It’s time for the Get Your Pretty on Fall 2018 Capsule Wardrobe Challenge! I’ve done these challenges in the past and I love how they make dressing for the day a snap! I feel so much better about myself and am more productive when I’m wearing a “real” outfit instead of yoga pants and a T-shirt.
Here’s how the challenge works:
I keep forgetting to post about the film Crazy Rich Asians. I’m sure you’ve heard of it because it is breaking all kinds of box office records. It’s the first movie with an all Asian cast in 25 years! One of the movie studios who wanted to adapt the book told the author Kevin Kwan that they wanted to cast a white girl to play Rachel. Why?? That would have completely changed the point of the story. I’m glad that Kwan stuck to his guns and told them no thank you.
My friend Sarah and I went to a black tie premiere party that Alamo Drafthouse put on the Friday of opening weekend. It was really fun to get all dressed up to see the movie. Alamo is a theater that serves food and adult beverages during the movie. For Crazy Rich Asians, they had some special Asian drinks and yummy Asian appetizers.
This movie was so good! It wasn’t just good for an Asian rom-com, it was good for a rom-com in general. I feel confident that it’s one of the best rom-coms I’ve ever seen, right up there with When Harry Met Sally. It was perfectly cast as well. I’ve read the book twice (see my review here) so I’m very familiar with the characters and all of the actors looked just like I pictured them when reading the book. Harry Golding, who played Nick, is just dreamy. Gemma Chan, who played Astrid, oozes elegance. And Constance Wu, who played Rachel, embodies the girl next door. I could go on and on with how spot on each actor is for each character but you get the idea.
I liked how the movie didn’t dumb down the Asian culture and interrupt the flow of the movie with finding a way to explain what the characters are doing. I’m sure the Asian viewers appreciated that as well. If you’ve read the book, you already know about the culture. If you haven’t, you can figure out most of it through context or you can look it up when you get home. You’ll still enjoy the movie. This article is helpful in explaining the pivotal mahjong scene (which is not in the book) but it does contain a lot of spoilers so don’t read it until after you’ve seen the movie.
With the amount of money Crazy Rich Asians is making, it will probably be in theaters for a while. Even so, do not delay – see this movie ASAP. You will love it!
A Place for Us by Fatima Farheen Mirza
Publisher: SJP for Hogarth
Release Date: June 12, 2018
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Publisher’s Description:
As an Indian wedding gathers a family back together, parents Rafiq and Layla must reckon with the choices their children have made. There is Hadia: their headstrong, eldest daughter, whose marriage is a match of love and not tradition. Huda, the middle child, determined to follow in her sister’s footsteps. And lastly, their estranged son, Amar, who returns to the family fold for the first time in three years to take his place as brother of the bride. What secrets and betrayals have caused this close-knit family to fracture? Can Amar find his way back to the people who know and love him best?
A Place for Us takes us back to the beginning of this family’s life: from the bonds that bring them together, to the differences that pull them apart. All the joy and struggle of family life is here, from Rafiq n way—tread between two cultures, seeking to find their place in the world, as well as a path home.
A Place for Us is a book for our times: an astonishingly tender-hearted novel of identity and belonging, and a resonant portrait of what it means to be an American family today. It announces Fatima Farheen Mirza as a major new literary talent.
Warning: This is probably going to be a gushing, rambling review. I hope I can get across just how good this book is. As you know, I love reading books with Indian characters because I am intrigued by Indian culture. This book is a study of one modern Muslim Indian American family and how their culture has shaped their relationships with one another.
It begins at Hadia’s wedding and weaves flashbacks throughout the narrative. The flashbacks are told in third person and alternate between perspectives of Layla; the mother or Hadia, the eldest daughter; or Amar, the youngest child. Some are different family members’ interpretation of the same event. Hadia feels like she can never be enough and that her parents will never love her as much as they love Amar, yet Amar feels like he will never fit in well enough for his father to love him. Of course the Hadia and Amar’s parents love them a lot.
As I read, I was constantly amazed Mirza is in her twenties and this is her first book. She has brilliant insight into the minds of both parents and children and writes both with beautiful, delicate prose. The family’s Muslim faith plays a huge role in their lives as Rafiq tries desperately to raise his children to be good Muslims in the face of the modern world. Parents of any or no religion will be able to empathize with Rafiq. The struggle to raise moral children is universal and transcends religion.
The last section is told by Rafiq in first person and broke my heart into a million pieces. Stoic and strict with his children throughout their lives, we get to see the contents of his soul. Once again, I was in awe of Mizra’s ability to authentically portray the parent’s side of a parent-child relationship.
One of the reasons I chose this book is because it is the first book in Sarah Jessica Parker’s new imprint, SJP for Hogarth. She’s smart and has good taste in general so I figured she probably knows books. Boy does she! I can’t wait to read whatever her imprint releases next. A Place for Us is amazing and Mirza is amazing. I can’t wait to see what she comes up with next.
(I received a complimentary copy of this book for review.)
Alternate Side by Anna Quindlen
Publisher: Random House
Release Date: March 20, 2018
My rating: 4.5 of 5 stars
Publisher’s Description:
Some days Nora Nolan thinks that she and her husband, Charlie, lead a charmed life—except when there’s a crisis at work, a leak in the roof at home, or a problem with their twins at college. And why not? New York City was once Nora’s dream destination, and her clannish dead-end block has become a safe harbor, a tranquil village amid the urban craziness. The owners watch one another’s children grow up. They use the same handyman. They trade gossip and gripes, and they maneuver for the ultimate status symbol: a spot in the block’s small parking lot.
Then one morning, Nora returns from her run to discover that a terrible incident has shaken the neighborhood, and the enviable dead-end block turns into a potent symbol of a divided city. The fault lines begin to open: on the block, at Nora’s job, and especially in her marriage.
Alternate Side starts slowly, showing the reader a slice of Nora and Charlie Nolan’s life in their New York City neighborhood. They live on a dead end street so it’s more like they’re in a small town than in the heart of a big city. There is a big cast of characters, such as the resident who’s been there forever and knows everything and the annoying know-it-all neighbor George, who has appointed himself the neighborhood hall monitor. The big news in the Noland’s life is that Charlie has just scored a parking space in the neighborhood’s parking lot and that their twins are about to graduate from college. I enjoyed the slow and winding story but wondered where it was going.
Halfway through, a tragic incident occurs on the block that has the neighbors reeling. Nora and Charlie find themselves on opposite sides as far as who was at fault for what happened. (Sorry – not going to spoil what it was!) Alternate Side is also a study on life and marriage after one’s children are grown and gone. What are you left with when being a parent is no longer your life’s primary focus? Charlie and Nora find themselves on opposite sides of this issue as well.
I loved that there was such a wide variety of characters in this book. Some I loved and some I loved to hate. And some I just hated! New York City was another character in itself. I lived there in my younger days and it made me miss it.
The only other one of Quindlen’s books I’ve read is Every Last One, which I really liked. Every Last One was like a punch in the gut. Alternate Side is completely different but I liked it too. I liked getting to know Nora and following her journey. I know Quindlen has a lot of books and now I’m curious if they are more like this one or like Every Last One. Either way, I’d like to read them as well. I definitely recommend Alternate Side.
(I received a complimentary copy of this book for review.)
Anything Is Possible by Elizabeth Strout
Publisher: Random House
Release Date: April 25, 2017
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Publisher’s Description:
Recalling Olive Kitteridge in its richness, structure, and complexity, Anything Is Possible explores the whole range of human emotion through the intimate dramas of people struggling to understand themselves and others.
Here are two sisters: One trades self-respect for a wealthy husband while the other finds in the pages of a book a kindred spirit who changes her life. The janitor at the local school has his faith tested in an encounter with an isolated man he has come to help; a grown daughter longs for mother love even as she comes to accept her mother’s happiness in a foreign country; and the adult Lucy Barton (the heroine of My Name Is Lucy Barton, the author’s celebrated New York Times bestseller) returns to visit her siblings after seventeen years of absence.
Reverberating with the deep bonds of family, and the hope that comes with reconciliation, Anything Is Possible again underscores Elizabeth Strout’s place as one of America’s most respected and cherished authors.
Anything is Possible was my book club’s July selection. It’s not quite a short-story collection but not quite a novel either. Each chapter is a vignette focusing on a different person. All of the main characters in each chapter are connected to the main characters of the other stories in some way – some more closely than others. A couple of people in my book club had trouble keeping track of the relationships between the characters but I didn’t find it to be a problem.
Lucy Barton, the main character of Strout’s novel My Name is Lucy Barton, is mentioned in a few of the stories in this book and she is a character in one of them. However, this book is not a sequel to that book. I haven’t read that book and it didn’t seem to matter much in reading this one. Others in my book club who had read My Name is Lucy Barton agreed that it was not necessary. However, some of the other reviews I’ve read of this book indicate that you will enjoy Anything is Possible even more if you have read My Name is Lucy Barton.
These stories in this book are melancholy, yet hopeful and filled with likeable and sympathetic characters. It’s slow paced and mostly just a slice of life for each character. Even so, I enjoyed it along with most of the members of my book club.
Cruel Beautiful World by Caroline Leavitt
Publisher: Algonquin Books
October 4, 2016
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Publisher’s Description:
It’s 1969, and sixteen-year-old Lucy is about to run away with a much older man to live off the grid in rural Pennsylvania, a rash act that will have frightening repercussions for both her and her older sister, Charlotte. As Lucy’s default caretaker for most of their lives, Charlotte has always been burdened by having to be the responsible one, but never more so than when Lucy’s dream of a rural paradise turns into a nightmare.
With precise, haunting prose and indelible characters, Cruel Beautiful World examines the infinitesimal distance between seduction and love, loyalty and duty, and most of all, tells a universal story of sisterhood and the complicated legacy of family.
Lucy and Charlotte are sisters. Charlotte is studious and straight laced. Ever since their parents died when they were small children, Charlotte has felt responsible for Lucy. And keeping Lucy in line is a hard job. She’s not studious and is kind of flighty. She doesn’t always make the best decisions as evidence by the fact that she runs away with her boyfriend William, who is currently her high school English teacher. They move to an isolated area in the middle of nowhere and Lucy soon learns that William isn’t the man she thought he was.
The description on the inside flap of this book said it was “set against a backdrop of peace, love, and the Manson murders,” which I was looking forward too since I’ve always been intrigued by the Manson family and have read books and listened to podcasts about them. However, I was disappointed that they were only briefly mentioned and didn’t have much bearing on the story. The other criticism I have is that although the book is set in the 1960s, the characters say words and phrases that weren’t common until later like, “It is what it is.”
Cruel Beautiful World was one of my book club’s selections. Lucy’s relationship with William gave us a lot to talk about. I won’t say much more because I don’t want to give anything away.
The characters in Cruel Beautiful World are complex and well-developed. All of the characters have a rich back-story, especially Iris, the girls’ guardian. There were a couple of surprises in the plot that I didn’t see coming. As Lucy’s relationship with William progresses, Leavitt creates an atmosphere thick with foreboding that kept my stomach in knots. I enjoyed this book and think it makes for a great summer read.
Foreign Soil: And Other Stories by Maxine Beneba Clarke
Publisher: Atria
Release Date: January 3, 2017
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Publisher’s Description:
From a powerful new voice in international fiction, this prize-winning collection of stories crosses the world—from Africa, London, the West Indies, and Australia—and expresses the global experience.
Maxine Beneba Clarke gives voice to the disenfranchised, the lost, and the mistreated in this stunning collection of provocative and gorgeously wrought stories that will challenge you, move you, and change the way you view this complex world we inhabit.
Within these pages, a desperate asylum seeker is pacing the hallways of Sydney’s notorious Villawood detention centre; a seven-year-old Sudanese boy has found solace in a patchwork bike; an enraged black militant is on the war-path through the rebel squats of 1960s Brixton; a Mississippi housewife decides to make the ultimate sacrifice to save her son from small-town ignorance; a young woman leaves rural Jamaica in search of her destiny; and an Australian schoolgirl loses her way.
These short stories are set in a wide variety of countries from Sudan to Australia to Jamaica just to name a few. Clarke does an excellent job of capturing the dialect and voice of the people of each country. The stories are consistently good and gut-wrenching. Most touch on issues of race in some way. For instance, Shu Yi is about an Asian girl’s first day at an all-white school. As you can probably guess, things did not go well.
This book was one of my book club’s selections and we found plenty to talk about. Foreign Soil has won several awards and it’s easy to see why. Even though I normal don’t enjoy reading short story collections, I liked this one. Just beware that it’s a downer – you’ll want to be in the right mood when you start it.
All We Ever Wanted by Emily Giffin
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Release Date: June 26, 2018
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Publisher’s Description:
Nina Browning is living the good life after marrying into Nashville’s elite. More recently, her husband made a fortune selling his tech business, and their adored son has been accepted to Princeton.
Yet sometimes the middle-class small-town girl in Nina wonders if she’s strayed from the person she once was.
Tom Volpe is a single dad working multiple jobs while struggling to raise his headstrong daughter, Lyla. His road has been lonely, long, and hard, but he finally starts to relax after Lyla earns a scholarship to Windsor Academy, Nashville’s most prestigious private school.
Amid so much wealth and privilege, Lyla doesn’t always fit in—and her overprotective father doesn’t help—but in most ways, she’s a typical teenaged girl, happy and thriving.
Then, one photograph, snapped in a drunken moment at a party, changes everything. As the image spreads like wildfire, the Windsor community is instantly polarized, buzzing with controversy and assigning blame.
At the heart of the lies and scandal, Tom, Nina, and Lyla are forced together—all questioning their closest relationships, asking themselves who they really are, and searching for the courage to live a life of true meaning.
Nina and Kirk Browning are new money and very, very wealthy. Their lives look perfect from the outside. However, one day their lives are turned upside down when their son Finch is accused of taking a lewd photo of a classmate and sharing it with his friends. To make matters worse, he added a racist caption on it. The photo quickly makes its way around the elite private high school he attends. The school intends to bring him before their Honor Council, who will no doubt issue a severe punishment. In addition, Finch has just been accepted to Princeton and they will probably revoke his acceptance when they find out about the incident.
Finch’s parents have vastly different reactions to Finch’s situation. His father Kirk feels like this is just a case of boys being boys and will do almost anything to make sure that Finch attends Princeton as planned. Finch’s mother Nina struggles with how she feels about what Finch has done and puts much more thought into what should be done with him than Kirk.
Giffin casts Kirk as a one-dimensional villain in this drama and doesn’t give Finch and his friends much depth either. However, the other characters are well-developed and flawed but sympathetic.
All We Ever Wanted would make a great book club selection. Groups could talk about how they as parents would handle it if their child found himself in this sort of predicament. There are other issues that are good discussion topics but too spoilery for me to mention here.
This book is more serious than the lighter beach-read type books that Giffin is known for. I was surprised by that but in a good way. I thought she did a great job and I enjoyed reading it. I think her fans will as well. Recommended.
(I received a complimentary copy of this book for review.)
Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders
Publisher: Random House
Release Date: February 14, 2017
My rating: 3.5 of 5 stars
Publisher’s Description:
February 1862. The Civil War is less than one year old. The fighting has begun in earnest, and the nation has begun to realize it is in for a long, bloody struggle. Meanwhile, President Lincoln’s beloved eleven-year-old son, Willie, lies upstairs in the White House, gravely ill. In a matter of days, despite predictions of a recovery, Willie dies and is laid to rest in a Georgetown cemetery. “My poor boy, he was too good for this earth,” the president says at the time. “God has called him home.” Newspapers report that a grief-stricken Lincoln returns, alone, to the crypt several times to hold his boy’s body.
From that seed of historical truth, George Saunders spins an unforgettable story of familial love and loss that breaks free of its realistic, historical framework into a supernatural realm both hilarious and terrifying. Willie Lincoln finds himself in a strange purgatory where ghosts mingle, gripe, commiserate, quarrel, and enact bizarre acts of penance. Within this transitional state—called, in the Tibetan tradition, the bardo—a monumental struggle erupts over young Willie’s soul.
Lincoln in the Bardo is an astonishing feat of imagination and a bold step forward from one of the most important and influential writers of his generation. Formally daring, generous in spirit, deeply concerned with matters of the heart, it is a testament to fiction’s ability to speak honestly and powerfully to the things that really matter to us. Saunders has invented a thrilling new form that deploys a kaleidoscopic, theatrical panorama of voices to ask a timeless, profound question: How do we live and love when we know that everything we love must end?
Lincoln in the Bardo takes place in the graveyard where Abraham Lincoln’s son was interred after he died of typhoid when he was just eleven years old. The graveyard is full of ghosts who are not aware that they are dead. They think that they have fallen ill and their bodies are lying in “sick boxes” (coffins), while they recover. Willie’s arrival shakes things up. When his father comes shortly after Willie gets there, he shocks the ghosts by cradling Willie’s body. None of them have had their bodies touched since they have been “sick.” Also, usually children pass through without stopping but Willie’s spirit hangs around because his father said he would be back to visit him again. The other ghosts must figure out how to convince Willie to move along so he doesn’t get stuck forever.
Lincoln in the Bardo was one of my book club’s selections. It has a huge cast of characters that was difficult for some of us, including me, to keep straight. Each ghost had some aspect of their appearance that was a reflection of who they were as a person. Sometimes it was hard to figure out what their appearance was supposed to symbolize. Talking it through it in book club helped.
Saunders includes real news clippings and interviews from the time period in which Willie died. It’s interesting how widely the first person accounts of the events surrounding Willie’s death differ. Some recall that there was a big, beautiful moon the night Willie died, while others say there was no moon at all. Some say Lincoln was extremely homely, some say he was handsome, and so on. Seeing these quotes juxtaposed against one another could be quite humorous. There was a dry humor about the way the ghosts spoke to one another as well that kept the book from being too melancholy.
A few of my book club friends listened to the audio version of this book and said that it was easier to follow than reading it in print so I decided to listen to it as well. They were right; I found it easier to follow. Some of that probably had to do with the fact that I had already read it in print but I think it also helped that each character is voiced by a different actor. There are 166 narrators in all! Some of them are famous actors. David Sedaris is one of the main characters and we all know he is fabulous. Some of the other characters are read by Bill Hader, Megan Mullally and Nick Offerman just to name a few. I definitely enjoyed the audiobook version more. If you decide to read this book, I recommend listening to the audiobook.
I had the opportunity to hear Saunders speak at an author event in my city. If you ever get the chance to see him, do it. He has a great sense of humor and his talk was really funny. He also gave us some great tips on writing that I thought were no nonsense and realistic. Some authors can sound pretentious when they talk about their process but he was very down to earth. I wish I would have gotten my book signed but the line was super long. He’s very popular!
Opinions varied widely at book club. Some thought Lincoln in the Bardo was one of the best books they’d ever read and some didn’t care for it at all. I fall somewhere in the middle. It’s such an unusual book that I think you need to give it a try. Let me know what you think after you read/listen to it.
Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli
Publisher: Balzer + Bray
Release Date: April 7, 2015
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Publisher’s Description:
Sixteen-year-old and not-so-openly gay Simon Spier prefers to save his drama for the school musical. But when an email falls into the wrong hands, his secret is at risk of being thrust into the spotlight. Now change-averse Simon has to find a way to step out of his comfort zone before he’s pushed out—without alienating his friends, compromising himself, or fumbling a shot at happiness with the most confusing, adorable guy he’s never met.
Simon Vs. The Homo Sapiens Agenda is the book the movie Love, Simon is based on. I haven’t seen the movie yet, but if it’s even half as good as the book, I know I’ll love it. High school junior Simon is gay. The only person he’s told is Blue, another gay junior at his school. Simon and Blue have been emailing each other anonymously since the beginning of the school year. After a time, Simon desperately wants to meet Blue in person but Blue isn’t ready yet. Who is Blue?
Oh my gosh, this book is so sweet. Simon is simply adorable and so is Blue. Their emails to each other chronicles not only the two of them slowly falling for each other but also their struggles of when and how to come out to their families. They both had such authentic teenage voices, which makes sense because Becky Albertalli is a clinical psychologist specializing in teenagers.
This book is not just about Simon’s emails to Blue. It’s also Simon’s life as told in first person by him. The group dynamics of Simon and his best friends Leah, Abby and Nick are complicated and made more complicated by the fact that his friends don’t know about Blue or even that Simon is gay.
I must be getting old because I totally related to Simon’s parents. They were fairly one-dimensional, which made sense because teenagers are generally self-centered and don’t know or care about their parents’ personal lives if it doesn’t directly affect them. One thing we do know about Simon’s mom is that she makes everything a BIG DEAL – even the fact that her baby boy Simon drinks coffee now. When did that start?? That is me one-hundred percent. I could hear my own son’s voice whenever Simon told his mom to STOP and CALM DOWN. I imagine Albertalli saw this in her clients’ parents as well.
It’s refreshing to read a YA novel about teen romance between gay boys. It showed that in many ways their struggles are not so different than those of straight teenagers. They are all trying to figure out who they are and where they fit in. They all experience love for the first time at some point. It’s the details of these struggles that are different. I loved this book and wanted to give it and Simon a great big hug when it was over. Both teens and adults will enjoy this book. Highly recommended.
I’m a reading, knitting, scrapbooking, running mom of four crazy kids.
Welcome to the chaos!
