In Memoriam

On a day when we're all remembering, I just wanted to do something I never do - a re-post.  This is what I wrote 364 days ago when I finally got my head around the fact that my friend was gone.

Say Goodnight, Not Goodbye 

The Yellow House by Patricia Falvey

Note: Per FTC regulations, this is a review of an advanced reader copy that I received free from the Hachette Book Group. This book will be released to the public on February 15th.

 

 

I admit, with my lack of Irish heritage and slim understanding of Irish history, that perhaps I was not the best audience for Patricia Falvey's The Yellow House.  I honestly couldn't be certain if the plot of the book was something that was common in families during the time of Ireland's "troubles" or if Falvey merely packed in many elements of that time period in order to create and maintain the drama and forward movement of the story.

Eileen O'Neill is the daughter of a farmer and a housewife in the early part of the twentieth century, growing up in a happy home with her older brother Frankie and younger sister Lizzie.  The lovely mountain Slieve Gullion can be seen from her home, and Eileen finds comfort and joy in the mountain, thinking of it as a mother figure.  All is well in the yellow house, with love and music, until the day Lizzie goes to the fever hospital and their mother comes home without her; Lizzie is gone.  As the rumblings of the Irish revolution come nearer, Eileen's mother leaves them with Frank in tow, and later suffers a breakdown which puts her in the hospital for the duration of the book, with Frank's Protestant grandfather raising him.  When her father is killed by English loyalists, Eileen flees with her baby brother Paddy and takes job in a mill in a nearby town to save money to fund her dream of one day reclaiming the Yellow House for her family and reuniting them.  

This is where I felt the need to suspend my disbelief.  Eileen becomes a labor reformist, forges a relationship with the wealthy son of the Protestant mill owner,  becomes a talented fiddler with the Ulster minstrels, marries a Catholic seminarian-turned-rebel, participates in IRA activities, swears in Gaelic, and gives birth to a daughter named Eoife (Eee-fa).  I'm sure if tattoos were in vogue back then she'd have had a shamrock tramp stamp.  

It is an engaging story; I just found it a tidge unbelievable.  More outlandish things happen, and there is a happy ending.  Falvey's writing is beautiful, almost lyrical, but as I said, I had no prior knowledge of the subject matter.  However, Falvey intrigued me and I'd like to read more on the topic.

Top Ten

So, my amazing friend Ms. Mix and Bitch had told me to rank my reads, but there is no way in hell that I can rank the 100+ books that I read in the last year (I'm counting my Pajiba reviews in that total, because I read that shit).  However, I will give you my ten favorite books from Year One of the Cannonball Read.  If you haven't checked them out yet, I invite you to - hey, why not add them to your list for Year Two?  So, in order from ten to one, here goes:

10.  Anybody Out There? by Marian Keyes

9.  Gone With The Wind by Margaret Mitchell

8.  My Lobotomy by Howard Dully

7.  Handle With Care by Jodi Picoult

6.   Paradise by A. L. Kennedy - This one didn't get reviewed, due to time restraints, but it knocked my socks off.

5.  The Girl Who Stopped Swimming by Joshilyn Jackson

4.  Beautiful Boy by David Sheff

3.  The Gun Seller by Hugh Laurie

2.  Band Geek by Dustin Rowles

1.  Still Alice by Lisa Genova

*Honorable Mention - Columbine by Dave Cullen

(Actually, Columbine deserves to be #3 or 4, but I kept my Pajiba reviews separate, so it gets its own place.)

There you have it.  You can check out ten of the eleven books listed; Band Geek is not yet published but I hope like hell that it is one day soon, because it's effing amazing. 

It's Here!

Yes, I'm talking about Cannonball Read II: In My Pants (also known as Cannonball Read II: Electric Bookaloo or Mother May I Read With Danger? II).  Check out the post at Pajiba and join in - don't be shy!  Even if you're not a regular Pajiban *looks at Mel with purposeful eyes* you can play along!  We have a Facebook group and everything! 

Year Two, Y'all

So, in the next few days, we'll be announcing the kickoff of Cannonball Read 2.0 over on Pajiba.  My main goal is to get a LOT more committed participants involved.  We want you to read!  And have your reviews posted on the site! And become more literate and enlightened bitches and hos!

We're also doing this for Amanda.  (Yes, I totally played that card.)

Stay tuned, kiddos.  And start eyeing up that TBR pile you have hidden under the bed, in a cupboard, behind the terlet, wherever. 

Cleanup

Ok, friends, followers, and otherwise, I didn't make it to my target goal of 100 reviews.  It was a lot easier when I was unemployed, but now that I've been among the workers of the world for nearly seven months, I've slacked.  Add in the reviews I've done for Pajiba that I didn't count on this here corner of the interwebs, and I managed to come a little closer to that goal. 

With no further ado, here is the roundup of the books that didn't make it to the review stage; I'm going to do my best to put them in chronological order, but they're books I read mostly in between:

Sixty Eight - Girls Dinner Club by Jessie Elliot

Sixty Nine - Stiff by Mary Roach

Seventy - Picture Perfect by Jodi Picoult

Seventy One - Rhett Butler's People by Donald McCaig

Seventy Two - The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

Seventy Three - The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Seventy Four - This Can't Be Love by Kasey Michaels

Seventy Five - Lady Killer by Lisa Scottoline

Seventy Six - A Royal Duty by Paul Burrell

Seventy Seven - Regeneration by Pat Barker

Seventy Eight - High Noon by Nora Roberts

Seventy Nine - Blue Dahlia by Nora Roberts

Eighty - Black Rose by Nora Roberts

Eighty One - Red Lily by Nora Roberts

Eighty Two - The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov

Eighty Three - Key of Knowledge by Nora Roberts

Eighty Four - Key of Valor by Nora Roberts

Eighty Five - The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion

Eighty Six - Conspiracy in Death by J.D. Robb

Eighty Seven - Lucky by Alice Sebold

Eighty Eight - Daring to Dream by Nora Roberts

Eighty Nine - Holding the Dream by Nora Roberts

Ninety - Finding the Dream by Nora Roberts

Ninety One - Flowers on Main by Sherryl Woods

Ninety Two - Dispatches From The Edge by Anderson Cooper

Ninety Three - The Eye in the Door by Pat Barker

Ninety Four - The Ghost Road by Pat Barker

Ninety Five - Harvesting the Heart by Jodi Picoult

Ninety Six - Paradise by A.L. Kennedy

Ninety Seven - A Mother and Two Daughters by Gail Godwin

So there you have it.  Three books short.  I couldn't finish Anna Karenina or if on a winter's night a traveler.

I'll still be writing reviews for Pajiba, and I'm running the next incarnation of the Cannonball Read.  I just won't be participating, because I need to corral our next group of Cannonballers.  Hope to see your lazy asses there; we're doing this in honor of Pink.

I only hope she's proud of me. 

Title Sixty Seven: Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane

Yes, I'm cheating again. Shut it, fools. It was a rough week, and anyway Rusty already reviewed this.

"The year is 1954. U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels and his new partner, Chuck Aule, have come to Shutter Island, home of Ashecliffe Hospital for the Criminally Insane, to investigate the disappearance of a patient. Multiple murderess Rachel Solando is loose somewhere on this remote and barren island, despite having been kept in a locked cell under constant surveillance. As a killer hurricane bears relentlessly down on them, a strange case takes on even darker, more sinister shades — with hints of radical experimentation, horrifying surgeries, and lethal countermoves made in the cause of a covert shadow war. No one is going to escape Shutter Island unscathed, because nothing at Ashecliffe Hospital is what it seems. But then neither is Teddy Daniels." - Barnes and Noble
My only previous experience with Lehane was Mystic River a few years ago, and I dug that book, so I figured this would be worth the read. Was it? Yes it was. I was completely immersed in the story almost from the beginning, the gears in my brain whirring as I tried to keep up with the pace and the twisting narrative laid out by Lehane. A couple of times, I found myself flipping back a page to re-read a passage or two, not because I was lost, exactly, but because I felt like there was a nuance that I might have been missing. Teddy Daniels is the good guy, and he has no idea who else is on his side. It could be that everyone is out to get him. Ghosts from his past won't leave him alone. He's a man on a mission. Then, just when everything seems to be resolving itself, Lehane comes up behind you with a two-by-four and nails you in the back of the skull. Everything that came before was smoke and mirrors, and holy shit, were you fooled.

I loved it. I read it in record time because I couldn't wait to get to the end, and when it was finished, I was satisfied. The conclusion isn't pat, but it's tidy, like a perfectly square box with a really rad gift inside.

Title Sixty Six: Lullaby by Chuck Palahniuk

Ok, I'm totally going to cheat for a couple of posts, okay? From the author's very own Official Lullaby Site:

"Carl Streator is a solitary widower and a forty-ish newspaper reporter who is assigned to do a series of articles on Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. In the course of this investigation, he discovers an ominous thread: the presence on the scene of these deaths of the anthology Poems and Rhymes Around the World, all opened to the page where there appears an African chant or "culling song." This song turns out to be lethal when spoken or even thought in anyone's direction and once it lodges in Streator's brain, he finds himself becoming an involuntary serial killer. So he teams up with a real estate broker, one Helen Hoover Boyle, who specializes in selling haunted (or "distressed") houses (wonderfully high turnover) and who lost a child to the culling song years before, for a cross-country odyssey. Their goal is to remove all copies of the book from libraries, lest this deadly verbal virus spread and wipe out human life. Accompanying them on this road trip are Helen's assistant, Mona Sabbat, an exquisitely earnest Wiccan, and her sardonic eco-terrorist boyfriend, Oyster, who is running a scam involving fake liability claims and business blackmail. Welcome to the new nuclear family. "

This was my first Palahniuk. (No, you cannot revoke my Pajiba card for that. It's in the rules that I've just made up.) I didn't really know what to expect, so I wasn't really surprised when I was completely blown away. I mean, damn, this dude can write. And somehow make you totally uncomfortable while keeping you so intrigued that you can't put the damn thing down. There were passages that made me actually squirm in my seat but I had to know what happened. None of the characters are likeable. In fact, they're all pretty much creepy and I felt like I needed a shower after I finished. But it was good. It wasn't so much a novel as a living thing, breathing words and images. I won't ever read it again, because it's too dark for me, but it is one of the best books I've read in a long time.

Title Sixty Five: Star Bright by Catherine Anderson

No. Just...no. I must have been high when I decided to read this. I mentioned it to a friend and he replied, "I would rather poke my own eyes out than read that." I may take it out back, put it on the grill, and set it on fire.

Rainie fakes her own death while on a cruise with her husband because he's going to kill her. She ends up working as a bookkeeper for a rancher dude in Crystal Falls, Oregon. Of course he's hot, and of course he sees her as a delicate flower that he wants to pick. They fall in love and all. His entire extended family foists themselves and their "aw shucks"-iness upon her, and she decides she'll marry him, but she has to divorce the psycho, who apparently killed his two previous wives to get their money, like he was going to do to Rainie. She gets her divorce, the FBI tries to use her as bait to get the husband, it doesn't work. One night, in a scene stolen right out of the movie Sleeping with the Enemy (which is discussed earlier in the book) the husband shows up in the backseat of Rainie's car and forces her to drive to her apartment - she won't live with Parker, the rancher, because he's Catholic and his family wouldn't approve and he's fucking THIRTY-FIVE YEARS OLD - and tries to kill her with a mix of Ambien and wine, and making it look like she offed herself. (Seriously? I can take a giant Vicodin for my broken spine and then go out drinking with Pajibans all night. This lightweight has a glass of wine and three Ambien and almost dies. Pussy.)

Whatever. Parker figures out that she was giving him clues on the phone, via talking about her HALLOWEEN COSTUME, and hoofs it over. Rainie uses the last of her strength to smash the wineglass into PeterExHusband's face. The paramedics come and get her to the hospital and pump her stomach. A couple months later Parker and Rainie get married.

I need Brillo for my brain.

Title Sixty Four: Lucy Sullivan Is Getting Married

Hello, dahlings. It is I, Marian Keyes. If you haven't suspected before now, I have actually kidnapped your adorable little Nicole and locked her in a closet so that I could take over her blog and promote my books. Here's another one!

On a lark, my heroine, Lucy Sullivan, goes with three coworkers to visit a psychic one evening after work. The fortune teller's prediction for Lucy is that she'll be married within a year. Lucy brushes this off with a "Bah!" That is, until her coworkers' predictions start coming true, and she meets the lovable, unemployed Gus, an Irish musician who charms his way into her pants and her pockets. Perhaps Gus is undependable and fond of the drink, but he's an artiste, moppets. He is a free spirit. Meanwhile, Lucy's best friend Daniel begins dating her roommate Karen, but this doesn't bother Lucy in the least because she simply doesn't find Daniel attractive.

You may be able to guess where the story goes. (I know, but dearies, I wrote it.) Gus turns out to be a worthless cad, Lucy realizes that her father is an alcoholic and that she's been beastly to her mother for years without understanding what the latter goes through, and Daniel is a dream.

Go buy it.

Note from the editor

It doesn't look like I'm going to make it to 100 reviews, but I damn well will make it to 100 books. I'm pretty close. Anyway, for the three of you who read this on a semi-regular basis, I'm going to keep going. Hope you dig it.

Title Sixty Three: Oswald's Tale: An American Mystery by Norman Mailer

So, the good news is that I finally found a cure for my chronic insomnia. For serious, every time I read this I fell asleep. I'm blaming Mailer for The Great Nap Debacle of Last Sunday, wherein I took not just one but two lengthy naps, and was awake till the wee hours, when it occurred to me to pick up the book again. Bingo. Out like a light. This shit is better than Xanax.

So anyway. I was feeling guilty about all the trash I've been stuffing into my brain lately, so I wanted to redeem myself. This Guy Formerly Known as My Stepfather had this for years, and was kind enough to leave it when he vacated the premises. I spotted it and said, "Nicole, grab that. You need to make penance for all that Nora Roberts noise you've been reading." In the future, the next time I tell myself to do something, could one of you hit me in the head? 'Kthanksbye.

This book is exhaustive. I mean, really and truly. I read all 791 pages, because I do not like to give up on books, but my stars, I was more confused at the end than at the beginning. Like, trying to solve a physics problem confused. I wasn't even sure where I was. (Extensive research led me to the conclusion that I was in my bedroom.) Mailer interviewed family, friends, acquaintances, and colleagues of Lee Harvey Oswald; he pored over and frequently references the Warren Commission testimony; he took excerpts of other books written about LHO; he incorporated letters and other writings, both to and by Oswald. Oswald's time in Russia, where he married Marina and had his first child, takes up nearly the first third of the book. His military history with the Marines is dissected. His job history is investigated. KGB and FBI records are made public. Mailer leaves no stone unturned in his quest to find the man who killed JFK (I don't even want to go into conspiracy theories). He not only delves into Oswald's past, but that of his wife, her family, and his mother. He goes back decades and decades to the beginning of the 20th century. He outlines the differences between various intelligency agencies and the perceptions of Oswald gleaned by said agencies.

The problem is, Oswald was a puzzle in life, and remains a series of contradictions in death. He was a failure who thought that he was something special; he renounced his US citizenship in Moscow (but not formally) only to return to the States a few years later, his experiment with communism a wash; he may or may not have been gay; he was a gregarious recluse. There's just too much information, and there is never a satisfactory answer to the question "Who was this man?" Again, this was no fault of Mailer's. It was just a question that will never be answered. No one could get a handle on Oswald before Jack Ruby put a bullet in his belly, so how could anyone possibly do it when the man's secrets died with him?

I'm going to keep the book on hand as a weapon for the zombie invasion. They're coming. Just you wait.

Title Sixty Two: Bel Canto by Ann Patchett

I read this lovely book about six years ago, and I wanted to see if it still held up. I'm delighted to say that it does, but it's also so bittersweet that I think I'll wait another five or six before visiting it again.

One evening, during a birthday party for a Japanese businessman held in a poor Latin American country (in the hopes that his electronics company will build a plant in said poor country), the Vice Presidential mansion is taken by terrorists; their intended target, the President, is not in attendance, and so the group must quickly formulate a new plan. They decide to take everyone hostage, including the evening's entertainer, world-renowned opera singer Roxane Coss. The first hours following the terrorists' arrival are filled with fear, confusion, and desperation, which Patchett transfers masterfully to the page. As time passes, the Red Cross brings in a negotiator, and eventually all women are released, with the exception of Coss, who chooses to stay.

Dozens of hostages remain, and the days pass. What began as a horrifying ordeal transforms into something unique: a small community of people, from all over the world, coming together and cobbling a satisfying little existence from the circumstances. Neither the terrorists nor the government will budge, so the experience lasts for months. In the meantime, Mr. Hosokawa, the guest of honor, becomes the chess partner of one of the Generals; Carmen, one of the two female terrorists, falls in love with Gen, Hosokawa's translator and aide; Vice President Iglesias becomes close with one of the young boys in the terrorist party and begins to plan a life, afterwards, in which he can raise the boy as his son; Coss begins singing arias every day for the delight and amusement of everyone in the house. They live in a bubble, a sort of hazy limbo, where the outside world ceases to exist and all that matters is their little group. None of them think any longer about the "after," because why would they want to? Friendships are forged, relationships flourish, talents emerge, and emotional bonds form. They don't need anyone but each other.

Of course, something like this can never end well, and the climax is heartbreaking and sudden. Patchett has breathed such life into her characters that they become real people, and by the end the reader cares as much about them as they do for each other. No one wins at the end of Bel Canto, and you will close the book with a sense of melancholy and dissatisfaction, but like the arias that Roxane Coss sings, just because something is sad doesn't mean it's not beautiful.

Title Sixty One: The Pact by Jodi Picoult

Emily Gold and Christopher Harte were born, months apart, to parents who lived in adjacent houses and mothers who were best friends. Growing up, they were two halves of a whole, partners in crime, and as close as any two humans could possibly be. As they moved into the maze of their teenage years, it was only natural that Chris and Em take the next step and become a couple. After all, it's like they were made for each other, so what could be more natural or perfect?

That perfection shatters on an autumn evening when both sets of parents are called with horrifying news: they must come to the hospital immediately; there has been a shooting involving Chris and Emily. The Hartes and the Golds race to the emergency room, but it's too late for Em, killed by a gunshot wound to the head. Christopher has a scalp laceration and stitches. In the ensuing hours, tragic details will emerge: Emily and Chris went to the local park, where Chris operated the carousel in the summer, to fulfill a suicide pact. The gun that killed Emily was Dr. James Harte's. Chris fainted after Em's shot and before he could follow through.

It's not that simple. When Chris is charged with Emily's murder, an already tragic situation becomes catastrophic. What really happened that night? Melanie Gold becomes so consumed by bitterness, blame and rage that she turns on everyone, alienating not only her best friend, Gus Harte, but also her own husband Michael. James Harte withdraws into himself and avoids his wife. Chris's younger sister, Kate, is all but forgotten (the Christmas morning scene is downright painful). In the midst of all of this, defense attorney Jordan McAfee is trying to build a case that will let Christopher off the hook while asking his client to just sit down and shut up; meanwhile, Christopher needs to face the truth of his relationship with Emily, and ask himself how much she really loved him. The answer is devastating.

Picoult uses a combination of legal and emotional plotlines to frame her most successful works, and I would argue that The Pact is in her top three, along with My Sister's Keeper and Handle with Care. While moving through the present day, focusing mostly on Chris but keeping a good handle on the supporting characters, Picoult intersperses the details of Chris and Em's years together, from the day Emily was born and Chris shared her hospital bassinet, up until the night that she died and left Chris behind. In the meantime, everyone tries to put together the pieces of what, exactly, happened. Too many variables don't add up - the trajectory of the bullet, Emily's demeanor, her future prospects as a very talented artist - to label her death a suicide; however, if Chris loves Em as much as he, and everyone else, claims, he could never have killed her, because he doesn't want to live without her. Slowly, secrets are rescued from their hidden corners and pockets, and the answers eventually come together in a moving scene that has Christopher taking the stand in his own defense. The outcome and the answers are completely unbelievable, but they fit the novel to perfection. There is no happy ending, and the truth hurts everyone, but it's fitting. Life isn't always sunshine and rainbows. Sometimes it's a cold marble headstone and regret.

Title Sixty: The Last Cowgirl by Jana Richman

I actually read this book months ago, and then re-read it after that. I'll put it on the stack of books to be reviewed, and then I take it off again and set it aside. I don't know why, but I just feel like I won't be able to do the book justice when I write about it. Then I realized that I need to get my ass in gear on this Challenge, so I resolved to do it. I apologize in advance, because the book deserves more than I'm about to give it. I just...I don't know how. I'm not that good.

Dickie Sinfield (only her father calls her by her given name of Darlene) had a normal suburban girlhood in Utah with manicured lawns and playing on the sidewalk in front of the house until the day her father decided that the family was going to move to a ranch outside of town so that he could follow his own childhood dream of becoming a cowboy. With the exception of Dickie's brother Heber, the family is less than enthused - Dickie misses her neighborhood and friends, her older sister Annie is horrified by the entire thing and spends her time out of the house or locked in her room, and their mother just quietly resents it. Her father's dream is only viable thanks to the efforts of two neighbors and fellow ranchers who would become more family than friends - Bev Christensen and Merv Nelson. A few years later, a local army base and the secrets beneath it would devastate all three ranchers, and Dickie would bolt for Salt Lake City as soon as she hit 18, where she would become a journalist and cut ties with her cowgirl past.

Dickie's story begins with the death of her brother Heber, an accident hushed up by the military base where he works - the same military base that played a role in the destruction of cattle herds decades earlier. Dickie is forced to confront the past in order to come to terms with Heber's death, and the story switches gracefully from the present day to Dickie's recollections of her youth, all told from her point of view. The novel ebbs and flows, unfolding at just the right pace. The plot folds in ranching, government research, environmentalism, Mormonism, family drama, friendship, betrayal, and acceptance in a fascinating way. It's not exactly a tale of redemption; it's more a tale of peace, and coming to terms with your life.

It's just so real. I think that's always been one of the best compliments I can give a book, because I want a story that I can believe in and characters I can know. I'm telling you, there is so much I'm missing here: Dickie's tumultuous relationship with Stumpy, Merv's grandson; her strained relationship with her father; the faithful details of cattle raising and ranch life; the pain of loss; Dickie's spiteful best friend Holly; the residents of Ganoa county and their uneasy acceptance of the military presence that provides jobs yet always casts a shadow of potential disaster. I just don't know how to incorporate all of my thoughts. This book is layered and thought-provoking and insightful and emotional. It's the book that any aspiring writer wants to create. It's lovely. I probably haven't made a very convincing argument here, because I'm babbling, but The Last Cowgirl is a gem. I hope that Richman keeps writing, because she has a fan here.

Title Fifty Nine: Play Dirty by Sandra Brown

Ok, I'll admit that this book is pure trash from front to back.* It's totally aimed at bored housewives who love the Lifetime Movie Network. It's possible that it destroyed a few of my brain cells.

A former Dallas Cowboys quarterback just got out of prison - I'm not sure why he was in prison, but it had something to do with him throwing a game for the Mob or something, and gambling, and I don't know what else. Anyway, this cat, Griff Burkett, gets the offer of a lifetime when he gets out - the billionaire owner of SunSouth Airlines wants Griff to get Mrs. SunSouth pregnant. The old-fashioned way. Because Mr. SunSouth is in a wheelchair and can't get the job done. Griff will make a boatload of money if he agrees. So he agrees. Mrs. SunSouth is okay with it. They knock boots at several appointed times, and Mrs. SunSouth gets up the pole right as the two fall in love, which is sad because now that the rabbit's dead, they have no more reason to meet. Then Mr. SunSouth turns up murdered, Griff is the suspect, but Mrs. SunSouth loves him anyway and helps him run. They figure out who really did it, everyone is redeemed, it turns out Mr. SunSouth was a manipulative, crazy bastard so no real loss there, and everyone is happy.

Seriously.

*Disclaimer: I was high on perfectly legal, professionally administered drugs when I read this.

Title Fifty Eight: Being Committed by Anna Maxted

Yes, again with the British chick lit. You shut your mouth when you're talking to me.

Hannah Lovekin prides herself on her lack of emotion; she believes that it makes her a good detective, and serves her well enough in her private life. The first sign of trouble comes when her boyfriend, Jason, proposes to her on a hotel bathroom floor, and she turns him down. This leads him to turn around and propose to his neighbor Lucy, which then makes Hannah decide she wants him back, even though he's kind of a puss. "Encouraged" by her father Roger to reconcile with Jason, Hannah goes through a sort of test course proposed by Jason in order to facilitate a reunion - she needs to be more feminine (the novel is written in the first person, and the description of a Brazilian had me putting down the book so that I could wipe away tears of laughter), she needs to learn to cook, she has to attend therapy in order to be more emotionally open, and she needs to find some closure with her ex-husband, Jack. The last proves the most difficult, since Jack left Hannah five months after they got married, at age twenty, because he believed that she cheated on him. Hannah has to spin a complicated web when she realizes that she's still in love with Jack, but needs to break off her engagement to Jason - he asked again after the Brazilian and the spray tan and the haircut and the dinner she made - in a delicate manner and return him to Lucy.

Things start to fall apart. Lies begin to spread, and with them truths come out. Memories of her own mother's affair, twenty-five years earlier, start pushing their way into Hannah's brain. She begins to see the people around her for who they really are: her parents, her brother Oliver and his wife Gabrielle, Jack, and her best friend Martine. Hannah starts feeling and it freaks her right the fuck out, but there's nothing she can do about it, and she finally begins to grow up.

Being Committed, like Maxted's other books, is a fast, fun read with a great central theme and a well-developed cast of characters. As the story branches out, it never becomes unwieldy; it just seems to evolve naturally. Maxted mixes humor with levity and creates an overall enjoyable experience. I dig it, and I'll read it again. And again.

Title Fifty Seven: A Final Arc of Sky: A Memoir of Critical Care by Jennifer Culkin

So, we all know by now that I'm a sucker for memoirs, medicine-related books, and combinations of the two. (Look, are you reading a hundred books in a year?) So I went to Barnes and Noble one day at lunch, as I tend to do when my friend Lo is craving one of their pizza pretzels, and was trolling for something cool and came upon A Final Arc of Sky. In all honesty, I checked out the flappy thinger that tells you what it's about (my job renders me brain dead, shut up) and put it back. Then I wandered away, wandered back, looked again, wandered away, wandered back, and grabbed it. It promised me tales of Culkin's career as a critical care/emergency flight nurse, and I wanted the blood and guts and syringes and O2 tanks and flying while trying to keep a dude who wrapped his car around a telephone pole going long enough to make it to the hospital. I'm that kind of girl.

Culkin half-delivered. I don't even know if that's a word or if I made it up, but if you had to read spreadsheets all day you wouldn't be coherent either. There are some great tales of accident victims, medical type actions, and the general bad-assery of the job - I mean, for serious, it takes some titanium balls to do everything in your power to keep someone alive while you're flying in a tin can through a storm in Washington state. And that's your job. Like it's my job to look at spreadsheets, it was Culkin's job to keep people alive in the air. During 24-hour shifts. No fancy machines, no team of doctors, no Code Blues. Just a couple of nurses, a pilot, and someone with one foot out life's door. Do you realize how cool that is?

Culkin frames the story in vignettes more than chapters, and it lends a sort of choppy feel to the narrative. I also became disappointed when the story veered off into her personal life and followed the illnesses and deaths of her parents (her dad was kind of a prick in his final months) and then her own struggle with MS. Don't get me wrong, I admire her for speaking up about her own illness, but I think I was so tired of reading about her father that I just couldn't muster up the energy to feel genuine emotion. There were also a couple of chapters about her love of bike riding, and I just didn't care about that. I skipped them. They were, at best, tangential and, at worst, completely unnecessary. Culkin rounds out the memoir with a powerful chapter on a fatal crash and the deaths of the colleagues involved, even though she had gone on disability by that point, and how it affected her. She realizes that it could have been any one of them, and recalls the deceased with affection and respect. Then it just kind of ends.

Honestly, I wish I hadn't spent my money on the book, because it really only comes out as mediocre and uneven on the whole. I did use a coupon, though.

Title Fifty Six: The House at Sugar Beach by Helene Cooper

It is so, so rare to find a memoir that can blend fact, experience, personal and political history, and a conversational tone and deliver something so pitch-perfect that you can't put it down. I managed to read Cooper's lovely account of her privileged girlhood in Liberia, followed by her escape to America as a refugee and successful career as a journalist, in about three and a half hours (roughly the time it took for me to fly to Portland and back). It was that engaging and gripping; touching without being manipulative, and informative without being pedantic.

Cooper begins with a short history of the country of Liberia itself - the only American attempt at colonization - and traces her own roots back to the founders of the country through both her mother and father. The author neatly encapsulates the background and peppers it with enough details and anecdotes to keep it from becoming dusty or dry. Fast forwarding nearly a hundred and fifty years, Cooper describes her childhood as a daughter of a wealthy and influential family; her father built a luxurious estate in a secluded suburb of the city of Monrovia, a home that the family called "Sugar Beach." Cooper's parents, who already had children of their own, brought a poor native girl named Eunice to live with the family in order to keep Helene and her sister Marlene company. Eunice was treated well and loved by the girls as a sister, but the Liberian caste system prevented her from truly belonging to the family. Cooper evokes vivid memories of parties, private school, clothes from America, vacations, fancy cars, and handsome boys as she describes a charmed girlhood. Then overnight, a coup destroyed the delicate balance of Liberian life and families such as the Coopers were marked for death. Helene watched her uncle, a government official, executed on television. In a matter of weeks Helene, Marlene, and their mother refugeed from Liberia and fled to America as the world they left behind crumbled and burned, giving way to a new world where women were raped and slaughtered and children were orphaned and forced into militias. Eunice had to be left behind, and Helene didn't see her again for decades.

After the coup and the escape, the Coopers built a new life in America, but Helene was never comfortable, and they moved around quite a bit. John Cooper eventually went back to Liberia and died there; Calista and Marlene Cooper also returned but came back to the U.S. after several years. Only Helene never cared to go back. Helene dedicated herself to her studies and became a reporter at UNC, then moved on to a journalism career that took her to the Wall Street Journal and later all over the world, but she locked away her feelings on Liberia and focused on her new life as an American, preferring to forget her past, until she found herself in Iraq in the beginning of the war and narrowly avoided dying in an attack. Helene Cooper picked herself up, dusting herself off, and decided that if she were going to die in a war, it should be Liberia. Her decision brought her face to face with the horrors she never wanted to see again, but it also brought her back to Eunice, and gave her a second chance that should probably never have happened.

A story like this should be trite. It should make you roll your eyes and sigh derisively. The beauty of The House at Sugar Beach is that, instead, it makes your heart ache and your eyes tear in the best of ways. (I fully admit to crying a little while reading the description of Helene's father's death, although I was surreptiously trying to knuckle the tears away lest the air hostess ask me if I was all right and embarrass me on a plane full of strangers.) It made me wonder why I didn't know more about Liberia or the atrocities committed there, and it made me respect someone who took the pieces of a shattered life and rebuilt them while she was still just a child, and then had the courage to risk that fragile existence by going back as an adult. Cooper keeps it real in the best sense of the word, being matter-of-fact without being cold, being honest without being callous, and being true without being exploitative. The mixture of emotion and fact is beautifully balanced, and makes for a bittersweet story with the happiest ending it could have had.

Title Fifty Five: Sushi for Beginners by Marian Keyes

I like Brit chick lit, we've established that. I dig the slang and the settings and the phrasing and the pace. I prefer Keyes' Walsh sisters stuff to her standalones, but the latter are serviceable enough. I feel like I've reviewed enough of her books here over the last several months that if I get all analytical it's just going to be boring, so to sum:

Lisa is a hotshot magazine editor based in London who is ruthless, bitchy, and almost guaranteed to snag a promotion and posting in NYC. To her shock, she's sent packing to the backwater of Dublin to launch an Irish women's magazine, Colleen. Lisa loathes everything about it but is determined to claw her way back to the top. She acquires a sexy new boss in Jack Devine and a doggedly loyal assistant in Ashling Kennedy. Keyes gives you interesting characters, and it's fun to watch them move through the process of launching a new magazine. Ashling is the most endearing, but Lisa becomes a sympathetic figure and is redeemed by the end of the book. Ashling gets betrayed by her best friend and her boyfriend, but lands on her feet. Jack smolders his way along and gets his own happy ending.

Really, I don't have much more to tell you. It's a fun book if you're into this kind of thing, and Keyes doesn't really hit wrong notes that often. Sushi for Beginners holds up nicely.