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July, July
Tim O’Brien
2002
Penguin

The class of ‘69 gets back together and learns that the past is still with them and you don’t stop changing as you grow older.

This book could have been titled “Big Chill 2.” It is so reminiscent of the movie, you can picture the actors in these roles. Set at their 30th reunion, a group of friends finds themselves drinking, drugging, dancing and remembering. What follows is a series of excellent short stories about their past pieced together with mediocre introductions of the present time.

All in all the characters are well-rounded, but annoying. Most are divorced, some have died, some have experienced incredible personal trauma, and so on. It read really quickly and I’m honestly surprised it hasn’t been optioned for a movie yet. (Unless it has and I haven’t read about it.) I gave this to my dad as soon as I finished because while I’m able to read and relate to just about anything, I had a hard time relating to these characters. They were all in another phase of their life and some were downright unlikeable.

I did thoroughly enjoy the flashback scenes. I wanted more from each one and dreaded heading back to the reunion. I did like the ending as well. As you can tell, I’ve been going back and forth on whether or not I like this book. The answer is definitively, “Yes, but…”

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Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia
Elizabeth Gilbert
2007
Penguin

At the age of thirty-one, Gilbert moved with her husband to the suburbs of New York and began trying to get pregnant, only to realize that she wanted neither a child nor a husband. Three years later, after a protracted divorce, she embarked on a yearlong trip of recovery, with three main stops: Rome, for pleasure (mostly gustatory, with a special emphasis on gelato); an ashram outside of Mumbai, for spiritual searching; and Bali, for “balancing.”

I love, love, love Eat Pray Love. It’s amazing and has sparked an incredible amount of wanderlust. I cried through Italy and the first part of India. I don’t know why, but it affected me very deeply. There seems to be a “love it/hate it” line when it comes to this book and I obviously fall in the former. I read it in a short time, only coming up long enough for food because her descriptions of meals made me HUNGRY.

So now I’m dying to go to Italy (more than before if that was possible), dying to go to India and dying to spend 4 months in Bali. The book definitely reads more like a novel than a memoir, making me doubt if some things happened exactly as she says. At times it gets a little bogged down with depressive emotions and yogic terms. I found myself skimming through parts of India hoping for interaction instead of the incessant monologue. It’s understandable though because she just went through a divorce and is spending months solely studying yoga in the Ashram under the Guru. I still don’t know if I buy into the whole guru bit.

Gilbert does a great job of injecting bits of history into the story about people, places and events. It’s very obvious she spent a lot of time in each location simply learning about where she was. I don’t think anyone would claim there is anything especially unique about the places she picked, but no one can deny her experiences were pretty fabulous.

Overall I get a sense it’s all mostly true and truly remarkable.

P.S. If anyone wants to give me an advance to write about traveling the world, I’m in.

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Model
Cheryl Diamond
2008
Simon Pulse

Every year, hundreds of the most beautiful people in the world come to New York to become models. At age fourteen, Cheryl Diamond was one of them. Living on her own in a run-down apartment, Cheryl spent her days on go-sees, runways, and shoots, surviving hand-to-mouth, while taking in everything she could about the tough and sleazy modeling industry. She watched other girls make mistakes, and swore she wouldn’t be a victim…until a career-altering event changed her life and nearly ruined her shot at her dream. This is the riveting, true account of Cheryl’s triumphant rise, disastrous fall, and phoenix-like comeback in one of the hottest and most demanding industries in the world.

Boring. I rarely ever look a book unfinished, but this I couldn’t even pick up after starting. Once I forced myself on several occasions, I found myself reading a few pages and putting it away again. Maybe I’m put off by the fact a young 20-something is writing a memoir. Maybe I’m easily annoyed by the problems of the beautiful and wealthy. I honestly can’t think of a group of people to recommend this book.

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Bitten
Kelley Armstrong
2004
Plume

Elena is a werewolf the only female werewolf in the world. Betrayed by Clay, her former lover, who bit her while in his werewolf form, she is now resigned to a life of secret changes while attempting to remain in human society. Meanwhile, the power of the Pack and her deep-seated ties to Clay continually press on her, preventing a true commitment to her human lover. When the Pack Alpha calls her to help rout a band of murderous “mutts” (werewolves not affiliated with the Pack), Elena reluctantly becomes the animal she has fought so long to suppress. First novelist Armstrong presents true werewolves as those who follow Pack law and don’t kill for pleasure. Changing into a werewolf becomes an act of nature, as does ripping mutts to shreds for threatening the Pack. Elena’s struggle with her wolf nature and her love for two men is caught up in the werewolves’ fight for dominance and territory.

I never thought I would describe a werewolf story as cute, but here I am. It’s a little predictable, a little too long, generally CUTE book. Elena makes a good heroine. It’s very similar to Rogue which I reviewed earlier, changing werecat to werewolf. The only thing that really makes Bitten better than Rogue is there is no need to get into the physics and politics of being a werewolf. There is a little bit, but it doesn’t come off as preachy as Rogue.

It fits the genre perfectly. I haven’t read any of the rest of the series yet, but I might and I might enjoy them.

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Summer Blowout
Claire Cook
2008
Voice

Bella Shaughnessy, a makeup artist whose solace in times of hardship is finding just the right lipstick to match her mood, gets a divorce and quits men after discovering that her husband of 10 years has been seeing her younger half-sister, Sophia. During a wedding job, she gets stuck with dog-sitting Precious (who looked kind of like a flying squirrel) and quickly gets so attached that she takes drastic measures to keep the dog. Can other kinds of attachment be far behind, as cute and easygoing Sean Ryan enters the picture?

I received this from LibraryThing’s Early Reviewer program. It was cute, but nothing to write home about. It was a pretty typical chick flick + dog. The dog was probably the most interesting character in the book. I read it in a few hours on a Sunday afternoon. It would be a good beach read if you prefer books that are almost totally mindless.

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