The Friday Night Knitting Club

Ah, chicklit.  So comforting and familiar.
This book was recommended to me by one Karen Eng (aka my sister-in-law).  It is a nice, simple story about interesting characters.  After I Know This Much is True, it feels like a vacation.  No characters with mental disorders, yay!
The book follows the exploits of Georgia Walker and the ladies who come into her knitting shop on Friday nights to do pretty much everything but knit.  I, of course, like Darwin Chiu, the snotty academic who has problems with social graces and thinks knitting is a form of submitting to "The Patriarchy."  There are many other characters, some of whom feel like the standard stock characters of chick-lit, but some who are interesting in their own right.  Georgia has a biracial daughter, Dakota, whose father reappears for the obligatory love story.  The book skates around the idea of race and mentions it frankly a few times, but Kate Jacobs doesn't really explore the issue.
The book has a tragic "twist" at the end.  Of course, since I read spoilers for just about everything, I knew this was coming.  The twist did make it less like very traditional chick-lit, which is all sunshine and roses... but who wants a character to die?  Really?!
Overall, the book wasn't the best thing I ever read, but it was enjoyable.  It worked very well as an audiobook to listen to while working, since it kept me entertained without requiring too much concentration.
In comparison to all other literature, I give it a 6 out of 10.  In the chicklit category, I'd give it an 8.

I am still slogging through the Rosalind Franklin biography.  Honestly, it is one of the worst-written books I have read in a very long time.  It seems like it was written without a copy editor.  Some sentences are only fragments while others run on and on.  And the author pays a lot of attention to the fact that Dr. Franklin was Jewish, even though she herself seems rather disinterested in religion.  The author points out every other character who is Jewish and makes some rather sweeping generalizations about supposedly Jewish traits that Dr. Franklin possesses.  I thought attributing character traits to religion and race went out with the last millenium, but apparently not.  Oh well, I keep plugging along because I do really want to know about Rosalind Franklin... but I may run out of patience before I run out of pages.

I Know This Much is True

I love me some Wally Lamb.  She's Come Undone might be my favorite book ever (though that is a hard choice).  I bought I Know This Much is True a couple years back, knowing I would love it.  I started it once and got a couple hundred pages in and then just lost interest.  This time, I had to finish it.  And I did!  Yay!
As mentioned previously, this book is ginormous.  900 pages of soul-searching redemptive modern literature... basically what Wally Lamb is known for.

The plot is incredibly complex (no surprise, since it takes so long to get through), but here's a basic run-down.  The story is told from the perspective of Dominick Birdsey, a regular Joe sort of guy in Three Rivers, Conn (the same setting as She's Come Undone).  Dom has an identical twin brother, Thomas, who has Schizophrenia and is institutionalized.  At the beginning of the book, Thomas goes into a public library and chops off one of his hands.  Yes, really.  His Schizophrenia manifests in delusions about Godly communication, and he believes that he needs to follow the Biblical dictate to cut off his right hand (if it offends thee) to get the attention of world leaders to stop the war in Iraq... the first one, that is.  Anyway, things spiral out from there.  Eventually the story encompasses the Birdsey twins, their mother and step-father, crazy Sicilian grandfather, Dom's ex-wife, Dom's friend Leo and his wife (who is also Dom's ex-wife's sister), a lesbian social worker, an Indian psychotherapist, and Ralph Drinkwater (a local Native American guy).  The story jumps back and forth in time, between Dom's childhood and the present day, and the main thrust of the book is the redemption of Dominick.  He starts out angry and isolated and unhappy and ends up "finding himself" and such. 


The book tells a really compelling story and the writing is pretty immersive, since it's all written in Dominick's voice.  I do think it was too long, though.  I enjoyed the book much more once I got past the first couple hundred pages, into the meat of the book where all the secondary characters come into play and Dominick starts to figure out that he's a bit screwed up.  I also preferred the sections of the book set in the present day, but that is mostly because the childhood stories are painful.  The Birdsey home was abusive and Thomas had some serious problems.  It is hard to read about child abuse and the initial manifestations of Schizophrenia.
The use of dialect in the book (such as yous guys), is a bit inconsistent and can be a bit jarring when it shows up, but other than that the writing is wonderful.


Overall, I give this book 8.5/10.  I would recommend it, but only if you are a patient reader with time to spare... and a stomach for some seriously sad stories.


I cheated and already started another book in audiobook format - The Friday Night Knitting Club.  A bit lighter fare.  However, in the interest of semi-consistency, here's my random number book, too:
#62: Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA
Hmm... I wonder how Dr. Franklin would feel about chick lit?

The Piano Teacher

I read The Piano Teacher by Janice Y.K. Lee in multiple formats.  I started out on my husband's kindle, then read my own paper copy, and also listened to the audiobook intermittently (the audiobook was available from the library).  That meant that I finished this book pretty fast.
The Piano Teacher is a beautiful book.  It sucks you in to its time and place (Hong Kong during and after WWII) and you feel immersed in the world of the characters.  That said, none of the characters are actually very sympathetic.  The story jumps back and forth in time.  One story line occurs during the Japanese invasion and occupation of Hong Kong and follows the romance of an Englishman, Will, and a Eurasian socialite of Chinese and Portuguese extraction, Trudy Liang.  Trudy is generally vapid and vain, but she has moments of insight and the affection between her and Will is portrayed well.  Will is a difficult character to understand.  He mostly comes across as the stalwart Englishman to whom things just seem to happen.
The second story line occurs 10 years later and follows the romance of Will and another woman, the "piano teacher" Claire.  Claire is married to a rather dull Englishman who has brought her to Hong Kong where she sort of "discovers herself."
Other characters float in and out, including Victor and Melody Chen, cousins of Trudy and employers of Claire.  There is also a strange subplot about the Crown Collection - some sort of archaeological treasure trove owned by the English in Hong Kong which went missing during the war.
The book itself is written well and I enjoyed it, but the Crown Collection plot line, which is meant to tie everything together at the end, never really worked for me.  Perhaps this was written for a British audience who would better understand the intricacies of imperial politics.  As an East Asian History major, the descriptions of the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong and the British reaction did seem accurate, and I liked learning more about this particular event.
Overall, I'd give the book 7 out of 10.  This was Lee's first novel, and I'd definitely like to read whatever she publishes next.

Random number generator says my next book is #12: I Know This Much is True.  This is a 900 page tome.  Since I'm posting this review very belatedly, I've already started this book... I've actually got only 250 pages to go.  So good but... SO. LONG.

I'm not dead!

This past month has been the month of doing stuff and then forgetting to tell anyone about it.  For example: I read two books, but left them off the blog.  Also, I worked out a lot and logged NONE of it in fitocracy, so my husband now thinks that he is in better shape than me because he has more fitocracy points.  He is probably in better shape than me... but still!

So, to pick up where I left off a month ago...

I DID finish Good in Bed over the weekend with the in-laws.  It was a very fun, easy read.  I like Jennifer Weiner as an author.  I loved In Her Shoes and Good in Bed hit a similar tone.  It's chick lit, but not the vapid sort of quickie romance that a lot of chick lit ends up being.  Yes, Good in Bed has a love story in it, but it's not the main thrust of the plot.  Most of the book focuses on heroine Cannie Shapiro's attempts at building a happy life for herself.  Romance is included, but it's not the only thing she's worried about.  Cannie seems like the kind of person I would love to hang out with - she's wickedly funny and very smart, so it made the book easier to read.  Of course, there were some things I had a hard time swallowing.  There was section of the book that was basically wish fulfillment - she meets a starlet who likes her and *spoiler* gets her screenplay made into a movie.  She goes to Hollywood and has a high old time, though not without some problems.  While Cannie's reaction to all this rang true, I just couldn't see this too-good-to-be-true storyline really fitting in with the rest of the very realistic book.  But that was really my only problem.  I guess there was also quite a bit of frank discussion of sex.  I guess the title should tell you that much.  That could be a little jarring at times, but it was never offensive to me.  I would give the book 8 out of 10. Very very good, but In Her Shoes (which was written after this book) is better.

Of course, I finished Good in Bed on the plane to New Hampshire, so by the time I go there, I had nothing to read.  To solve this problem I stole my husband's kindle and downloaded The Piano Teacher from the St Louis Public Library.  It was the only book they had in kindle format that was also on my list.  So, again, I did not use my random number generator to pick my next book.  What can ya do?