
Although the name “Alexandre Dumas” is probably most recognized as the name of the author of such great works as The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo, the novelist Dumas actually shares the name with his father, General Alex Dumas, a mixed-race military leader in revolutionary France.
Alex — as he preferred to be called — Dumas was born to a black slave mother and a fugitive white Frenchman hiding out in Saint-Domingue. However, Alex was raised the son of an aristocrat, and eventually made a name for himself because of his dashing good looks and skill with a sword. Much to his luck, Alex found himself in France during a revolutionary time, one of the earliest civil rights movements, which allowed him to advance through the ranks of the French army until the Black Count commanded more than 50,000 men and became a threat to the great Napoleon.
Artist Gerald Murphy and his with Sara, were icons of expatriate life in the 1920s. They mentored or befriended artists like Picasso and Dorothy Parker, and even served as the inspiration for Nicole and Dick Diver in F.Scott Fitzgerald’s book Tender is the Night. But their lives weren’t without difficulty – it took them years to first find each other, their family was plagued by illness, and they constantly strove to invent a life for themselves that was both enchanting and different from the lives they were expected to lead.
In an effort to maybe, perhaps, hopefully get caught up on all the books I haven’t reviewed, I’m planning to start doing mini-reviews every couple of weeks for books that I read but didn’t have much to say about. If you have more specific questions about any of this week’s titles, leave them in the comments! In this post, How to Be a Woman by Caitlin Moran and Murder in Peking by Paul French.
In an effort to maybe, perhaps, hopefully get caught up on all the books I haven’t reviewed, I’m planning to start doing mini-reviews every couple of weeks for books that I read but didn’t have much to say about. If you have more specific questions about any of this week’s titles, leave them in the comments! In this post, The Dark Days of Hamburger Halpin and Codex.
In 1985, Lusita López Torregrosa was married to her career as an editor on the foreign desk at a major American newspaper. Recently out of a relationship, Torregrosa’s work provided “a semblance of ordinary life” at a time when she was struggling. Then Elizabeth entered the picture, a “bookish and terribly proper” writer for the newspaper’s city desk. When Elizabeth is given the opportunity to serve as a foreign reporter in the Philippines, Torregrosa decides to follow her. While there, the women make a life for themselves in a country marred by political turmoil. When they are forced to return to the United States, however, their relationship struggles to breathe in this new place.
In an effort to get caught up on all the books I read but haven’t reviewed, I’ve started doing doing mini-reviews every couple of weeks for books that I read but didn’t have much to say about. If you have more specific questions about any of this week’s titles, leave them in the comments! In this post, The Night Circus, Seating Arrangements, and Laura Lamont’s Life in Pictures.
One Sentence Summary: Game Change is a gossipy, inside politics style narrative of the 2008 election, from the historic primary between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama to the Republican vice presidential selection process, concluding with the general election between Obama and John McCain.
One Sentence Review: Game Change wonderfully captures the grand ambition and theatrical failures that come with a bid for the office of President of the United states.
