Furiously Happy: A Funny Book About Horrible Things by Jenny Lawson
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Publication Date: September 22, 2015
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Publisher’s Description:
In Furiously Happy, a humor memoir tinged with just enough tragedy and pathos to make it worthwhile, Jenny Lawson examines her own experience with severe depression and a host of other conditions, and explains how it has led her to live life to the fullest:
“I’ve often thought that people with severe depression have developed such a well for experiencing extreme emotion that they might be able to experience extreme joy in a way that ‘normal people’ also might never understand. And that’s what Furiously Happy is all about.”
Jenny’s readings are standing room only, with fans lining up to have Jenny sign their bottles of Xanax or Prozac as often as they are to have her sign their books. Furiously Happy appeals to Jenny’s core fan base but also transcends it. There are so many people out there struggling with depression and mental illness, either themselves or someone in their family―and in Furiously Happy they will find a member of their tribe offering up an uplifting message (via a taxidermied roadkill raccoon). Let’s Pretend This Never Happened ostensibly was about embracing your own weirdness, but deep down it was about family. Furiously Happy is about depression and mental illness, but deep down it’s about joy―and who doesn’t want a bit more of that?
Jenny Lawson has done it again. Furiously Happy is just as hilarious as Let’s Pretend This Never Happened. (My review of that is here.) Let’s Pretend This Never Happened was mostly stories about Jenny’s childhood and family while Furiously Happy is more recent stories from her life. Some of the stories have a serious tone because the focus of this book is Jenny’s experience with her mental illness, which includes depression and severe anxiety. True to form, she sees the humor in almost every situation, including in her struggles with her mental illness. As she says in the book the Furiously Happy movement is about people with depression,
“taking those moments when things are fine and making them amazing because those moments are what make us who we are, and they’re the same moments we take into battle with us when our brains declare war on our very existence.”
Jenny definitely makes the most of everyday moments and makes them hilarious. The very best story is about her trying to figure out how a Japanese toilet works. When I read it the first time, I laughed so hard I had tears. Even now, I still chuckle when I think about it. I liked that this book alternated between truly hysterical stories like the Japanese toilet saga with the more introspective chapters so that it never got too heavy. I think people with depression will appreciate how unflinchingly honest she is about her struggles and find a kindred spirit in her. Highly, highly recommended.
March 4th, 2021 in
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The Island of Sea Women by Lisa See
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Publisher’s Description:
Mi-ja and Young-sook, two girls living on the Korean island of Jeju, are best friends who come from very different backgrounds. When they are old enough, they begin working in the sea with their village’s all-female diving collective, led by Young-sook’s mother. As the girls take up their positions as baby divers, they know they are beginning a life of excitement and responsibility—but also danger.
Despite their love for each other, Mi-ja and Young-sook find it impossible to ignore their differences. The Island of Sea Women takes place over many decades, beginning during a period of Japanese colonialism in the 1930s and 1940s, followed by World War II, the Korean War, through the era of cell phones and wet suits for the women divers. Throughout this time, the residents of Jeju find themselves caught between warring empires. Mi-ja is the daughter of a Japanese collaborator. Young-sook was born into a long line of haenyeo and will inherit her mother’s position leading the divers in their village. Little do the two friends know that forces outside their control will push their friendship to the breaking point.
The Island of Sea Women is historical fiction about the women divers, or haenyeo, who live and work on the Korean Island of Jeju. It spans from the Japanese occupation in 1938 up through 2008. Mi-ja and Young-sook are baby divers and best friends. However, they have very different backgrounds. After they each marry, their relationship is tested in the ultimate way.
I enjoyed learning about the haenyeo (you watch can videos of them in action on YouTube) and the matriarchal society they live in. Because women’s bodies are better suited for diving, they are the breadwinners and the men are the main caregivers to the children. Everyone seems happy with this arrangement, which was refreshing.
That being said, this book is gut-wrenching. There is brutal violence in it that was hard to read. It’s one of those books where it feels weird to say I enjoyed it because so many terrible things happen in it. But I did like this book. I especially liked that it was full of strong women characters and I liked the historical aspect of it. Recommended.
March 1st, 2021 in
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Dear Child by Romy Hausmann
Translated from German by Jamie Bulloch
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Publication Date: October 6, 2020
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Publisher’s Description:
A windowless shack in the woods. A dash to safety. But when a woman finally escapes her captor, the end of the story is only the beginning of her nightmare.
She says her name is Lena. Lena, who disappeared without a trace 14 years prior? She fits the profile. She has the distinctive scar. But her family swears that she isn’t their Lena.
The little girl who escaped the woods with her knows things she isn’t sharing, and Lena’s devastated father is trying to piece together details that don’t quite fit. Lena is desperate to begin again, but something tells her that her tormentor still wants to get back what belongs to him…and that she may not be able to truly escape until the whole truth about what happened in the woods finally emerges.
A woman is hit by a car trying to escape her captor and taken to the hospital. She says her name is Lena, who is a girl who has been missing for 14 years. She even has a scar on her forehead, just like Lena did. But when Lena’s parents come to the hospital, they say that this Lena is not their daughter. A little girl was with Lena when she has hit and went with her in the ambulance to the hospital. She knows what Lena was running from but she won’t say. She says the woman is her mama and that she has a brother who stayed behind in the cabin to “clean up the stains on the floor.” She calmly recounts her life with her family in the cabin – boarded up windows and doors locked up so that no one except Papa can go outside. But still questions remain: If the woman in the hospital is not Lena, then who is she? And where is Lena?
Wow, is all I can say about this book. Okay, I’ll say more. The blurb on the front cover says that it’s Room meets Gone Girl, which I’d say is pretty accurate. But it’s definitely not an imitation of either. There have been so many thrillers with unreliable narrators since Gone Girl that it’s usually easy to spot the twist a mile away. Not so in Dear Child. And Dear Child has twist upon twist upon twist. There’s no way I could have guessed how it all turned out, and yet the ending actually made sense. That’s all you’re going to get out of me because I don’t want to spoil a single surprise. Highly recommended.
February 22nd, 2021 in
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The Power by Naomi Alderman
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Publication Date: October 10, 2017
My rating: 4.5 of 5 stars
Publisher’s Description:
In The Power, the world is a recognizable place: there’s a rich Nigerian boy who lounges around the family pool; a foster kid whose religious parents hide their true nature; an ambitious American politician; a tough London girl from a tricky family.
But then a vital new force takes root and flourishes, causing their lives to converge with devastating effect. Teenage girls now have immense physical power: they can cause agonizing pain and even death. And, with this small twist of nature, the world drastically resets. From award-winning author Naomi Alderman, The Power is speculative fiction at its most ambitious and provocative, at once taking us on a thrilling journey to an alternate reality, and exposing our own world in bold and surprising ways.
When I heard that Naomi Alderman’s mentor is the queen of speculative fiction Margaret Atwood, I knew The Power was a book I had to read. The Power is written as a book within a book. It starts with a letter from an author named Neil Adam Armon (an anagram of Naomi Alderman) to another author named Naomi. Neil has written a historical fiction novel set 5000 years ago (which would make it set in the present day) about what happened when teenage girls suddenly developed the power to shoot powerful volts of electricity out of their hands. The balance of power in the world shifts when women are suddenly able to overpower men whenever they want.
It turns out that power corrupts women just as much as it corrupts men and a female-dominated society isn’t the benevolent matriarchy one might imagine. It’s an interesting thought experiment that Alderman engages in. She does so with nuance and a touch of dark humor. Once I finished, I immediately wanted to read it again because I know I’ll get even more out of it when I know where the story is headed. We read this book for one of my book clubs and there was a lot to talk about – it makes for a great discussion. My book club is all-female – I’d be really interested in what male readers think of it. I’m guessing most would find it pretty eye-opening. Highly recommended.
P.S. Production on a 10-episode series for Amazon Prime was delayed due to the pandemic but should be starting up soon. I can’t wait to watch it!
February 18th, 2021 in
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A Very Punchable Face by Colin Jost
Publisher: Crown
Publication Date: July 14, 2020
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Publisher’s Description:
If there’s one trait that makes someone well suited to comedy, it’s being able to take a punch—metaphorically and, occasionally, physically.
From growing up in a family of firefighters on Staten Island to commuting three hours a day to high school and “seeing the sights” (like watching a Russian woman throw a stroller off the back of a ferry), to attending Harvard while Facebook was created, Jost shares how he has navigated the world like a slightly smarter Forrest Gump.
You’ll also discover things about Jost that will surprise and confuse you, like how Jimmy Buffett saved his life, how Czech teenagers attacked him with potato salad, how an insect laid eggs inside his legs, and how he competed in a twenty-five-man match at WrestleMania (and almost won). You’ll go behind the scenes at SNL and Weekend Update (where he’s written some of the most memorable sketches and jokes of the past fifteen years). And you’ll experience the life of a touring stand-up comedian—from performing in rural college cafeterias at noon to opening for Dave Chappelle at Radio City Music Hall.
For every accomplishment (hosting the Emmys), there is a setback (hosting the Emmys). And for every absurd moment (watching paramedics give CPR to a raccoon), there is an honest, emotional one (recounting his mother’s experience on the scene of the Twin Towers’ collapse on 9/11). Told with a healthy dose of self-deprecation, A Very Punchable Face reveals the brilliant mind behind some of the dumbest sketches on television, and lays bare the heart and humor of a hardworking guy—with a face you can’t help but want to punch.
If you’re a Saturday Night Live fan, you know that Colin Jost is one of the head writers and co-host of Weekend Update. We all know that I love celebrity memoirs and I originally picked this one up hoping for details on his relationship with his now wife, Scarlett Johansson. I’ll just tell you right up front – there is almost nothing about Johansson in here. But there’s so much other good stuff and it’s so freaking funny that I didn’t even care! A lot of memoirs written by comedians aren’t really that funny unless you listen to them reading it. It’s their delivery that makes it funny. Not so in Jost’s case. I read the print version of this book and was laughing out loud. I read passages out loud to my husband and kids and they laughed out loud too.
One of the funniest chapters is about all the times in his life that he’s pooped his pants. Like, as an adult. And while the way he tells it, it’s hilarious, as someone with Crohn’s disease, I kind of want to have a little chat with him. Pooping your pants once or twice a year is not normal!
Surprisingly, this book also made me teary. Jost’s mother is a physician and was the chief medical officer for the New York Fire Department on 9/11. Reading his account of that day was emotional. And he loves his mom so much, it’s sweet. (She’s still alive but she lost many friends that day.)
Even though he’s only 38, he has a lot of interesting stories to tell. For instance, he almost died surfing with Jimmy Buffet and he was at Harvard at the same time as Mark Zuckerberg and rowed crew with the Winklevoss twins. While there isn’t much about ScarJo included, he does dish on some of the past SNL hosts, which I appreciated. Highly recommended, especially right now when something to laugh about is needed more than ever!
February 16th, 2021 in
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Happy President’s Day! I thought I’d rerun a couple of president related books today. I’m going to spend as much of today as I can huddled under my electric blanket reading since it’s a whole ONE degree outside! Brrrr…
Dream Big Dreams: Photographs from Barack Obama’s Inspiring and Historic Presidency by Pete Souza
Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Release Date: November 21, 2017
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Publisher’s Description:
From former Chief Official White House Photographer Pete Souza comes a book for young readers that highlights Barack Obama’s historic presidency and the qualities and actions that make him so beloved.
Pete Souza served as Chief Official White House Photographer for President Obama’s full two terms. He was with the President during more crucial moments than anyone else – and he photographed them all, capturing scenes both classified and candid.
Throughout his historic presidency, Obama engaged with young people as often as he could, encouraging them to be their best and do their best and to always “dream big dreams.” In this timeless and timely keepsake volume that features over seventy-five full-color photographs, Souza shows the qualities of President Obama that make him both a great leader and an extraordinary man. With behind-the-scenes anecdotes of some iconic photos alongside photos with his family, colleagues, and other world leaders, Souza tells the story of a president who made history and still made time to engage with even the youngest citizens of the country he served.
By the author of Obama: An Intimate Portrait, the definitive visual biography of Barack Obama’s presidency, Dream Big Dreams was created especially for young readers and not only provides a beautiful portrait of a president but shows the true spirit of the man.
Dream Big Dreams is the children’s version Pete Souza’s book Obama: An Intimate Portrait. It includes some photos that are not in that book. Souza was the official White House photographer for all eight years of Barack Obama’s presidency. In this book, he includes photos of Obama interacting with children and other happy photos. There are a few sad photos, like Obama comforting the parents of the children killed at Sandy Hook. However, these types of photos are meant to show Obama’s compassion and the captions do not go into great detail about the events. I don’t think it will be too much for most kids to handle.
I have loved looking at Souza’s photographs of Obama on Facebook over the years. He is a truly gifted photographer. Check out his Instagram page. He has been posting photos of Barack Obama that relate to events involving our current president. For instance, he posted a photo the other day with a picture of Obama with his hand over his heart and the caption, “Yes, he knew the words.” You know what he was referring to, I’m sure!
Dream Big Dreams is a nice, quality hardback coffee table book. It would make a great gift for any child interested in a photographic history of our 44th president’s compassion, sense of humor and accomplishments.
(I received a complimentary copy of this book for review.)
TIME for Kids Presidents of the United States by Editors of TIME for Kids Magazine
Publisher: Time for Kids
Released in 2017
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Time for Kids: Presidents of the United States is a brief look at all forty-five presidents of the United States of America. Each president gets a one or two page spread, depending on how major their presidency was, e.g. Jefferson and Lincoln each get two pages. We learn the birth and death date, wife and children’s names and a few tidbits of notable information about each one. There is also a time-line for events going on in technology or popular culture during that president’s time in office. The book does include information about our current president; however, it was written before the inauguration so there is no information about what his “accomplishments” are to date. The writers are probably thanking their lucky stars that they don’t have to try to write that up in an unbiased voice! It does say that during the campaign, “He made controversial remarks about several groups of people,” which I think is fair to say.
Speaking of bias, I think overall, the authors did a good job of presenting the information objectively or making sure they included the opinions on both sides of the issue, i.e. some people thought this, others thought that.
Also included in this book is a flow chart of what it takes to run for president and an explanation of the three branches of government. There is also some information on the more active first ladies.
I think this is a great book for middle-grade readers to get some concise information on each president. It’s very age-appropriate too. For instance, it says that Bill Clinton “faced charges of illegal behavior.” (That made me laugh.) I learned quite a bit from this book too, not being a big history buff myself. This book would be a great addition to a middle-graders library.
(I received a complementary copy of this book for review.)
February 15th, 2021 in
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Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman
Publisher: Penguin Books
Publication Date: June 5, 2018
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Publisher’s Description:
No one’s ever told Eleanor that life should be better than fine.
Meet Eleanor Oliphant: She struggles with appropriate social skills and tends to say exactly what she’s thinking. Nothing is missing in her carefully timetabled life of avoiding social interactions, where weekends are punctuated by frozen pizza, vodka, and phone chats with Mummy.
But everything changes when Eleanor meets Raymond, the bumbling and deeply unhygienic IT guy from her office. When she and Raymond together save Sammy, an elderly gentleman who has fallen on the sidewalk, the three become the kinds of friends who rescue one another from the lives of isolation they have each been living. And it is Raymond’s big heart that will ultimately help Eleanor find the way to repair her own profoundly damaged one.
Soon to be a major motion picture produced by Reese Witherspoon, Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine is the smart, warm, and uplifting story of an out-of-the-ordinary heroine whose deadpan weirdness and unconscious wit make for an irresistible journey as she realizes. . .
The only way to survive is to open your heart.
Eleanor Oliphant has almost no social skills or filter. She works in an office during the week and spends her weekends eating frozen pizza and drinking vodka to escape her loneliness and memories of her troubled childhood. She strikes up a friendship (maybe the first she’s ever had) with her company’s IT guy Raymond when they both come to the rescue of an elderly man who has fallen on the sidewalk.
This book would be horribly sad if not for Eleanor’s deadpan observations on the world going on around her. She reminded me a lot of Don Tillman from The Rosie Project. However, her perspective doesn’t stem from autism but from trauma and loneliness. One assumes that she doesn’t have much in the way of social skills because she never practices by interacting with other people. Her coworkers, except for Raymond, are simply awful to her because she’s different. It’s a vicious circle – she’s awkward so no one wants to be he friend, which makes her even more awkward.
Once she meets Raymond, things start to look up for her a little, even though she resists Raymond’s overtures of friendship at first. As the book goes on, we learn more and more about her childhood. I think the book would have been just fine without the mystery and twist, which I thought was contrived and familiar. Overall, I really liked this book because I love characters like Eleanor who see through all the bull and call it like it is, even when they don’t necessarily know that’s what they are doing. And I love dark, dry humor when it’s done right as it is in Eleanor. Recommended.
P.S. I looked into the status of the movie adaptation of Eleanor that Reese Witherspoon is making and all I could find is that it is “in development”. If I had to guess, I would say that it is on the back burner because of covid.
February 11th, 2021 in
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Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi
Publisher: Knopf
Publication Date: September 1, 2020
My rating: 4.5 of 5 stars
Publisher’s Description:
Gifty is a sixth-year PhD candidate in neuroscience at the Stanford University School of Medicine studying reward-seeking behavior in mice and the neural circuits of depression and addiction. Her brother, Nana, was a gifted high school athlete who died of a heroin overdose after an ankle injury left him hooked on OxyContin. Her suicidal mother is living in her bed. Gifty is determined to discover the scientific basis for the suffering she sees all around her. But even as she turns to the hard sciences to unlock the mystery of her family’s loss, she finds herself hungering for her childhood faith and grappling with the evangelical church in which she was raised, whose promise of salvation remains as tantalizing as it is elusive. Transcendent Kingdom is a deeply moving portrait of a family of Ghanaian immigrants ravaged by depression and addiction and grief–a novel about faith, science, religion, love. Exquisitely written, emotionally searing, this is an exceptionally powerful follow-up to Gyasi’s phenomenal debut.
Gifty is the daughter of Ghanaian immigrants. She’s a neuroscience PhD candidate at Stanford where her research centers on addiction and depression. She longs to understand why her brother, who died of a heroin overdose, became addicted to opiates in the first place. Her mother comes to live with her while suffering from severe depression. Gifty can’t get her out of bed. She can’t even make her roll over away from the all and face her.
As Gifty performs her research and cares for her mother, she recalls her childhood in Alabama, where she was raised in an all-white evangelical church. The racism all around her family took its toll. Her father came from Ghana a proud man but was soon demoralized after things like being followed around by security while shopping at Walmart kept happening. He eventually couldn’t take it anymore and went back to Ghana. Gifty’s mom worked for people who called her the n-word on a regular basis. And when Gifty’s brother became addicted to OxyContin, church “friends” remarked it was no surprise because “those people” seem to have a taste for drugs. When Gifty goes away to college, her fellow students are mostly atheists. Gifty become disillusioned with religion but its impact on her life is profound and she thinks about it and God a lot.
There is no sophomore slump for Yaa Gyasi. Transcendent Kingdom is about as different as it could be from her first novel Homegoing. While Homegoing (my review here) spans centuries and generations, Transcendent Kingdom focuses on one woman and her family. And they are both brilliant. Gyasi is truly a gifted writer with an incredible range. I can’t wait to see what she does next.
February 8th, 2021 in
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The Flatshare by Beth O’Leary
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Publication Date: May 28, 2019
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Publisher’s Description:
Tiffy and Leon share an apartment. Tiffy and Leon have never met.
After a bad breakup, Tiffy Moore needs a place to live. Fast. And cheap. But the apartments in her budget have her wondering if astonishingly colored mold on the walls counts as art.
Desperation makes her open minded, so she answers an ad for a flatshare. Leon, a night shift worker, will take the apartment during the day, and Tiffy can have it nights and weekends. He’ll only ever be there when she’s at the office. In fact, they’ll never even have to meet.
Tiffy and Leon start writing each other notes – first about what day is garbage day, and politely establishing what leftovers are up for grabs, and the evergreen question of whether the toilet seat should stay up or down. Even though they are opposites, they soon become friends. And then maybe more.
But falling in love with your roommate is probably a terrible idea…especially if you’ve never met.
When Tiffy and her boyfriend break up and she has to move out, she needs somewhere to go on short notice that she can afford. She answers an ad for a flatshare. Leon, who works nights as a hospice nurse, wants to share his flat with someone who works during the day. It’s the perfect arrangement – Tiffy will work while Leon sleeps and he will work while she sleeps. They never even have to meet. In fact, Leon’s girlfriend prefers it that way, which is why she agrees to make all of the arrangements with Tiffy on Leon’s behalf.
Tiffy and Leon communicate with each other through Post-It notes. Their notes are short and sweet at first – don’t forget to take the trash out, help yourself to the brownies I made, that sort of thing. But as the arrangement goes on, the notes become more and more personal. The Flatshare is a romantic comedy so I’ll bet you can guess what happens next!
The Flatshare alternates between Tiffy and Leon’s first-person narration. The author gave each of them such a unique voice that there isn’t really a need for the chapter headers indicating who is narrating. I love Leon. His clipped, droll way of speaking and note-writing was endearing. Tiffy was fun but she was similar to most female leads in British rom-coms – slightly daffy and unable to fully function without relying on her small friend group every step of the way. I would have liked for her to be a little less needy.
The Flatshare was one of my book club’s January pick. There was a surprising amount of discussion to be had. Probably because there is some substance in this book in addition to the rom-commyness. Leon and Tiffy have some serious stuff going on in their lives apart from all of the note writing. It’s got a good balance of humor and pathos. Recommended.
February 4th, 2021 in
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Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi
Publisher: Knopf
Publication Date: June 7, 2016
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Publisher’s Description:
Ghana, eighteenth century: two half-sisters are born into different villages, each unaware of the other. One will marry an Englishman and lead a life of comfort in the palatial rooms of the Cape Coast Castle. The other will be captured in a raid on her village, imprisoned in the very same castle, and sold into slavery.
One of Oprah’s Best Books of the Year and a PEN/Hemingway award winner, Homegoing follows the parallel paths of these sisters and their descendants through eight generations: from the Gold Coast to the plantations of Mississippi, from the American Civil War to Jazz Age Harlem. Yaa Gyasi’s extraordinary novel illuminates slavery’s troubled legacy both for those who were taken and those who stayed—and shows how the memory of captivity has been inscribed on the soul of our nation.
Homegoing is a great book to read for Black History Month because it covers such a broad swath of Black history in such a brilliant way. It starts out with two-half sisters, each born in Ghana, knowing nothing of the other. Effia marries an English slave trader and stays in Ghana, while Esi is captured and sold into slavery. Gyasi traces the lives of the sisters and their descendants through the generations up to the present day. Esi’s family’s trajectory shows very clearly slavery’s legacy in America – convict leasing, Jim Crow, etc. I think it will be eye-opening for people who have trouble understanding the roots of systemic racism in this country.
There are two chapters for each generation, one for each sister’s descendant. Each chapter is a snapshot of a signal moment in the life of the subject. In that way, it’s almost like a short story collection. I still felt deeply invested in each character’s fate, even though I didn’t get to spend much time with any of them. I can’t even imagine the research that went into a work of historical fiction like this – spanning almost 300 years in both Ghana and the United States. It was quite an undertaking, I’m sure. It’s amazing that this is Gyasi’s first novel. Highly recommended.
February 1st, 2021 in
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