Almost Interesting by David Spade
Publisher: Dey Street Books
Publication Date: October 27, 2015
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Publisher’s Description:
A hilarious and biting memoir from the actor, comedian and Saturday Night Live alumni David Spade.
David Spade is best known for his harsh “Hollywood” Minute Sketches on SNL, his starring roles in movies like Joe Dirt and Tommy Boy, and his seven-year stint as Dennis Finch on the series Just Shoot Me. Now, with a wit as dry as the weather in his home state of Arizona, the “comic brat extraordinaire” tells his story in Almost Interesting.
First taking fans back to his childhood as a wannabe cool younger brother and recounting his excruciating road-tour to fame—when he was regularly mistaken for a ten year-old, Spade then dishes about his time crisscrossing the country as a comedian, for low-paying gigs and dragging along his mother’s old suitcase full of props. He also covers his years on SNL during the beloved Rock/Sandler/Farley era of the 1990s, including his close working relationship and friendship with Chris Farley and brags about the ridiculous perks that fame has brought into his life, including the constant fear of being fired, a crazy ex-assistant who attacked him while he was sleeping, a run-in with Eddie Murphy on the mean streets of Beverly Hills, and of course an endless supply of hot chicks.
Sometimes dirty, always funny, and as sharp as a tack, Almost Interesting reminds you why David Spade is one of our generation’s favorite funny guys.
I’ve always been intrigued by David Spade. His Hollywood Minute bits on Saturday Night Live were hilarious and so well-written. He’s been a scene-stealing supporting cast member in the TV series Just Shoot Me and Rules of Engagement. In both shows, he played a womanizing jerk. However, in his appearance on talk shows, he is self-deprecating to the point where it seems like he really does have low-self-esteem. Yet at the same time, he’s kind of a womanizer like his characters. But then, he dated Heather Locklear?! He’s an enigma. I picked up his book, hoping I could get to the bottom of who the heck is David Spade.
Almost Interesting starts in David’s childhood but the bulk of the book is about his career leading up to and as a cast member of Saturday Night Live. If you want an in-depth look at how an episode of SNL is put together, this is the book for you. I enjoyed learning about how the writer’s room at SNL works. David was there for five years and had imposter syndrome (that’s my diagnosis, not his) basically the whole time. He was always worried that he was going to get fired. I think that the self-deprecating humor he portrays on talk-shows comes from a place of genuine vulnerability that is in this book as well.
There are also some stories about the movies he made with Chris Farley, who was a close friend. He doesn’t go into much detail about Chris’s personal demons but I wouldn’t expect him to. There’s almost nothing about the two TV series he was in. The biggest disappointment is that there is NOTHING about Heather Locklear. I can only hope that he held back some info to include in a second memoir.
Memoirs from comedians can be hit or miss. Often their humor doesn’t translate well to the page. While some of the humor in the book was on the obnoxious, swarmy side, I thought that the sincere parts of the book made up for it. Recommended, especially for SNL fans.
April 9th, 2021 in
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Broken by Jenny Lawson
Publisher:Henry Holt and Co.
Publication Date: April 6, 2021 – That’s today!!
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Publisher’s Description:
As Jenny Lawson’s hundreds of thousands of fans know, she suffers from depression. In Broken, Jenny brings readers along on her mental and physical health journey, offering heartbreaking and hilarious anecdotes along the way.
With people experiencing anxiety and depression now more than ever, Jenny humanizes what we all face in an all-too-real way, reassuring us that we’re not alone and making us laugh while doing it. From the business ideas that she wants to pitch to Shark Tank to the reason why Jenny can never go back to the post office, Broken leaves nothing to the imagination in the most satisfying way. And of course, Jenny’s long-suffering husband Victor―the Ricky to Jenny’s Lucille Ball―is present throughout.
A treat for Jenny Lawson’s already existing fans, and destined to convert new ones, Broken is a beacon of hope and a wellspring of laughter when we all need it most.
If you’ve read Jenny Lawson’s previous books or follow her blog, The Bloggess, then you know that she suffers from mental illness, including depression and has chronic physical health issues as well. In Broken, Jenny shares her experiences in only the way that she can – with brutal honesty and complete hilarity. I appreciate that book is organized so that the more serious essays are interspersed with the funny essays so that the book never gets too heavy. She lays herself bare in some of the more serious essays, she hasn’t been quite this raw in her other books. Everyone will relate to her chapter about her experience with her insurance company. Ugh.
Once again, she had me laughing so hard my cheeks hurt at some of her stories, especially when her husband Victor is involved. Although, the tables were turned in one of them – she was the one behaving sensibly and he was the irrational animal lover. It was fun to see that side of him.
Even if you haven’t heard of Jenny, you will love this book. And if you suffer from chronic or mental illness, Jenny will make you feel like you are not alone. Highly, highly recommended.
Other books by Jenny Lawson I’ve reviewed:
Let’s Pretend This Never Happened: A Mostly True Memoir
Furiously Happy: A Funny Book About Horrible Things
(I received a complimentary copy of Broken for review.)
The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Publication Date: September 7, 2011
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Publisher’s Description:
At Westish College, a small school on the shore of Lake Michigan, baseball star Henry Skrimshander seems destined for big league stardom. But when a routine throw goes disastrously off course, the fates of five people are upended.
Henry’s fight against self-doubt threatens to ruin his future. College president Guert Affenlight, a longtime bachelor, has fallen unexpectedly and helplessly in love. Owen Dunne, Henry’s gay roommate and teammate, becomes caught up in a dangerous affair. Mike Schwartz, the Harpooners’ team captain and Henry’s best friend, realizes he has guided Henry’s career at the expense of his own. And Pella Affenlight, Guert’s daughter, returns to Westish after escaping an ill-fated marriage, determined to start a new life.
As the season counts down to its climactic final game, these five are forced to confront their deepest hopes, anxieties, and secrets. In the process they forge new bonds, and help one another find their true paths. Written with boundless intelligence and filled with the tenderness of youth, The Art of Fielding is an expansive, warmhearted novel about ambition and its limits, about family and friendship and love, and about commitment — to oneself and to others.
I picked up The Art of Fielding at a used book sale a couple of years ago because I remembered that there was a lot of buzz around it when it was first published. I love sports movies, e.g. Rudy, Hoosiers, etc. so I figured a novel about baseball would be right up my alley.
Henry Skrimshander comes to Westish College to play baseball. He was the star of his high school team and is the star of the Westish team until a wild throw of his injures somebody. From then on out, he has the yips, i.e. the inability to throw a baseball accurately. This causes a ripple effect through the lives of the other people in his life – his roommate and teammate Owen, his mentor Mike, the school’s president Guert and Guert’s daughter Pella.
I enjoyed the first three-quarters of this book a lot. The author weaves an intricate cloth with all five main characters’ lives. While baseball is definitely part of the story, there’s quite a bit more to it. It’s also about the relationships between the five main characters. It’s hard to go into too much detail without spoilers but I will say that some of the relationships are not healthy.
So that last quarter of the book…it was so out of left-field (pun intended!) that it actually made me a little angry. This book is over 500 pages long so to have invested quite a bit of time in it and for it to have such a disappointing and weird ending was unsatisfying, to say the least. I would give the first three-quarters of this book four stars and the last quarter two stars. Take that for what you will!
April 1st, 2021 in
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Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens
Publisher: G.P. Putnam’s Sons
Publication Date: August 14, 2018
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Publisher’s Description:
For years, rumors of the “Marsh Girl” have haunted Barkley Cove, a quiet town on the North Carolina coast. So in late 1969, when handsome Chase Andrews is found dead, the locals immediately suspect Kya Clark, the so-called Marsh Girl. But Kya is not what they say. Sensitive and intelligent, she has survived for years alone in the marsh that she calls home, finding friends in the gulls and lessons in the sand. Then the time comes when she yearns to be touched and loved. When two young men from town become intrigued by her wild beauty, Kya opens herself to a new life–until the unthinkable happens.
Where the Crawdads Sing is at once an exquisite ode to the natural world, a heartbreaking coming-of-age story, and a surprising tale of possible murder. Owens reminds us that we are forever shaped by the children we once were, and that we are all subject to the beautiful and violent secrets that nature keeps.
I’m sure you’ve heard of and probably even read Where the Crawdads Sing by now. It’s been on The New York Times bestseller list for eons and is one of the top-selling books of all time. It’s a murder mystery as well as a coming-of-age novel. Kya is known as the “Marsh Girl”. Abandoned by her family, she’s survived on her own in a remote cabin in the marsh. When Chase Andrews, a popular local boy is found dead, Kya is the prime suspect. The book alternates between the present day of the investigation to Kya’s childhood and how she became the “Marsh Girl.”
I didn’t read this book until it had been out quite a while so there was a lot of hype about it. Several of my friends said that it was one of the best books they’ve ever read. While I did enjoy Where the Crawdads Sing, I didn’t think it quite lived up to that level of hype. It bothered me that there were so many coincidences necessary for the twist ending to work.
The author did a good job of bringing emotion to the story. Reading about Kya’s childhood was heart-wrenching. There were also beautiful descriptions of the natural world that Kya inhabits, which makes sense because the author, Delia Owens is a retired wildlife biologist. Even though I had some minor problems with the murder mystery element of the book, I still liked the book as a whole. Recommended.
March 29th, 2021 in
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The Alice Network by Kate Quinn
William Morrow Paperbacks
Publication Date: June 6, 2017
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Publisher’s Description:
In the chaotic aftermath of World War II, American college girl Charlie St. Clair is pregnant, unmarried, and on the verge of being thrown out of her very proper family. She’s also nursing a desperate hope that her beloved cousin Rose, who disappeared in Nazi-occupied France during the war, might still be alive. So when Charlie’s parents banish her to Europe to have her “little problem” taken care of, Charlie breaks free and heads to London, determined to find out what happened to the cousin she loves like a sister.
A year into the Great War, Eve Gardiner burns to join the fight against the Germans and unexpectedly gets her chance when she’s recruited to work as a spy. Sent into enemy-occupied France, she’s trained by the mesmerizing Lili, the “Queen of Spies”, who manages a vast network of secret agents right under the enemy’s nose.
Thirty years later, haunted by the betrayal that ultimately tore apart the Alice Network, Eve spends her days drunk and secluded in her crumbling London house. Until a young American barges in uttering a name Eve hasn’t heard in decades, and launches them both on a mission to find the truth…no matter where it leads.
In 1947, Charlie St. Clair is pregnant and unwed. Her well-to-do mother takes her to Europe to take care of her Little Problem. Charlie uses the opportunity to escape her mother and search for her cousin Rose, who went missing in France during WWII. She finds and convinces Eve Gardiner to help her. Eve was one of several female spies known as The Alice Network during WWI. The book alternates between Eve and Charlie’s journey to find Rose and Eve’s experience as a spy in WWI.
I enjoyed The Alice Network, especially Eve’s story during WWI. I wasn’t that interested in Charlie’s story. A couple of turns in the plot were just a little too convenient and didn’t make much sense, which bothered me a bit. There’s also a torture scene that had me majorly cringing so beware if you’re sensitive to that sort of thing. I appreciated that the author did her research in writing about the spy network. At least one of the characters is an accurate portrayal of a real person. Recommended.
March 25th, 2021 in
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Next Year in Havana by Chanel Cleeton
Publisher: Berkley
Publication Date: February 6, 2018
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Publisher’s Description:
After the death of her beloved grandmother, a Cuban-American woman travels to Havana, where she discovers the roots of her identity—and unearths a family secret hidden since the revolution…
Havana, 1958. The daughter of a sugar baron, nineteen-year-old Elisa Perez is part of Cuba’s high society, where she is largely sheltered from the country’s growing political unrest—until she embarks on a clandestine affair with a passionate revolutionary…
Miami, 2017. Freelance writer Marisol Ferrera grew up hearing romantic stories of Cuba from her late grandmother Elisa, who was forced to flee with her family during the revolution. Elisa’s last wish was for Marisol to scatter her ashes in the country of her birth.
Arriving in Havana, Marisol comes face-to-face with the contrast of Cuba’s tropical, timeless beauty and its perilous political climate. When more family history comes to light and Marisol finds herself attracted to a man with secrets of his own, she’ll need the lessons of her grandmother’s past to help her understand the true meaning of courage.
Marisol Ferrera’s grandmother Elisa’s final wish was for her ashes to be scattered in Cuba, where she grew up until her family was forced to flee to America. Next Year in Havana alternates between the present day, in which Marisol travels to Cuba with her grandmother’s ashes and when her grandmother was a young woman in Cuba. It’s two love stories for the price of one. Elisa’s forbidden love is Pablo. Once in Cuba, Marisol falls for Luis, the grandson of her mother’s childhood best friend.
I learned a lot about Cuba’s history from this book as Elisa’s story takes place during Fidel Castro’s rise to power and I enjoyed Elisa’s storyline. However, I felt like Marisol and Luis’s relationship was contrived. I didn’t feel like there was any chemistry between them. And the speed at which their relationship progressed seemed unrealistic, even for a romance novel. There are three more books in this series but Next Year in Havana didn’t grab me enough to make me want to read further.
March 22nd, 2021 in
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Normal People by Sally Rooney
Publisher: Hogarth
Publication Date: April 16, 2019
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Publisher’s Description:
Connell and Marianne grew up in the same small town, but the similarities end there. At school, Connell is popular and well liked, while Marianne is a loner. But when the two strike up a conversation—awkward but electrifying—something life changing begins.
A year later, they’re both studying at Trinity College in Dublin. Marianne has found her feet in a new social world while Connell hangs at the sidelines, shy and uncertain. Throughout their years at university, Marianne and Connell circle one another, straying toward other people and possibilities but always magnetically, irresistibly drawn back together. And as she veers into self-destruction and he begins to search for meaning elsewhere, each must confront how far they are willing to go to save the other.
Normal People is the story of mutual fascination, friendship and love. It takes us from that first conversation to the years beyond, in the company of two people who try to stay apart but find that they can’t.
Normal People starts when Connell and Marianne are in high school in a small town in Ireland. Although Connell poor (his mother cleans Marianne’s mother’s home), he is athletic and popular in school. Even though Marianne comes from a wealthy family, she’s kind of a weirdo and doesn’t have any friends. She and Connell strike up a friends with benefits type situation but Connell insists they keep their relationship a secret, worried that if it gets out he’s sleeping with Marianne, it will lower his social status.
They both head to Trinity College, an elite private school in Dublin. There the tables are turned. Marianne fits in with the other wealthy students, while Connell feels like an outsider. My favorite line in the book is Connell’s observation of the other students at a party:
“It was culture as class performance, literature fetishized for its ability to take educated people on false emotional journeys, so that they might afterward feel superior to the uneducated people whose emotional journeys they liked to read about.”
Throughout college, Marianne and Connell break-up and get back together a few times, dating other people in-between. Their break-ups are usually precipitated by some sort of misunderstanding. The kind that makes you want to jump in the book and shake them. Just communicate with each other for goodness sake!
Some of the reviews I read after reading Normal People indicate that its theme is class. While that didn’t jump out at me as the theme while I was reading it, looking back on it now, I can see that it is about class to some extent. Marianne and Connell are definitely of different classes and it does have an effect on the way they each see the world and relate to one another.
Normal People has also been called the first great millennial novel. Speaking as a Gen Xer, I can see why it’s been called that but I think that anyone can appreciate it, although maybe not as much as a millennial might. My book club that is made up of mostly baby boomers were lukewarm on it overall. I enjoyed it enough that I plan to read Rooney’s first novel, Conversations with Friends, which is supposed to be fairly similar and just as good, if not better. Normal People has been made into a limited series on Hulu which I also plan to check out. I’ll keep you posted on what it’s like.
(I received a complimentary copy of this book for review.)
Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family by Robert Kolker
Publisher: Doubleday
Publication Date: April 7, 2020
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Publisher’s Description:
The heartrending story of a midcentury American family with twelve children, six of them diagnosed with schizophrenia, that became science’s great hope in the quest to understand the disease.
Don and Mimi Galvin seemed to be living the American dream. After World War II, Don’s work with the Air Force brought them to Colorado, where their twelve children perfectly spanned the baby boom: the oldest born in 1945, the youngest in 1965. In those years, there was an established script for a family like the Galvins–aspiration, hard work, upward mobility, domestic harmony–and they worked hard to play their parts. But behind the scenes was a different story: psychological breakdown, sudden shocking violence, hidden abuse. By the mid-1970s, six of the ten Galvin boys, one after another, were diagnosed as schizophrenic. How could all this happen to one family?
What took place inside the house on Hidden Valley Road was so extraordinary that the Galvins became one of the first families to be studied by the National Institute of Mental Health. Their story offers a shadow history of the science of schizophrenia, from the era of institutionalization, lobotomy, and the schizophrenogenic mother to the search for genetic markers for the disease, always amid profound disagreements about the nature of the illness itself. And unbeknownst to the Galvins, samples of their DNA informed decades of genetic research that continues today, offering paths to treatment, prediction, and even eradication of the disease for future generations.
Hidden Valley Road is the story of Don and Mimi Galvin and their twelve children – ten boys and two girls. Six of their boys end up being diagnosed as schizophrenic. The diagnoses started rolling in the 1960s, when not much was known about the cause of the disease or how to treat it. It was originally thought to be brought on by being raised by an overbearing mother. Eventually, some scientists wanted to know if there could be a genetic component to the disease and that’s where the Galvin family could help, being such a large family with such a high incidence of the disease.
Robert Kolker goes back and forth between chapters on the Galvin family and chapters about theories and research related to schizophrenia. He spent hours interviewing members of the family and their friends and reading journals that various family members kept over the years. The family struggled so much. Any parent would have been overwhelmed but Mimi’s preoccupation with making sure her family looked perfect from the outside certainly didn’t help. Her two daughters were the two youngest children and had to endure horrible abuse from some of their older brothers. The family was perpetually in chaos.
The book profiles the Galvins from when Don and Mimi first started dating, right up through the present day. The work scientists are doing in the field is also followed up through today. It was interesting to see how all of the Galvin children ended up. Of course, even the healthy siblings were profoundly affected growing up in a household with so many mentally ill people. At times, I wished for a little more details about some of the siblings but I know the author could only include so much without making the book cumbersome.
Hidden Valley Road has a very readable narrative, even with all of the scientific information that’s included. Kolker’s treatment of the mentally ill brothers never seems exploitive, only informative. Recommended.
March 15th, 2021 in
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The Other Mother by Matthew Dicks
Publisher: St. Martin’s Press
Publication Date: January 12, 2021
My rating: 4.5 of 5 stars
Publisher’s Description:
Thirteen-year-old Michael Parsons is dealing with a lot. His father’s sudden death; his mother’s new husband, Glen, who he loathes; his two younger siblings, who he looks after more and more now that his mother works extra shifts.
And then one day, Michael wakes up and his mother is gone. In her place is an exact, duplicate mother. The ‘other mother’. No one else seems to notice the real version is missing. His brother, his sister, and even Glen act as if everything’s normal. But Michael knows in his heart that this mother is not his. And he begins to panic.
What follows is a big-hearted coming-of-age story of a boy struggling with an unusual disorder that poses unparalleled challenges―but also, as he discovers, offers him unique opportunities.
Thirteen-year-old Michael Parsons is under a lot of stress. He cares for his younger brother and sister while his mother works double shifts to make up for the fact that his scheming, deadbeat step-dad contributes almost nothing financially to the household. Michael has anger problems that have gotten worse since his father died. It seems likes he’s always in trouble at school. Then, one day he wakes up to discover that his mother is missing. She has been replaced with an exact replica. No one else seems to notice that this woman is not his mother. Michael needs to find out what this other mother has done with his real mother. He can’t tell anyone because he knows they’ll think he’s crazy.
Michael clearly has some sort of behavior disorder, although a specific diagnosis is never given in the book. He meets with the school counselor daily to help develop coping mechanisms for his anger. Because he has outbursts at school, he doesn’t have any friends. His inner thoughts reveal some of the causes of his behavior but it confuses him almost as much as it confuses the people around him. Matthew Dicks has a real insight into the minds of troubled people and Michael’s inner thoughts are authentic and revealing. I felt such empathy for him, my heart hurt while reading this book.
There are bright spots for Michael. Sarah, the prettiest girl in school, happens to live next door. When Michael’s little sister invites her to go fishing with them, Sarah and Michael hit it off and become fast friends. She’s only the second friend Michael has ever had. Michael also meets a woman on his paper route who knew his dad when they were kids. He enjoys hearing stories about when his dad, who he misses terribly, was younger. Michael has to decide if he trusts either Sarah or the woman enough to tell them that his mother is missing.
Dicks wrote Memoirs of an Imaginary Friend, which is one of my all-time favorite books. I’m happy to say that The Other Mother is in league with that book. Highly recommended.
Other books I’ve reviewed by Matthew Dicks:
Memoirs of an Imaginary Friend
The Perfect Comeback of Caroline Jacobs
(I received a complimentary copy of The Other Mother for review.)
March 11th, 2021 in
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Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America by Ijeoma Oluo
Publisher: Seal Press
Publication Date: December 1, 2020
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Publisher’s Description:
What happens to a country that tells generation after generation of white men that they deserve power? What happens when success is defined by status over women and people of color, instead of by actual accomplishments?
Through the last 150 years of American history — from the post-reconstruction South and the mythic stories of cowboys in the West, to the present-day controversy over NFL protests and the backlash against the rise of women in politics — Ijeoma Oluo exposes the devastating consequences of white male supremacy on women, people of color, and white men themselves. Mediocre investigates the real costs of this phenomenon in order to imagine a new white male identity, one free from racism and sexism.
As provocative as it is essential, this book will upend everything you thought you knew about American identity and offers a bold new vision of American greatness.
Mediocre should be required reading for everyone, especially white males. Of course, I knew that white males are the most privileged group in our society and that they have been scared of losing their power forever. They go to great lengths to keep from relinquishing even one iota of it. However, I didn’t realize just how pervasive and ingrained the myth of white male superiority is in our country. This book is well-researched and Oluo lays it all out in a way that left me wondering how I hadn’t put all of the pieces together before now. It’s truly amazing how much we capitulate to the white males of the world.
She starts all the way back with Buffalo Bill and ends up in the present day. She’s equal opportunity – it’s not just white male conservatives enjoying their status – she takes Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders to task as well. I especially appreciated what I learned about how women CEOs have been typically been treated. The section on the history of racism in the NFL was also enlightening – I wish that everyone against the players kneeling for the national anthem would read it.
Oluo has been doxed, swatted and received multiple death threats and yet she keeps on speaking and writing the truth. Just like her first book, So You Want to Talk about Race, (find my review of it here) Mediocre is written in her accessible style with some dry humor sprinkled in. I hope that everyone reads it.
(I received a complimentary copy of this book for review.)
March 8th, 2021 in
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