Take one part sad human female, add several books from the 'should read' shelf, and combine. The result? A mellow brew. A more tranquil human. And some book recommendations.
Sex as a Second Language by Alisa Kwitney Thoughtful, smart, well-paced, funny book. Perfect for Kwitney's shift from trade paper to hardcover (the bookies in the audience know what I mean). Unfortunately, she is afflicted by the cutesy cover/title disease, which makes it difficult to embrace reading her books in public, or to fully endorse them to all who might find their contents appealing. This, for example, is about determining the degree that one accepts that one can really trust other people
as they are, and understand them
as they are, as much as it is about the surface topics of language and, to a lesser degree, relationships and sex. It read faster than I would have liked, and when it was through I savored it...and then checked her website to see if there was a release date on her next work.
I have no quotes to share because I've loaned my copy to D; perhaps y'all should just find a copy and read
Sex as a Second Language on your own, eh?
The Myth of You & Me by Leah Stewart This is one of those books that caught me from the title, and once I saw the cover art I knew I would have to read it. That sense was heightened when
D read it and kept asking, "Have you read this yet? When are you going to read this? Why aren't you reading this?" And
quoting parts of it to me as if I'm capable of forgetting stuff like that! Yargh.
The non-spoiler-laden synopsis: Cameron is the personal assistant to Oliver, a famous historian. When she receives a letter from her former best friend, Sonia, she is inexplicably (to Oliver) angered, while Oliver is inexplicably (to her) intrigued. That letter, along with the tension that it creates between Cameron and Oliver, sets in motion a deceptively complex chain of events leading the former best friends somewhere that they never thought they would go.
(My, that was vague! I hadn't realized how difficult it would be to describe the book without "giving it away." The degree of importance that I'm placing on that should indicate how pleased I would be if someone--anyone? anyone?--would read it and enjoy it as much as I did.)
And I
loved it. Stewart writes so smoothly, given how much emotional and physical ground she covers. Anyone who has ever had (or lost) a best friend will find something in
The Myth of You and Me.
"How much had I lost, racing down the highway with everything I owned in my car, trying to arrange my life so that I had nothing to lose?"
My Latest Grievance by Elinor Lipman Elinor Lipman is a genius and I love every word that she's ever written (with the incomprehensible exception of the inexplicable
Ladies' Man, but that's another story) and
My Latest Grievance is a great example of what makes her one of my favorite authors. It is quirky but not contrived, funny but not joke-filled, 'nice' but not schmaltzy. The characters (narrator Frederica Hatch and her parents Aviva and David, and the preternaturally perky Miss Laura Lee French) are remarkably complete, individual people given their utter enmeshedness. Every situation is necessary to the work as a whole--it is that tight, that spare.
My Latest Grievance is not a quick afternoon's read, but it is very good.
For the Relief of Unbearable Urges by Nathan Englander Love the title. The book--a series of Jewish short stories--has me at something of a loss, though, and I'm roughly 1/3 of the way through. We'll see how it shapes up.
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