Title: Pain, Parties, and Work: Sylvia Plath in New York, Summer 1953
Author: Elizabeth Winder
Genre: Nonfiction
Year: 2013
Publisher: Harper
Acquired: From the publisher for review as part of a TLC Book Tour
Rating:

Review: In May of 1953, Sylvia Plath, then a 21-year-old junior at Smith College, arrived in New York City for a one-month assignment as a guest editor for the college issue of Mademoiselle. Plath, along with the 19 other women selected for these prestigious posts, would spend 26 sweltering, frenetic, life-changing days working on the magazine and learning how complicated the world of the 1950s could be for smart, ambitious women.

Pain, Parties, and Work is a biography of a moment, an exploration of the 26-day period that led to the first of Plath’s several breakdowns and suicide attempts. In the book, author Elizabeth Winder interviews many of the women Plath served with to gain and understanding of what Plath was like as a young woman, before she became the tortured, talented, and tragic poet we remember her as today.

I was drawn to read Pain, Parties, and Work after I learned that Plath’s time at Mademoiselle was the inspiration for her autobiographical novel The Bell Jar, a book I read for the first time almost exactly two years ago. I really connected with the protagonist, Esther Greenwood, and her struggle to feel like she fit. Plus, I didn’t know a lot about Plath other than the way her life ended and I was curious about what she was like as a young woman.

At the beginning of the book, I was a little skeptical that Winder was going to be able to draw many conclusions about Plath’s life based on a month-long experience. Her Mademoiselle stint seemed, at first, to be mostly about the second to words of the books title — parties and work. Plath was a glamorous young woman who loved fashion and makeup and food and her many boyfriends. She seemed, at times, rather frivolous and entirely carefree.

But as the book continued, I began to see what Winder learned through her interviews with the other guest editors — life in the 1950s was difficult for talented women. They received mixed signals about what they should want, even more than I think we get today. And it was difficult for Plath, trying to blend her sense of adventure and fun with her strong work ethic and perfectionism all within the strict ideals of what women were supposed to be, trying to reconcile “Medea with Emily Post.”

But Plath was not the only guest editor who struggled to survive this New York experience; the other women also had to work hard at the “self-policing, the grueling effort it took to make all that varnish seem like second nature.” While it’s sad to admit, I think women today still do this — put on a good face to others while privately struggling to meet the expectations that society creates. The expectations are different now than they were in 1953, but no less difficult to manage.

Pain, Parties, and Work is really a wonderful little book. It’s a biography of Sylvia Plath, but it’s also a look at 1950s womanhood and a portrait of life in New York City at this time. Winder packs a lot into the story, all while presenting a very specific but convincing exploration of a time that upended Sylvia Plath’s life and influenced her decisions for years to come.

Other Tour Stops: Savvy Verse & Wit |  50 Books Project | Veronica M.D | Unabridged Chick | The Road to Here | nomadreader | Man of La Book | The Blog of Lit Wits | Necromancy Never Pays | Luxury Reading | (May 7th) Tiffany’s Bookshelf | (May 8) Book Hooked Blog | (May 9) Peppermint PhD | (May 13) A Bookish Affair | (May 14) missris | (May 15) guiltless reading | (May 16) The Scarlet Letter |

If you have reviewed this book, please leave a link to the review in the comments and I will add your review to the main post. All I ask is for you to do the same to mine — thanks!

Time // 8:30 a.m.

Place // Back at my desk… it’s too chilly to be out on the porch today.

Eating // Nothing yet. But I am hungry. I might break in the middle of this to grab some food, but we’re pretty low on anything delicious right now. I suspect I’ll be going to the grocery store this afternoon.

Drinking // Lemon-flavored black tea.

Reading // I had a great reading week to follow up last weekend’s Readathon. Since last Sunday I finished three books: Divergent by Veronica Roth, The World’s Strongest Librarian by Josh Hanagarne and Telegraph Avenue by Michael Chabon. The top quote above is by George Orwell from The World’s Strongest Librarian.

Today I need to finish Pain, Parties and Work by Elizabeth Winder so I can post a review for a TLC Book Tour tomorrow (items five and six on my weekend to do list, bottom right photo). It’s very interesting so far, so I’m excited to share more about it with all of you. After that, I’m not sure what I’ll read next, probably one of my library books (Lean In by Sheryl Sandberg or A Natural History of Dragons by Marie Brennan — I decided I’m going to hold off on Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs until the October Readathon).

Watching // I finished season three of Fringe this week and I’m not feeling especially drawn into season four so far. Part of what I love about the show is Peter and Olivia and Walter being together, so the fact that they’re not is sort of annoying. I know things get back to “normal” eventually, but I’m not really excited to get there.

Nate and I also watched a couple of movies this week, Hitchcock (which we both liked a lot) and Iron Man 3 (where a lot of stuff gets blown up).

Listening // I started listening to Insurgent by Veronica Roth (the second in her YA series after Divergent). It’s pretty decent YA that holds my attention when I’m exercising. I’ve been trying to run more, but the chilly weather has left me pretty unmotivated.

Blogging // I didn’t get a lot posted this week, just a review of Frozen in Time by Mitchell Zuckoff and my April 2013 wrap-up, but I’m more optimistic about getting some posts up this week. I went to a local coffee shop yesterday and got drafts of several posts started — hooray!

Promoting // I’m looking forward to participating more fully in Armchair BEA, a way for book bloggers to participate in Book Expo America from the comfort of their living rooms. I am not going to BEA this year (a combination of money and wanting to travel other places), so I’m excited to try this out fully at the end of the month.

Avoiding // I have to work on a couple of small issues with my health insurance company, which I have been putting off for a couple of weeks now. I really need to get on the phone and take care of it today or tomorrow

Anticipating // I’m working on a really fun story for the newspaper this week, so I’m anticipating the time it’ll take that to get put together. If it works out like I’ve planned it in my head, it’s going to be really neat. I was inspired to try a more visual story by a new book I bought, The Newspaper Designer’s Handbook, which has the best dedication I’ve seen in awhile (bottom left photo).

Happy Sunday, everyone! What are you reading today?

I managed to read 13 books in April. And only two of those were books I read during the Readathon. This is not typical reading behavior — I’m normally much slower — but I’ll take it.

Looking at the list, there’s a lot of fiction and YA fiction, which was a nice change of pace and probably why I was able to read so much. I didn’t really get to any of the review copies I had on my shelves, but given how out of sorts I was for most of this month that’s probably a good thing. Crabby Kim is not an especially good book reviewer.

Books Read In April

1. Hochschild, Arlie Russell: The Outsourced Self (nonfiction)
2. Erdrich, Louise: The Round House (fiction)
3. Berger, Jonah: Contagious (audio book/nonfiction)
4. Flynn, Gillian: Sharp Objects (fiction)
5. Collins, Suzanne: Catching Fire (YA fiction/reread)
6. Yolen, Jane: Curses! Foiled Again! (YA graphic novel)
7. Shriver, Lionel: The New Republic (fiction)
8. Schuppe, Jonathan: A Chance to Win (nonfiction)
9. Grossman, Austin: You (fiction)
10. Zuckoff, Mitchell: Frozen in Time (nonfiction)
11. Collins, Suzanne: Mockingjay (audio book/YA fiction)
12. Brooks, Max: World War Z (fiction)
13. Roth, Veronica: Divergent (YA fiction)

I’m planning to do reviewletts of You and World War Z at the end of this week, but I’m not sure what I’m going to do about reviewing all of the YA fiction. I may just do a few Twitter-style reviews (140 characters) and call it done. Thoughts?

Other Books Reviewed

• Does Jesus Really Love Me? by Jeffrey Chu
• Let’s Explore Diabetes With Owls by David Sedaris

Books I Want to Read in May

• I’ve got two “required” books for this month: Pain, Parties and Work by Elizabeth Winder (nonfiction about young Sylvia Plath) and I Never Promised You a Goodie Bag by Jennifer Gilbert (a memoir of “survival, renewal, and transformation”) for a couple of book tours with TLC Book Tours.
• I need to read a couple of June releases to decide what to recommend for Bloggers Recommend. At the moment I’m looking at Queen of the Air by Dean Jensen and Eating on the Wild Side by Jo Robinson.
• I’ve got a few other May releases I’d like to get to: The World’s Strongest Librarian by Josh Hanagarne, Don’t Worry, It Gets Worse by Alida Nugent, and Paper: An Elegy by Ian Sansom.
• My local library has been really good to me the last few weeks, I’ve got Detroit: An American Autopsy by Charlie LeDuff, Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs, Lean In by Sheryl Sandberg and Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell on my shelves now that I’d love to read.
• I’m also a bit behind on my 2013 TBR Challenge pile. I’m not sure which of those books sounds appealing now, but I hope I can read at least one.
• And then there are all the books I missed in April… too many to even count.

Writing Around the Internet

You can check out lots of good books coming up this month in the Bloggers Recommend newsletter. My contribution is Jonathan Schuppe’s A Chance to Win, which I really liked. I also previewed some upcoming books for May over at Book Riot.

Speaking of Book Riot, I had some pretty good pieces over there this month, if I do say so myself. My favorite was Roger Ebert’s Best Reviews of Movies Based on Books, but I’m also proud of a discussion post about paperback releases (spoiler: I wish all books came out in paperback immediately) and five bookish cross-stitch projects I found on Etsy.

Here on the blog, it’s mostly been about book reviews and catching up on Sundays with my new “Currently” post format. I’d like to get some more discussion posts up this month, but we’ll see what happens.

2013 Goals Review

• Essay a Day, Take Two: I’ve been failing something terrible at this goal. As much as I love to read essays, I just don’t think my heart is in it for now. I’m going to put this goal aside and revisit it for 2014.
• 12 Ebooks and 12 Audiobooks: I’m still at 2/12 for ebooks but got to 4/12 for audio books — I finished Contagious and Mockingjay this month.
• Balance Books In/Books Out: I don’t even want to know on this one. I haven’t updated my books list for awhile so I’m not even sure. It’s not good though. I’ve bought a lot of books lately.
• Balance Review Copies (40), My Books (30), and Borrowed Books (30):  A look at my stats shows I’m at 44 percent review copies, 36 percent of my own books, and 20 percent borrowed books. That’s pretty close to where I want to be.
• Leave One Comment Per Day: This has been going reasonably well. I don’t do it every day, but I think I leave a comment most days.
• Read My Shelf of Doom: Since I finished reading Possession in April, I haven’t made any progress on this project. I hope I can fit in a book or two this month to start catching up.

So, that was life here at Sophisticated Dorkiness in April. Here’s to a wonderful month of May!

PHOTO CREDIT: ROB WARDE VIA FLICKR

Title: Frozen in Time: An Epic Story of Survival and a Modern Quest for Lost Heroes of World War II
Author: Mitchell Zuckoff
Genre: Nonfiction
Year: 2013
Publisher: Harper
Acquired: From the publisher for review consideration (and later a TLC Book Tour)
Rating:

Review: On November 5, 1942 a C-53 Skytrooper carrying five American airmen took off from Iceland to return to their home base on the western side of Greenland. Midway through the trip, the plane inexplicably crash landed on an ice cap. Although none of the passengers were killed, the men would need to be rescued. The U.S. military sent search and rescue planes out looking for the lost crew, but the plane and the men on it seemed to have disappeared.

Four days later, a B-17 bomber searching for the missing C-53 was caught in a storm. Despite the pilot’s best efforts, the B-17 hit a glacier and, again, crash landed. The nine airmen and volunteers all survived the crash, but their predicament forced another series of search and rescue missions through the dangerous Arctic landscape. When the B-17 was located, two members of the U.S. Coast Guard attempted a daring rescue mission using a Grumman Duck amphibious plane to bring the men back. But their plane disappeared in a storm and, 70 years later, remained trapped somewhere in the expanse of Greenland’s glacial tundra.

In Frozen in Time, Mitchell Zuckoff tells the story of the B-17 crash survivors and their fight to stay alive for nearly 150 days in one of the most inhospitable places on the planet. But that’s not the end of the story. Zuckoff is also part of a present-day mission to try and solve the mystery of the Duck’s last flight and, hopefully, bring back the remains of the plane and the crew.

There are a lot of good ways in which Frozen in Time is like Zuckoff’s previous book, Lost in Shangri-La, a book that I enjoyed immensely. Both are “forgotten” World War II stories about plane crashes and the daring rescue attempts that take place as a result (Zuckoff even acknowledges this at one point, referencing the Shangri-La rescue in Frozen in Time). And, like I said about Lost in Shangri-La when I first reviewed it, Frozen in Time exemplifies all of the things I love about good narrative nonfiction: it puts a new twist on a familiar story, shows meticulous research through primary and secondary sources, and pulls these pieces together with well-spun characters and a story full of the dramatic ups and downs of the best adventure fiction.

But as gripping as history stories like this one can be, it’s hard to build suspense when the outcome of the story has already been decided. By also writing about the present-day attempt to locate the Coast Guard plan and the missing crew members, Zuckoff builds in a layer of tension that elevates the book. The mission is pulled together by the skin of it’s teeth and going against enormous odds; Zuckoff does a great job writing about the project and his role as chronicler, communicator and partial financier.

Frozen in Time is just a great book, especially if you’re a reader looking for nonfiction that is entertaining and easy to read. Despite the grim topic, I couldn’t put this book down.

Other Tour Stops:  BookNAround | Wordsmithonia (April 30) |  The Well-Read Redhead (May 1) | Literary Feline (May 2) | Doing Dewey (May 6) | Reviews from the Heart (May 7) | I Read a Book Once (May 8 ) | Man of La Book (May 8) | Between the Covers (May 9) | Library of Clean Reads (May 13) | Bibliophiliac (May 15) | Reading to Know (May 16) | 50 Books Project (May 17) |

If you have reviewed this book, please leave a link to the review in the comments and I will add your review to the main post. All I ask is for you to do the same to mine — thanks!