Book Review: Bossypants by Tina Fey

My Review:  3 out of 5 stars

Meh.  I don’t get the hype about this book.  Parts are funny, but overall I found it kinda boring.

This book is funny.  Well, funny-ish.  Tina Fey’s road to fame is actually pretty uninteresting, but her satirical look at life and the ways she describes her life’s milestones are humorous-to a point.

Where I got a bit bored was when the book took a turn from being a quirky autobiography to being more of a Management for Dummies thing.  The last quarter of a book had a very, “now that I’m in charge, here’s what I do as a woman who has to manage people so they like me and do what I say” sort of tone.  It was surprising.   And useless.  Obviously you offer favors.  Everyone knows that.  I AM JUST KIDDING.  Holy cow. 

Anyways, the more ‘managerial’ it became the less funny it was.  I still love Tina Fey, but I’m not looking to get leadership advice from her.

Book Review: The Phoenix Apostles (A Seneca Hunt Mystery) by Lynn Sholes & Joe Moore

My Rating:  1.5 out of 5 stars

EDIT:  thank you to Candice who read my review and pointed out a mistake in my historical facts.  I’ve edited my post with the correct information.

This book is extremely formulaic.  It follows a similar plot outline as many of the popular crime series with a recurring character:  Stephanie Plum (Janet Evanovich), Cotton Malone (Steve Barry), Alex Cross (James Patterson), you get the picture. 

Believe it or not, the use of a well-worn plot is not a criticism.  I enjoy these types of books and I chose this book specifically because I was in the mood for this formula. 

This story has the typical elements:  young, intelligent woman with a non-detective job who gets innocently wrapped up in solving a mystery to save her own life, narrowly escaping death and meeting interesting friends along the way.   

It’s the details that killed me here.  Spoiler Alert (highlight with your cursor over the next section – it’s in white text): There is a guy living in present times who is Montezuma who never died because he had the shroud of Turin the Veil of Veronica and is now digging up the graves of world history’s ‘mass murders’ (think Hitler and the like) and using their ground up bones and some smart doctors to  bring them back to life.  Which worked. Why is he doing this you ask?  So these killers can all do their bidding at the same time again now and ‘cleanse’ the earth which will make the sun-god happy and Montezuma will become a god. 

In-SANE.  When I said I liked formulaic, I should have also said that BEING REMOTELY FEASIBLE must be part of the formula I’ll read.  This is just nonsense.

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My Top 5: Winter Reads

Here are 5 great books to read curled up with a blanket during these cold winter months. 

Faithful Place by Tana French

Modern day Ireland. Rain. Murder and mystery.  More rain.  Awesome.

The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett

This book is so long that winter comes and goes several times.  It  literally spans one man’s lifetime during the very tumultuous times in 12th century England.   It’s over 1000 pages but don’t be intimidated –  you have several months until spring.

The Other Boleyn Girl by Phillipa Gregory

A cold and drafty castle in England setting is a great start.  Add in a power-hungry king and several women bidding for his affections, along with the state of the country in the 16th century and you have a perfect book to get cozy with. 

I Know This Much is True by Wally Lamb

This is also a long book but SO Good. 

Harry Potter (any and all) by J.K. Rowlings 

Okay so there’s some magic and you think fantasy may not be your bag.  I am asking, no, begging you to trust me on this.   I don’t like fantasy at all and these are my favorite books.  It’s not all dragon-y or time warp-y.  And there’s a castle and lots of snow and fireplaces!  And one of the best written stories ever.  If you haven’t read them yet, now is the time.  If you have read them, it’s time to read them again.  Seriously.

 Enjoy!

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo Movie is Intoxicating!

It. Was. So. Good.

I have read The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo by Steig Larson.  At this point many people have.  I’ve also seen the Swedish adaptation of the movie which was made in 2010. 

The U.S. version of the movie came out about a month ago and stars Daniel Craig and Rooney Mara.  Here is a link to the trailer.  I saw it just after Christmas.  A part of me was questioning how well this U.S. movie would end up.  There’s already a book and another movie.  It seems as if it would be difficult to be original with all of that precedence.   Additionally, there was a part of me who wanted to like the foreign version more than the American. Perhaps that sounds unpatriotic but it’s not meant to be.  I simply like the cinematography style and artsiness of the Swedish version and I sort of wanted that to be the more potent of the two movies.  I was pleasantly surprised.  The U.S. version of this movie is extremely powerful and potent.  All aspects of it appealed to my senses and left me, well, sort of cinematically buzzed!

The cast was well-chosen, and seemed very authentic!  This is in spite of the accents being fabricated in some cases and simply not from the right country in most cases.  But it worked somehow! My favorite casting selection, Christopher Plummer as Henrik Vangar, who I thought played this role flawlessly.  Daniel Craig as Mikael (he’s really cute, by the way), Robin Wright as his boss/partner/lover/friend and Rooney Mara was a great Lisbeth Salander. Beautiful and cool beautiful for the movie except for the bleached eyebrows – WHY?!

For you football fans:  Rooney Mara, who played Lisbeth Salander, is the great-granddaughter of N.Y. Giants founder, Tim Mara and Pittsburgh Steelers founder, Art Rooney, Sr.  Her full name is Patricia Rooney Mara. 

The movie is a bit long but the pacing is great.  The scenery is vivid and  rich.  And the music (Trent Reznor) is almost another character itself although I have to say the Nine Inch Nail ‘sound’ got a little redundant after a bit.  The movie opens with an intro which was very artsy and unique - you don’t see intros very often with movies anymore and that was nice bonus.

They did take some liberties with the plot that surprised me; both things were left out and put in that I wasn’t expecting.  But overall I’m not going to criticize there – the book is stuffed with details that required some editing to bring to screen. 

This is a good movie to watch in the theater but would also be a great movie to watch with wine, a blanket, and someone who looks like Daniel Craig.  Just kidding!

Book Review: The Other by Thomas Tryon

My Rating 4 out of 5 stars

I heard about this book from my sister-in-law who was describing this as being one of the scariest books she’d ever read.  She said she read it in like the 6th grade.  After some searching (no eBook, no library copy and it is out of print) I was able to find a paperback copy on Amazon, which the seller claimed to be in Good-Used condition.  I’d argue that rating since the spine split the second I opened it to the first page.  But whatever.  So here’s the deal with this book.  It was written in 1971 by an actor named Tom Tryon.  He was in a bunch of stuff in the 1950s and 60s.  This book was made into a movie by the same name (not to be confused with The Others with Nicole Kidman in it – it’s not the same).  It scared the bejesus out of everyone who read it or saw the movie. 

So knowing that, would you expect it to be 1) good writing (the author was an actor for goodness sakes) or 2) scary (by today’s standards)?  Perhaps not, but you would be sorely mistaken on both fronts.  The writing is very unique, but Tyron most certainly had talent.  He described the environment and moved the story along so well, it was so believeable.  And it was creepy (the grown-up kind, not the tween kind)…so creepy that it was still creepy to read in 2011, exactly 40 years after the book was written.  How many things that were scary then are just as scary now?  Right, The Omen, maybe.  And everyone’s heard of that.  I think this book is grossly underrated and the author’s style is superb.  If you are interested in borrowing it from me, you’ll have to stand in line (and bring some masking tape).  Thanks to a great SIL for helping me discover this gem!

 

Book Review: The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides

My Review:  A regrettable 2.5 out of 5 stars

I say regrettable because I had HIGH hopes for this book.  This author is one of my favorite novelists of all time.  If you’ve never read Middlesex, it was the winner of the Pulitzer prize in 2003 and is my second most favorite book ever.  It’s just so good!  I know, that’s not very descriptive but this isn’t a review of that book.  He also wrote The Virgin Suicides, which is pretty amazing as well.  I suppose no author will turn out a prize winner every single time so perhaps I should go easy on Jeffrey.  But I’ve been waiting for almost 10 years for this and I have to say it was a complete letdown.

The story is about 3 students at a college on the east coast, their lives crossing at random points throughout college and after.  The main character Madeline and her boyfriend are both literature majors and the book is full of references to different authors and time periods of writing.  I actually think that’s what the title is drawing on – the books in the 19th century and how marriage was synonymous with love (or something like that, I wasn’t paying close attention).  The third character, Mitchell, is in love with Madeline but very little of the story focuses on scenes where he’s with her – after graduation he tours Europe and India looking for religion (or something like that, I wasn’t paying close attention).  Are you still awake? 

I finished the novel, which believe it or not does tell you how much respect I have for this author.  If it were anyone else’s book I would have thrown in the towel after the first 100 pages.  If I set aside the subject matter and focus on the storytelling itself, even that wasn’t as Eugenides-y as I had hoped.  I mean, he does have a knack for the written word, but it just seemed so…average.  Madeline’s boyfriend, Leonard, is manic and his breakdowns are described in first person, which is very well done.  I give Eugenides credit for capturing the essence of the no-win situation being bi-polar is.  But aside from that, I am going to re-read Middlesex and try to pretend this novel wasn’t written by the same author.  You can barely tell that it was so that shouldn’t be hard.  Disappointed!