Book Review: Crazy Rich Asians

Crazy Rich Asians by Kevin Kwan
Publisher: Doubleday
Release Date: June 11, 2013
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Publisher’s Description:

Crazy Rich Asians is the outrageously funny debut novel about three super-rich, pedigreed Chinese families and the gossip, backbiting, and scheming that occurs when the heir to one of the most massive fortunes in Asia brings home his ABC (American-born Chinese) girlfriend to the wedding of the season.

When Rachel Chu agrees to spend the summer in Singapore with her boyfriend, Nicholas Young, she envisions a humble family home, long drives to explore the island, and quality time with the man she might one day marry. What she doesn’t know is that Nick’s family home happens to look like a palace, that she’ll ride in more private planes than cars, and that with one of Asia’s most eligible bachelors on her arm, Rachel might as well have a target on her back. Initiated into a world of dynastic splendor beyond imagination, Rachel meets Astrid, the It Girl of Singapore society; Eddie, whose family practically lives in the pages of the Hong Kong socialite magazines; and Eleanor, Nick’s formidable mother, a woman who has very strong feelings about who her son should–and should not–marry.

This was one of the most fun books I’ve read in a long time. It’s a wonderful comedy of manners about of segment of Asian society that is so opulent, it’s almost unbelievable. However, after a perusing a few reviews written by people who have lived in this part of the world, it appears that it is actually pretty accurate. All of the societal rules that must be obeyed to avoid shaming oneself and one’s family reminded me very much of a Victorian novel, which I love.

As a former CPA myself, I must share my favorite quote:

The only acceptable majors were medicine and law (unless you were truly dumb, in which case you settled for accounting).

Even though it was satirical and funny, it was compelling too. I was up way past my bedtime several nights in a row, unable to stop reading. At almost 400 pages, it’s a hefty read but even so, when I was finished, I wanted more. I would love it if Mr. Kwan wrote a sequel or some kind of spin-off featuring some of the same characters.

The author includes dryly funny footnotes explaining certain expressions or traditions that really added to my enjoyment and understanding of the story. I thought it was a creative touch. Crazy Rich Asians is escapism at its finest.

(I received this book courtesy of Amazon Vine.)

Weekend Ramblings: Neve Starts Preschool!

Poor Neve – she is definitely suffering from third child syndrome. She started preschool almost two weeks ago and I’m just now posting about it! She goes to school two days a week and loves it. Her teacher tells me that she talks about “my boys” (Cash and West) all day long. Cash gets home from school in time to go with me to pick Neve up from school. When he walks into her classroom, she runs over to him, throws her arms around his legs and squeals, “Cashy, my Cashy!” So sweet – they have such a strong bond.

Book Review: Orange is the New Black

Orange Is the New Black: My Year in a Women’s Prison by Piper Kerman
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Paperback Release Date: March 8, 2011
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

With a career, a boyfriend, and a loving family, Piper Kerman barely resembles the reckless young woman who delivered a suitcase of drug money ten years before. But that past has caught up with her. Convicted and sentenced to fifteen months at the infamous federal correctional facility in Danbury, Connecticut, the well-heeled Smith College alumna is now inmate #11187–424—one of the millions of people who disappear “down the rabbit hole” of the American penal system. From her first strip search to her final release, Kerman learns to navigate this strange world with its strictly enforced codes of behavior and arbitrary rules. She meets women from all walks of life, who surprise her with small tokens of generosity, hard words of wisdom, and simple acts of acceptance.

I’m writing this review assuming you have watched the Orange is the New Black TV series on Netflix. If not, step away from the computer and binge watch it immediately. It is a MUST SEE. Great storylines and fantastic acting.

The book Orange is the New Black is decidedly less dramatic than the TV series. After reading it, I understand why the series is “inspired by” rather than “based on” the book. For instance, in real life, when Piper ends up with an extra screwdriver, she freaks out for a moment and then tosses in a Dumpster, never to be thought of again. The whole incident takes about two pages. In the series, an entire episode was based on the screwdriver and it caused an uproar in the whole prison.

The book shows more graphically how horrible Danbury actually is and how inequitable and arbitrary sentencing can be from prisoner to prisoner, usually depending on class and race. Piper doesn’t rant and rave about this or the ineffectiveness of prison as a rehabilitative tool, she just lets her experience and what she observed speak for itself.

I did find Piper to be a little pretentious in the first half of the book. It seemed at times like she thought she was the only well-educated white woman to ever be in prison, which I don’t think is the case. However, I felt like she redeemed herself to me in the last couple of chapters. And I still definitely enjoyed the book. It wasn’t as compelling as the TV series but it was more educational. It’s a good read to get your fix until the next season of Orange is the New Black is released. (And the book is so far removed from what is happening on the series at this point that I don’t feel like reading it will spoil the second season for you.)

Buy this book at:

Book Review: Necessary Lies

Necessary Lies by Diane Chamberlain
Publisher: St. Martin’s Press
Release Date: September 3, 2013
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

There is a prequel to this book called The First Lie, available on e-book for 99 cents. It’s only 39 pages long. I went ahead and bought it since I didn’t have to pay for Necessary Lies but I going to say it – this trend of super short prequels on ebooks really annoys me. It seems like it’s just a way to get one or two more dollars out of the person buying the book. Thirty-nine extra pages could have easily been included in Necessary Lies, having a separate prequel is ridiculous. But I guess I’m a sucker because I bought it even though I was mad about it!

Anyway, enough ranting! On to my review of Necessary Lies. First, the publisher’s description:

After losing her parents, fifteen-year-old Ivy Hart is left to care for her grandmother, older sister and nephew as tenants on a small tobacco farm.  As she struggles with her grandmother’s aging, her sister’s mental illness and her own epilepsy, she realizes they might need more than she can give.

When Jane Forrester takes a position as Grace County’s newest social worker, she doesn’t realize just how much her help is needed.  She quickly becomes emotionally invested in her clients’ lives, causing tension with her boss and her new husband.  But as Jane is drawn in by the Hart women, she begins to discover the secrets of the small farm—secrets much darker than she would have guessed.  Soon, she must decide whether to take drastic action to help them, or risk losing the battle against everything she believes is wrong.

Set in rural Grace County, North Carolina in a time of state-mandated sterilizations and racial tension, Necessary Lies tells the story of these two young women, seemingly worlds apart, but both haunted by tragedy.  Jane and Ivy are thrown together and must ask themselves: how can you know what you believe is right, when everyone is telling you it’s wrong?

Even though Necessary Lies is a work of fiction, it’s an accurate account of the way the Eugenics Sterilization Program worked in North Carolina. I was shocked to learn that this barbaric program was in place up in until 1974. The characters in Grace county are typical of the kind of people who were affected by this horrifying program.

I appreciated Jane’s struggle with the program, on the one hand wanting to be a good social worker, on the other hand not knowing if following the rules actually made her a good social worker. This book was also an eye-opening look of what it was like to be a woman in the 1960s. Jane’s doctor won’t prescribe her birth control pills without her husband’s permission!

This book also did a good job of portraying the cycle of rural poverty and just how hard it to break as well. The author made me feel deep sympathy for Ivy and her family.

This book was a compelling story with a couple of very surprising plot twists. It was extremely well-researched as well. Necessary Lies would be an excellent book club pick; you will want to discuss this book with somebody after you read it, if only to vent your frustration with North Carolina during this time period. This is the first book I’ve read by Diane Chamberlain and I’m looking forward to reading more by her. I highly recommend Necessary Lies.

(I received this book courtesy of the Amazon Vine program.)

Book Review: The Engagements

The Engagements by J. Courtney Sullivan
Publisher: Knopf
Release Date: June 11, 2013
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Publisher’s Description:

Evelyn has been married to her husband for forty years—forty years since he slipped off her first wedding ring and put his own in its place. Delphine has seen both sides of love—the ecstatic, glorious highs of seduction, and the bitter, spiteful fury that descends when it’s over. James, a paramedic who works the night shift, knows his wife’s family thinks she could have done better; while Kate, partnered with Dan for a decade, has seen every kind of wedding—beach weddings, backyard weddings, castle weddings—and has vowed never, ever, to have one of her own.

As these lives and marriages unfold in surprising ways, we meet Frances Gerety, a young advertising copywriter in 1947. Frances is working on the De Beers campaign and she needs a signature line, so, one night before bed, she scribbles a phrase on a scrap of paper: “A Diamond Is Forever.” And that line changes everything.

The Engagements follows five different characters throughout their lives, all of whom live primarily in different eras. One of the characters is Frances Grerety, the real-life advertising executive who wrote the slogan “A Diamond is Forever.” I was particularly interested in her story because my husband is in advertising and also an episode of the TV show Mad Men briefly mentioned the story behind “A Diamond is Forever.” It’s clear from reading the author’s note, that Ms. Sullivan did a substantial amount of research into Frances’s life and her story appears to be based on factual information. It was truly fascinating to learn how the diamond went from a precious gem worn only by the rich and famous to an almost mandatory part o the American marriage experience.

The other four main characters are fictional. I knew that that somehow their stories would all come together but it wasn’t obvious to me how that would happen until it was revealed in the story telling. I loved how each character was so different from each other. I also appreciated how well developed they all were, each had an extensive back story, making the motivations for their actions unquestionable.

I think this book would make an excellent book club choice. It would provoke an interesting discussion about marriage and marriage traditions I’m sure. The effect of advertising on the American psyche could be discussed as well. As I was reading this book, I found myself questioning the importance I have placed on my own engagement ring in my life. The Engagements is more than just a summer beach read; it will have you thinking about the issues it addresses long after you finish. It’s the perfect mix of fun and thoughtful.

(I received this book courtesy of the Amazon Vine program.)

Weekend Ramblings: Happy Birthday Neve!

My sweet baby girl Neve turned three in July. Since her birthday is the day after Cash’s and Cash had a pretty labor intensive party, we made her celebration more low-key. She started mentioning in May that she wanted to go to Chuck E. Cheese for her birthday. She actually mentioned it multiple times a day in May. And June. And July. So that’s what we did. We invited all the local family to join us to play some games. Some braved it, while some opted to join us at our house later, where we ate edible, nay delicious pizza instead of the crapalicious pizza they serve at Chuck E. Cheese. (Sorry, Chuck but you know it’s true.) I ordered a cake from Hy-vee that Neve has had her eye on for a while. It was a great day!

Weekend Ramblings: Happy Birthday Cash!

I realized that while West got his own birthday post, I neglected to write posts for Cash and Neve’s birthdays. It’s so hectic with all three kids having birthdays within a month of each other. I’m going to post Cash’s birthday post today and Neve’s tomorrow.

My sweet first-born Cash turned nine in July. He’s so tall – he comes up to my chin now! He’s still super skinny at about 55 pounds.

His latest obsession is Minecraft so he had a Minecraft themed birthday party. Before the party, he opened his presents from Travis and I. He’d been asking for a keytar for months and he finally got one!

Since the Minecraft craze is relatively new, there aren’t many Minecraft birthday supplies on the market yet and I was forced to get creative. Travis, Granddad and the boys painted several cardboard boxes to look like Minecraft world items. The plan was that the kids would build things with them, but intstead they just destroyed them.

We also played Pin the Tail on the Ender Dragon. We found Ender Dragon images online and printed them out to make the game.

For the food I just made as much as I could square since everything is square in the Minecraft world. We had square cheeseburger sliders and square blue Knox blox to look like Minecraft water. I made a Creeper cake that is a composite of ideas I found on Pinterest.

For goodie bags I ordered some boxes that look like gold bars (there is gold in Minecraft) and put in a Dum-Dum sucker (the stick had to be cut down a little to make it fit) and some fake diamonds that are meant to be used as table decorations for weddings. There are diamonds in Minecraft so they fit the theme. Then I pinned a Minecraft pin on the outside of the box since it wouldn’t fit inside of it. I used the extra diamonds as table decorations. For the table cloths, I used plastic table cloths that look like grass. I ordered everything except the suckers off Amazon.

If you are more crafty and motivated than I am, you can find tons of elaborate Minecraft party ideas on Pinterest. Luckily, Cash was thrilled was his mid-range Minecraft party. A good time was had by all!

Book Review: The Sandcastle Girls

The Sandcastle Girls by Chris Bohjalian
Publisher: Vintage
Paperback Release Date: April 16, 2013
My rating: 4.5 of 5 stars

Publisher’s Description:

When Elizabeth Endicott arrives in Aleppo, Syria, she has a diploma from Mount Holyoke, a crash course in nursing, and only the most basic grasp of the Armenian language. It’s 1915, and Elizabeth has volunteered to help deliver food and medical aid to refugees of the Armenian Genocide during the First World War. There she meets Armen, a young Armenian engineer who has already lost his wife and infant daughter. After leaving Aleppo and traveling into Egypt to join the British Army, he begins to write Elizabeth letters, realizing that he has fallen in love with the wealthy young American.

Years later, their American granddaughter, Laura, embarks on a journey back through her family’s history, uncovering a story of love, loss—and a wrenching secret that has been buried for generations.

The Sandcastle Girls is a historical novel about what the author terms the Slaughter You Know Next to Nothing About, which is the Armenian genocide. I’ll admit I didn’t know anything about the Armenian Genocide until I read The Gendarme by Mark Mustian a few years ago. (Bohjalian lists The Gendarme in the acknowledgments) as one of the novels that was helpful to him in writing The Sandcastle Girls.) I don’t understand politics well enough to know why this horrible event has been virtually ignored but I’m glad books like this one are bringing it to light.

The Sandcastle Girls alternates between the present day first person narration of Laura Petrosian, a novelist who is discovering the story of Elizabeth Endicott, an American aid worker and Armen, an Armenian engineer who meet in Aleppo, Syria in 1915. This book was a wonderful mixture of war, romance, and mystery with a surprise ending that blew me away. Bohjalian doesn’t shy away from describing the horrors that took place during that time. It was hard to read about them but it was important to include them to understand what shaped the people who lived through them. I found the story to be organic and not emotionally manipulative.

I have to include my favorite quote in this review. Elizabeth works in a hospital in Aleppo and befriends the Muslim doctor who also works there. He teaches Elizabeth proverbs from the Koran, which she is fond of quoting. After quoting a proverb to Nevart, her Armenian friend, this exchange takes place:

“‘Soon you are going to become a Mohammedan,’ Nevart tells the American lightly.

‘Not likely. A Unitarian someday, maybe. But I believe that would be the extent of my radicalization.'”

As a Unitarian Universalist myself, I love it when we get a mention in popular culture. I especially love the notion that becoming Unitarian in the early twentieth century would have been radical.

The Sandcastle Girls is an important, emotional book that I highly recommend.

Buy this book at:
Amazon Powell’s Books Rainy Day Books

(I received this book courtesy of the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program.)

Saturday Salon: The Back-to-School Edition

Thursday my boys went back to school, which meant that Wednesday was the nanny’s last day. (I’ve had a nanny this summer because of my illness.) I guess West decided it had just been too uneventful of a summer for the poor nanny and cut his finger on my weight machine Wednesday morning. Doing what, I don’t know. His explanation was sketchy. The nanny remembered me telling her that because of West’s dangerously high pain tolerance, if he cries for more than a minute after injuring himself, it’s serious. Thus, I was awakened by her and West storming in my room with West wearing a shirt spotted with blood and her holding a paper towel on his finger. The wound was gaping so we headed off to the ER, with me forgoing coffee and not realizing til we got there that I didn’t have any change to buy it. I deserve a medal!

Luckily, the doctor said that he would use glue instead of stitches. However, West was still freaked out, even after the doctor glued my wrist to show him that it wouldn’t hurt. I played the ice cream card and that got him calmed down pretty much immediately. After we were finished, West asked if we could just get ice cream for him and not for Cash and Neve. I said no and asked him how he would feel if Cash went to the ER and got ice cream and he didn’t. West responded, “But Cash never has to go to the ER!” Exactly, kid. Cash deserves ice cream for not seriously injuring himself on a regular basis.

The finger did not prohibit West from starting school Thursday morning as planned:

Cash-3rd grade  West-2nd grade

Eid Book Review: Nabeel’s New Pants

Nabeel’s New Pants: An Eid Tale by Fawzia Gilani-Williams
Publisher: Two Lions
Release Date: April 1, 2010
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Publisher’s Description:

Ramadan has come to an end. The fast is over, and tomorrow the celebration of Eid will begin. Nabeel decides to buy each of his family members something special to wear for the holiday. But while he’s choosing, the shopkeeper persuades him also to buy a gift for himself—a pair of new pants that are too long! Nabeel asks his wife, his mother, and his daughter to hem them, but no one has the time—everyone is busy preparing for the festivities. Will Nabeel be able to wear his new pants to celebrate Eid? Only a pair of scissors can tell.

This is a cute and funny little story about a Muslim family that loves each other preparing for the holiday of Eid by exchanging gifts and cooking food. This particular book didn’t go into the religious aspect of Eid but that’s okay with me. How many non-religious children’s books about Christmas are there? Tons. I don’t think every book about a different culture than mine needs to go into a ton of detail. I did appreciate that there is a glossary of terms with pronunciation at the front of this book though.

The illustrations had a very vibrant Indian color scheme, which I loved. The illustrator is Indian so that makes sense. I’d love to read some of the other picture books she’s illustrated.

This a great book about love and generosity to add to your child’s library.

Buy this book at:
Amazon

(I received this book courtesy of the Amazon Vine program.)