Let's Pretend This Never Happened

Okay, people.  If there's one lesson I've learned so far in doing this blog, it's that my readers get scared or bored as soon as they see a post title with the words "Book Review."  I don't know if it's because you have a thing against books, a thing against reviews, or a thing against me doing book reviews. 

I hope it's not a thing against books, because books are awesome and you should read them before North Carolina tells us we can't.  If it's a thing against reviews, I promise that my reviews aren't like annual reviews or compensation reviews or parole board reviews.  They're much more benign and you don't have to get nervous or clammy-palmed.  If it's a thing against me doing book reviews, then I assume you're one of those people who says things like "Let's zip it with the breast-feeding instructions, Gisele.  Stick to modeling."  And I gotta say, I respect that.  But come on.  Have you not been paying attention?  If there's anything that's in my wheelhouse, it is books!

Nevertheless, I am a girl who learns from her mistakes.  So now when I write a book review, I'm not going to put the words "Book Review" in the title of the post.  Wah-bam!  Do you see how I'm controlling your mind right there?  Consider yourself my Bourne Identity.  (But if you kung-fu chop someone to death in a bus station janitor's closet, that's all on you.  Also, please don't do that.)

Yes, my little pet, you've gotten to the fourth paragraph of a book review.  Keep reading.  You're going to thank me for this one.

BECAUSE THIS BOOK I'M FIXIN' TO TELL YA'LL ABOUT IS THE GOSH DARNED FUNNIEST, ZANIEST, CRAZIEST, MOST UNIQUE BOOK YOU'LL EVER READ.

The book is called "Let's Pretend This Never Happened (A Mostly True Memoir)" by Jenny Lawson. 

Jenny gained fame and a devoted following as a blogger (she is known as the "Bloggess," the title of her blog).  During that time, she was also working on a book about her life.  That book is the aforementioned memoir, and it has topped the charts of best-seller lists since its release a few weeks ago.

The book chronicles her life from young girlhood to young motherhood.  But hers is no ordinary life, and hers is no ordinary perspective on that unordinary life.  You see, Jenny grew up in rural -- and I mean rural -- Texas, the daughter of a stay-at-home mom and ... a dad.  A dad who left the military to open a taxidermy shop in the back-yard.  A dad who thought cougars made good housepets.  A dad who woke his daughters up in the middle of the night to show them a new hand puppet he'd made...using the carcass of a dead squirrel.  A dad who fashioned winter boots for his girls by using old bread sacks.  Needless to say, growing up with that dad for a parent was not for the faint of heart, and Jenny survived her fair share of horrifying situations.  Like the time she had to artificially inseminate a cow and lost the turkey baster containing nature's juice in the process.

Her upbringing was certifiably unorthodox, shall we say, but she also writes about more relatable life events.  Meeting the man who'd become her (long-suffering) husband and the awkwardness of blending two families (especially his proper one and her "quirky" one).  The ups-and-downs of marriage.  The difficulties of making friends.  Surviving a job you don't like and leaving it to pursue your passion.  Struggling with debilitating insecurities and anxieties.  Trying to have children.  Becoming a mother.

The thing that sets this memoir apart, though, is the out-of-left-field humour and painfully hilarious take Jenny has on each of these otherwise universal moments.  The creativity with which she paints her husband as the foil to her insane impulses is delicious.  For example, there's an entire chapter devoted to post-it notes she left for her husband on topics such as picking up his wet towels from the bathroom floor.  In another chapter, she recounts a conversation she had with her husband when she was lost driving in the neighborhood they lived in because her GPS system was out to get her.

There was one passage that literally had me laughing and crying at the same time -- the tears being a result of the side-splitting laughing I was doing.  That passage involves her describing her first trip to a public pool with her toddler daughter.  Unbeknownst to Jenny, swimming toddlers need swimming diapers.  For the unenlightened, regular diapers become door-stopper heavy with all the water they absorb from the pool, and then they explode into bits of stuff you never would have guessed would constitute diaper components.  Jenny's horrifying enlightenment is, I think, the funniest thing I've ever read.

Amidst all the humor, though, Jenny manages to write equally poignant moments.  She honestly addresses her psychological issues, and shares her brave struggle to have a baby.  By the end of the book, you are officially in love with her.  Because she can make you laugh and make you cry and make you admire.

Be forewarned. The one other tie that binds this book is, perhaps not surprisingly, her love of taxidermied animals.  They're kind of her thing.  Some dads teach their kids a love of baseball; hers taught her a love of stuffed pets.  It's kind of weird to read about how she just HAD to have that little misshapen, miniaturized dead alligator, but somehow it's the weird-in-a-good-way weird.  The great thing is, though, Jenny knows her predilections are weird, and she's proud of them.  Actually, she knows she's pretty weird, and she's proud of that.  In fact, she's the Pied Piper of weirdos, but her lute is the written word.  To read her is to love her. 

Be forewarned again.  This book is not appropriate for funerals, burst appendix recuperations, or meetings with the Board of Directors.  There is no way to stop yourself from laughing.  And you're inevitably going to want to read out loud the passage that almost made you wet your pants.  Which is something your priest, your surgeon, and/or your Chairman probably won't look kindly upon.  Especially your priest.  There's lots of swearing.

Assuming everyone around you looks healthy and nowhere near a conference room, go get this book immediately.  Let me know what you think.

P.S.  Yes, I know.  You're welcome.

Book Review: Zeitoun

The danger in not traveling for a long time is that you forget some of the tricks of the trade, and end up making costly rookie mistakes.  In my former life, I traveled a lot for work and could pack myself for days of depositions, client dinners, and travel comforts in less time than it now takes me to put out breakfast.  In preparing for this week's trip, I needed an Excel spreadsheet and a life coach to walk me through the process.  And even after that investment, I made the worst packing mistake I could have:

I brought only one book.  A book I was already halfway through by the time the taxi picked me up to head to the airport.

Silly, silly girl.  Know thyself.  Plan ahead.  Prepare for all possibilities. 

Including the possibility that no entertainment is offered on your flights, your iPod doesn't work and you forgot your earbuds anyway, you can't sleep, and the television in your hotel room (or "den," as the case may be) only offers "hotel channels" where you can see pictures of kids doing things you just saw kids doing when you entered the lobby and sprinted to the elevators. 

I've had to monitor and conserve the pages remaining to me like deer tracker protecting his beef jerky reserves.  I've scoured the surrounding territory for a place that will sell me another book, but unless I'm ready to cuddle up with "100 Ways to Rope Steer," I'm out of luck.  So I've read paragraphs here, sentences there, and the list of Guest Services in between to pass the time.

But today is travel day, and that means I'm headed to an airport.  If there's one thing I can count on an airport to provide, other than time-sucking and discomfort, its a bookstore.  I threw caution to the wind and finished the five pages remaining to me, and now I can report back to you on the book that got me through the past week.

That book is Zeitoun, by Dave Eggers.

Abdulrahman Zeitoun is a Syrian-American who lives in New Orleans with his Louisiana-born wife Kathy and their children.  Together, the husband and wife team run a successful general contractor/property management company.  August 2005 finds them living their lives -- business is going well, their children are beginning the school year, and Kathy's biggest concern is Zeitoun's grueling schedule. 

Then they start hearing news reports about a tame hurricane traveling up the Florida panhandle.  Accustomed to hurricanes and the manufactured hysteria that often accompanies an approaching storm, the two only half-monitor this hurricane's approach.  Soon, though, Hurricane Katrina becomes a force they can no longer ignore -- they listen to reports of its Category 5 strength and the brewing concerns about a storm surge and the strength of the levees.  Finally, Kathy decides to take the kids to weather the storm with her family in Baton Rouge.  Zeitoun decides to stay behind to take care of their house and the other properties they own and have projects at.

Eggers manages to portray the horrors that follow with simple prose and a direct story-line.  That feat is all the more impressive given the many layers of tragedy embodied in Hurricane Katrina.  There are the human triumphs, most notably Zeitoun's rescuing of strangers and neighbors who are stranded in their water-logged homes.  There is the human panic thanks to a disorganized evacuation process and misinformation about the scope of the storm.  And there are illusions to the mind-boggling atrocities at the Superdome that were broadcasted across the news.

For me, perhaps the most remarkable part of Zeitoun's story was his arrest in the days following the storm. A combination of local police and National Guards stormed a house Zeitoun and fellow survivors had taken refuge in (it had a working shower and telephone) and arrested all four men on the spot.  They were brutally treated, refused access to an attorney and a phone call, and jailed in make-shift cages set up outside a local Greyhound station.  The four men spent anywhere from weeks to months in an actual prison they were eventually transferred to, still without ever being charged with a crime, and continuously denied medical treatment, legal counsel, and even time outside of their packed jail cells.

This aspect of the book shed light on even more levels of corruption and failure that Hurricane Katrina managed to put in stark relief.  Police armed to the hilt who are themselves looting gas stations and stores arrest men who "look suspicious."  The false priorities of city officials, who managed to construct the cage system of jails in days while New Orleanians were starving, thirsty, and stranded just neighborhoods away.  A complete breakdown in the basic rights and preservation of human dignity that Americans provide themselves on championing and protecting above all else.

The book speaks on so many levels, and each will resonate on different levels for different readers.  It is a book we all owe the Zeitouns of the world to read.

Eggers also wrote a book called What Is The What, which I read a while ago.  While Zeitoun's story is compelling, I thought Eggers' writing made for a moving depiction in What Is The What.  So have yourself an Eggers weekend and read both.

Book Review: The Tender Bar

I love to read.  It is most certainly the "hobby" that defines me and the pasttime that, almost as much as people, serves as a mile-marker in my life.  I remember the Christmas my mother gave me Gone with The Wind.  I remember the night I finished Little Women.  I remember the apartment where I read A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.   I remember where I was when A Thousand Splendid Suns made me cry.  I remember stacking my little cubby at summer camp full of books, and tracking the progress of those seven weeks by the progress I was making through my miniature bookshelves.

I remember the winter day when I was ten years old and I spent the entire -- as in breakfast-to-dinner -- day in a straight-backed chair in the living room reading.  It wasn't a time out (what book nerd does anything remotely remarkable enough to merit day-long punishment?).  It was an indulgence: snowy day, preoccupied sisters, and no school -- let's get our reading on!

So me and reading go way back, in a dedicated way.  I have the supremely awkward middle school pictures and the no-boyfriend-'til-college track record to prove it.  Boy, did my husband nab himself a WINNER!!!

After my son was born six months ago, though, I found myself having a hard time concentrating in my usual way on whatever book was in my hands.  Normally when I'm reading a book, I plan my day around those moments when I can sneak in a few more pages or chapters, and I think about the characters all day long.  I used to walk dozens of blocks in New York City with my nose in a book.  My favorite part of city-living was being able to read on the subway or bus when I was commuting to work or anywhere else.  When I run on a treadmill, I use one of those plastic do-hickeys or whatever other device I can fashion to hold my book, and the pages fly as the miles drag.

But post-baby #2, I found myself scanning paragraphs and forcing myself to make time to read.  I plodded through books, and when I finally finished, I realized I hadn't even really enjoyed what I'd read. 

I frieked the eff out.  Was I broken?

But then my Easter miracle came early.  I started reading The Tender Bar, a memoir by J. R. Moehringer.  And I was me again.

I heard someone say once that every book is a variation on a single theme: a hero/heroine who encounters an obstacle and ultimately triumphs over that obstacle (with tragedies simply following that same formula but applying it in the reverse).  The Tender Bar is helpful evidence in support of the triumphant vein of that thesis.

J. R. is the story's hero, and his obstacle is the identity crisis he suffers as a young boy when he feels and acknowledges the gaping hole his absent father left in his life when he abandoned seven-month-old J.R. and his mother.  For years, J. R.'s only connection with his father was via radio frequency, after he learned that his father was a disc jockey whose programs could be picked up on the dilapadated stereo he was able to find.  J. R.'s tenuous connection with The Voice, as J. R. dubs him, becomes the relationship that haunts him for years: sometimes J. R. tries to force the issue and figure out how to bring his father back into the family fold, sometimes he writes him off, and sometimes he simply loses track of him altogether.

To fill the hole his father left behind, J. R. looks for other personalities to become his anchor to windward.  In his earliest years, his mother serves as his beacon.  But the pressure of making her happy and keeping her provided for eventually proves to be too much, and J. R. distances himself from her, even as he knows how much they need each other.  Other family members, like the cousins he sometimes lives with and, for brief moments, his grandparents, take turns filling the void.  Each of them are filled with their own insecurities and short-comings, however, and they don't have the energy or the character to provide the constancy J. R. needs.

Enter Dickens (later known as Publicans), the bar located 142 steps up Plandome Road from his grandparents' house in Manhasset, N.Y., a commuter village outside New York City.  Publicans is where J. R.'s uncle tends bar, where the town goes to celebrate and commiserate, where last call is a mere formality, where boys become men and men become old, where the game is always on and the conversation is always lively, where the nicknames outnumber the names, where loyalties run deep and friendships run forever. 

Publicans is where J. R. figures out who he wants to become and starts trying to become him.  He has his first drink there, but he also mails his application to Yale from there, takes the notes that become his memoir there, nurses his first heartache there, and learns to love the Mets there.  From his perch on a barstool, he has a bird's eye view of the town and the men who live in it. 

Moehringer describes those men in such vivid detail that I felt like I'd spent years at the bar with them myself.  Much of that description comes through his narration of stories that take place at the bar and prominently feature those men, such as Colt and Bob the Cop and Jimbo and Fuckembabe and Smelly.  He talks of going to the beach with them, getting drunk with them, betting with them, trading literary quotes with them, and mourning with them.  You see how the bar becomes the place where J. R. is most himself, and most at home.  Not surprisingly, over the course of his young life, J. R. is often homesick for the bar -- more than he ever misses his mother or wonders about his father.

Don't be confused.  This is not a seedy book.  It is not a depressing book.  It is not a book about the makings of an alcoholic, though drinking obviously plays a role in the book and there are undercurrents of a nascent drinking problem as J. R. leaves college and tries to get his journalism career off the ground. 

Instead, it's a book about the village that helped raise this boy; a village that stepped in when the boy thought he was forever stranded in a no-man's land of abandonment, poverty, and lack of opportunity.  It just so happens that the village fit inside the four walls of a bar called Publicans.

If you never thought a book about a bar could be touching and heart-lifiting, prove yourself wrong.  If you want a unique take on a coming-of-age book, you've found it.  If you need your reading machine fixed, consider this your mechanic.  Cheers to that.