Remember Me?

  Remember Me?  by Sophie Kinsella was great.  It's been a while since there was a book I was willing to read through House (though it's been really bad this season, I should stop watching it all together) for, but yesterday, I was so enamored with this book, I went home and read for three straight hours.  Not that I had time for that, of course.  But I had to find out what happened!  Remember starts with a normal twenty something, Lexi, and her slightly sad life.  She just started working at a carpet company with her best friend, she's dating a guy named Loser Dave, and her teeth and hair are bad (it's England of course).  She wakes up one day in a hospital to find that the last three years have been erased from her memory.  But suddenly she's married to the perfect guy, rich, with a great new job, it seems perfect.  But of course it isn't.  She's lost all of her friends, her husband is too perfect, her house is too nice.  As she tries to remember the last three years, of course she runs into Jon who works with her perfect husband, and she seems to remember only him.  It's so sappy and dorky, and I loved every second of it.  Kinsella is one of my favorites, and her sense of humor is fabulous.  It's funny, it's sweet, and I loved Lexi (Kinsella's main characters are part of her charm, they are funny, sweet and always a little weird).  It's great for beach reading, and I should have known better than to start it right before a full day at B&N followed immediately by a full day at school.  I wanted to read it all at once!

I Love You, Beth Cooper

By Larry Doyle.  Awesome.  Hilarious.  Just so funny.  I was not surprised to find, in reading the author bio, that he has worked on the Simpsons.  This was a recommendation I didn't take too seriously, but was wandering around B&N looking to buy myself books for Christmas (well, an organization what will remain nameless, for which I do well above and beyond what I should  bought me a fuchsia pencil case for Christmas, I'm buying what I want with my employee discount, in all fairness it was a very expensive pencil case.  Which I can't return.  I hate fuchsia).  ANYWAY.  So I walked by it and picked it up.    It is the story of the Buffalo Grove Valedictorian, and how telling Beth Cooper he loves her during his graduation speech changes the course of well, at least graduation night.  It's funny, it's smart, it's wickedly clever, and it might even have a good message (I was too busy laughing to be sure).  This will be my go to male above 16 recommendation for a long time.  Which, considering how much I adore Christopher Moore, and would use him as a recommendation for ANYONE, is a big compliment.  Read it.   

Holiday's on Ice

  Have you read David Sedaris?  Why not?  I love him.  He's hysterical.  And I think the first essay in Holiday's on Ice, in which he takes a job as an elf during the Christmas season at a department store is one of my very favorites of his.  Every year I read a Christmas book.  Stupidest Angel by Christopher Moore, Laurie Notaro's Idiot Girls Christmas, and of course Holiday's on Ice. This year I read Holiday's on Ice, I think next year I'll reread Stupidest Angel, but all are funny and very festive for the holidays.  

Lame

  So two of the books I read over Christmas break were lame, and I'm pretty disappointed.   So the first one was Lady Elizabeth by Alison Weir.  I have to stop reading the historical fiction chick lit that people keep recommending.  It's about Queen Elizabeth's childhood and right before she takes over the throne from her half sister Queen Mary.  So I find the time period interesting, and I thought reading a book about Elizabeth's early life would be good.  And then it wasn't.  Especially the part where the author has written several biographies and history books on the time period and Henry VIII's family, and in all of them asserted the Elizabeth was actually the virgin queen.  But because it's the new historical fiction chick lit (my new least favorite genre), Elizabeth had to have sex and get pregnant.  WHAT?  

   The second one was Dean Koontz's The Darkest Night of the Year.  Several people told me I had to go back to Koontz.  Despite loving Dark Rivers of the Heart, Seize the Night and it's sequel and lots of his early stuff, his books lately have been awful.  But this one was about a woman who rescues Golden Retrievers and of course something weird and scary happens to her.  I thought I'd like it.  I did not.  The characters were boring, the kids in the story were tortured and beaten by their parents(one was autistic (maybe), the other one had Downs Syndrome, I don't like reading about that kind of thing anyway, but especially for special needs kids, what was he thinking?).  I did not find the dog charming (here's a hint there buddy, people like reading about real dogs.  Not special dogs who can do amazing things.  Remember Rocky from Dark Rivers of the Heart?  That dog was a character in your book).  I skimmed through to the end because I couldn't take it anymore.  If you are curious, the kids live happily ever after.  Despite the emotional damage they had to deal with.  

   I don't like to review books I didn't like, but both of these came recommended by lots of people, and I hated them both.  Luckily I took my manager Kelly's recommendation and started I love you Beth Cooper.  Amazing, when I finish I'll post my thoughts.  

Drood By Dan Simmons

   This book doesn't come out until February (thanks to Dan for making me take this book), but I still can't wait to recommend it.  It follows the final years of Charles Dickens life through the eyes of his less famous contemporary Wilkie Collins (a decent author in his own right).  The outsiders look at famous authors genre (not really a genre, I just think it is) is pretty popular (again, probably just in my head).  I really liked Arthur and George (Sr. Arthur Conan Doyle) by Barnes that came out a few years back, and I love this novel.   Perhaps a bit too much of the thousand pages was devoted to Wilkie's opium addiction, but for a thousand paged novel, it really moved.  Dickens was in a train accident that changed his life and shaped his final, unfinished novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood.  Drood was the man Dickens claimed to have seen in the aftermath of that accident and became obsessed with, claiming to Wilkie (in the novel) that he thought he was an agent of Death.  It's a really interesting mystery, but if you'd rather not spend a month reading a book, skip it.

I see you everywhere by Julia Glass

  This is a book, I think, for sisters.  That was the push at BEA (she would send a free copy to your sister if you gave an address) anyway.  It's the story of two sisters as they move through life, each chapter is a different year with a story about them told by one of the sisters.  Clem is the wild adventurous one, Louisa the steady one, though both are effected greatly by the other.  The ending is sad, which was predictable (every novel I've read in the past five years that deals seriously with the sibling relationship ends sad, it's either a trend in fiction right now, or a easy way to make sure that protagonists realize how much they mean to each other.  Gag.)  I liked the characters, and it was occasionally funny, even if I knew what was going to happen by the second chapter.  I think it would be easier to appreciate it if I had a sister with whom I had ever been close, but this book dealt with a bond I have no first hand experience with.  So I moved on to Christopher Moore's A Dirty Job, where the main character finds out he is a merchant of death, and hilarity ensues.   At least I can understand a warped sense of humor. 

Gilead by Marilynne Robinson

This book took me forever to finish, but I'm glad I did.  It won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, and I have the book she wrote after it, called Home.  John Ames, the preacher in Gilead Iowa is the narrator, and the entire book is an open letter to his young son which he writes as his health fails.  It's a lovely book, I really enjoyed it, though it was hard to get into, and difficult to finish.  But then, I get distracted easily.  John is a great narrator, telling the story of his life and beliefs through a series of stories and thoughts.  I'll let you know if I ever get to Home.