Julie's Review: Boy, Snow, Bird

Author: Helen Oyeyemi
Series: None
Publication Date: March 6, 2014
Publisher:Riverhead
Pages: 320
Obtained: publisher
Genre:  Fairy Tale
Rating: 4/5
Bottom Line: 
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Summary: From the prizewinning author of Mr. Fox, the Snow White fairy tale brilliantly recast as a story of family secrets, race, beauty, and vanity. In the winter of 1953, Boy Novak arrives by chance in a small town in Massachusetts, looking, she believes, for beauty — the opposite of the life she's left behind in New York. She marries a local widower and becomes stepmother to his winsome daughter, Snow Whitman. A wicked stepmother is a creature Boy never imagined she'd become, but elements of the familiar tale of aesthetic obsession begin to play themselves out when the birth of Boy's daughter, Bird, who is dark-skinned, exposes the Whitman's as light-skinned African Americans passing for white. Among them, Boy, Snow, and Bird confront the tyranny of the mirror to ask how much power surfaces really hold. Dazzlingly inventive and powerfully moving, Boy, Snow, Bird is an astonishing and enchanting novel. With breathtaking feats of imagination, Helen Oyeyemi confirms her place as one of the most original and dynamic literary voices of our time. ~powells.com

Review: Boy, Snow, Bird is an expertly written novel that takes the fairy tale of Snow White and spins it 180 degrees. What if Snow wasn't as pure as the driven snow? What if the step-mother wasn't really evil? What if the truth is somewhere in between? Ms. Oyeyemi explores this and how a family deals with the issue of race within society and themselves.

This story belongs to both Boy and Bird, with Snow being both a catalyst and a symbol. Boy is somewhat of an enigma throughout the whole book and even at the end. She's aloof, cool and bit frigid.  That doesn't mean I didn't like her because I did. I felt that when the story was told through her she was honest. Honesty doesn't always make you the most well liked person. You never really know what Boy's intentions are with Arturo. Does she truly love him? Does she know how to love? I never really figured it out.

Bird is a wonderful character. She's full of life and love and curiousity that will serve her well in life. She aspires to be a investigative reporter. What I find interesting is that in someways she is shunned by her own family but is embraced by the community. She is cautious to get to know her sister, Snow. Why was she sent away? What is it about Snow that people seem to revere here? Why is she treated like an artifact in a museum?

Snow remains an enigma for the whole novel. Is that the purpose? Yes. It makes us question if someone can be pure good or have they been put on a pedestal to suit the needs of the family? Is Snow adored because she doesn't show the family's true race? Are they proud to call her their own because she's so white? Is she symbolic of the pressure we put on black people to be more white? Maybe it doesn't speak to now but it certainly was true back in the 50s and 60s.

There are some loose ends that were never tied up or never fully came to fruition. What was the deal with the mirrors? Why drop the bombshell and not really do anything with it? Was the point to help us understand Boy and her upbringing? While I enjoyed the dropped bomb, I'm not sure if it helped me understand at all.

Ms. Oyeyemi writes a truly beautiful and lyrical novel. She weaves a story and pulls you into her spell and doesn't release you until the final word. I look forward

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Children's Corner: Mo Willems

It's that time again on the blog where we highlight a favorite of ours...Mo Willems! We are HUGE, HUGE fans of all of his books but we recently bought 2 of his newer books; I'm a Frog! and Let's Go for a Drive!.

Not only are the kids thrilled with the 2 new acquisitions but my son even pulled out the Knuffle Bunny books to read for a night. This meant that my daughter had to come in and steal them after he was done with them to read them.

I love, love, love the friendship between Piggie and Gerald. They truly adore each other and bring out the best in each other. My kids and I crack up every time we read their adventures and these two are no different. I think my favorite out of these two are Let's Go for a Drive because of what Piggie does at the end.

Mo Willems never disappoints and he will be an author I always look forward to reading.

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Julie's Review: The Ballad of Barnabas Pierkiel

Author: Magdalena Zyzak
Series: None
Publication Date: January 14, 2014
Publisher: Henry Holt
Pages: 288
Obtained: Publisher
Genre:  Humor, Folklore
Rating: 3.5/5
Bottom Line: A politically humorous debut that was hard for me to connect with.
Grab, Just get it at the library, or Remove from your TBR list? just get it at the library

Summary: Set in the quaint (though admittedly backward) fictional nation of Scalvusia in 1939, The Ballad of Barnabas Pierkiel follows the exploits of a young swineherd with romantic delusions of grandeur. Desperate to attract the voluptuous Roosha, the Gypsy concubine of the local boot-and-shoe magnate, Barnabas and his short-legged steed Wilhelm get embroiled in a series of scandals and misadventures, as every attempt at wooing ends in catastrophe. After the mysterious death of an important figure in the community, a witch-hunt ensues, and a stranger falls from the sky. Barnabas begins to see the terrible tide of history turning in his beloved hometown. The wonderfully eccentric supporting cast includes a priest driven mad by a fig tree, a gang of louts who taunt our reluctant hero at every turn, and a dim-witted vagabond with a goat for a wife. Even as her characters brush up against one of the darkest moments of the twentieth century, Magdalena Zyzak's humor and prose delight in the absurdities of the human animal. ~powells.com  

Review: The Ballad of Barnabas Pierkiel is a quirky modern day folk-story about a young man coming into his own while his country and the world around him begins to fall apart. Barnabas is a smart young man that no one takes seriously because of his status within the community. It doesn't seem to bother him much except when it comes to his object of affection, Roosha.

Among the humor, is a story of a country at the crossroads of choosing their future. They are stuck between the past and the uncertain future. The town of Odolechka demonstrates on a small scale with the inhabitants. It's hard to believe that this is Ms. Zyzak's first novel because her writing is lush and descriptive. Her use of humor is unlike any other book I've read. It is used in a way that not only makes you laugh but it makes you think. It takes true talent to get the use of humor correct in the first try.

While it might not have resonated with me, I think those who enjoy "dramedy" books, will thoroughly enjoy this one. I will definitely look for Ms. Zyzak's books in the future to see what else she does with her talent. 

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Julie's Review: Beautiful Disaster

Author: Jamie McGuire
Series: Yes, Beautiful Series
Publication Date: 
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Length: 10 hours, 30 minutes
Obtained: Audible, mine
Genre:  New Adult
Rating: 3.5/5
Bottom Line: Totally not in my scope of genres but if you want a little bad boy gone good, this is for you
Grab, Just get it at the library, or Remove from your TBR list? Just Get it at the library

Summary: The new Abby Abernathy is a good girl. She doesn’t drink or swear, and she has the appropriate number of cardigans in her wardrobe. Abby believes she has enough distance from the darkness of her past, but when she arrives at college with her best friend, her path to a new beginning is quickly challenged by Eastern University’s Walking One-Night Stand. Travis Maddox, lean, cut, and covered in tattoos, is exactly what Abby wants—and needs—to avoid. He spends his nights winning money in a floating fight ring, and his days as the ultimate college campus charmer. Intrigued by Abby’s resistance to his appeal, Travis tricks her into his daily life with a simple bet. If he loses, he must remain abstinent for a month. If Abby loses, she must live in Travis’s apartment for the same amount of time. Either way, Travis has no idea that he has met his match. ~powells.com

Review: Abby/Travis or Travis/Abby it doesn't really matter because you know these two are destined to be together. Beautiful Disaster was an interesting book for me. On one hand I couldn't tear myself away from it and on the other I wanted to scream because of the co-dependency between these two. I think if I had read it I probably would have put it down but listening to it kept me from stopping. Plus I kind of wanted to see if they would implode or survive.

Let's talk about the good things: Abby's strong personality, her ability to go toe to toe with Travis' erratic behavior and her confidence. Let's face it, even if you aren't into men with tattoos Travis is still hot and the sex scenes. That Jamie McGuire does a great job of writing those scenes. You can't help getting a little flushed.

Let's talk about the questionable things: Travis' control-freak behavior towards Abby, their co-dependency on each other, the anger/violence that Travis has burning inside him, their ping-pong relationship. The fact that he felt he needed her to save him, that's a tough bill to fill for anyone let alone an 18/19 year old girl. The overuse of "Pigeon" as a term of endearmeant. It was enough to want me to puke at times.

I enjoyed the reveals of why Abby didn't have the pristine background everyone thought she had. I loved that she did have an edge to her and I loved that she could keep up with Travis' antics. I loved that Abby was finally finding her place in the world and was able to find stablity, even if Travis seemed unstable to me.

While I enjoyed it as a book and will probably read the next one Walking Disaster. Travis is the exact kind of guy we warn our daughters about. He's violent, possessive, irrational and downright scary at times. So why did I root for them? I guess because maybe Abby is his calming affect. Maybe they really are each other's yin and yang. My only hope is that he won't become more possessive now that they are together. Perhaps he was that way because he was fighting for her.

If you are looking for a novel to escape into, then Beautiful Disaster is for you.

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Alice's Review: The Opposite of Loneliness

Author: Marina Keegan
Series: None
Publication Date: April 8, 2014
Publisher: Scribner
Pages: 240
Obtained: Publisher via NetGalley
Genre:  Essays, Short Stories
Rating: 4
Bottom Line: A wonderful collection by a talented young woman.
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Summary:  Marina Keegan’s star was on the rise when she graduated magna cum laude from Yale in May 2012. She had a play that was to be produced at the New York International Fringe Festival and a job waiting for her at the New Yorker. Tragically, five days after graduation, Marina died in a car crash.  As her family, friends, and classmates, deep in grief, joined to create a memorial service for Marina, her unforgettable last essay for the Yale Daily News, “The Opposite of Loneliness,” went viral, receiving more than 1.4 million hits. She had struck a chord.  Even though she was just twenty-two when she died, Marina left behind a rich, expansive trove of prose that, like her title essay, captures the hope, uncertainty, and possibility of her generation. The Opposite of Loneliness is an assem­blage of Marina’s essays and stories that, like The Last Lecture, articulates the universal struggle that all of us face as we figure out what we aspire to be and how we can harness our talents to make an impact on the world.

Review:  I didn't know anything about Marian Keegan before I began reading this collection. I chose it simply because I am a lover of short stories. Upon beginning, I was shocked to learn of Ms. Keegan’s premature death at the age of 22 from a car accident.

I just loved The Opposite of Loneliness, the essay this collection was named after. It did something to me when I read it, like goose bumps/twisted insides kind of something. It was so good, so wonderful and so sad knowing the outcome of Ms. Keegan’s life. Having an author explain what she wants from life, knowing that her own was cut so short is heartbreaking.

I enjoyed the fiction stories more than the non-fiction essays. Each of the fiction stories was better than the last. My favorites were Baggage Claim, Sclerotherapy, and the eerie Challenger Deep. I loved, loved, loved Challenger Deep and read it 3 times before moving onto the next story. Of the non-fiction collection, I just loved “I Kill for Money.” There was only one essay I didn’t enjoy at all called Even Artichokes Have Doubts. It was too scientific and read more like a school paper than anything else. It lacked the soul the others possessed. I will admit my eyes glazed over after a couple of pages and I skipped the rest of it altogether.

I believe anyone who enjoys short stories and observations will benefit from this collection. It is beautifully written and full of soul. It is a shame Marina Keegan was taken so soon. I can only imagine what other greatness would have come from her because The Opposite of Loneliness is just about perfect.

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Julie's Review: On the Rocks

Author: Erin Duffy
Series: No
Publication Date:April 22, 2014
Publisher: William Morrow
Pages: 320
Obtained: Amazon Vine
Genre:  contemporary fiction, women's fiction
Rating: 4.25/5
Bottom Line: nothing rocky about this delightful novel
Grab, Just get it at the library, or Remove from your TBR list? Grab it

Summary: A funny, bittersweet, yet heartwarming novel about friendship, family, and finding love in the Facebook age—not to mention the perils, pitfalls, and dubious pleasures of life as a modern young single woman—from Erin Duffy, the author of the acclaimed Bond Girl Ever since she was a little girl, Abby Wilkes dreamed of her wedding, the day when she'd wear a pretty white dress and look like a princess. . . . But that was before her life fell apart for the entire world to see. Her longtime boyfriend-turned-fiancé, Ben, unceremoniously dumped her—changing his status to single on Facebook—while she was trying on the most gorgeous Vera Wang dress for the big day. Six months and twenty pounds later, the usual remedies—cupcakes, a freezer stocked with pints of Ben and Jerry's, sweatpants, and a comfy couch—haven't worked their magic. Worried about her best friend, Grace devises the perfect plan to get Abby back on her game. The two of them are going to escape sweltering Boston and its reminders of Ben and head to Newport for the summer. In a quaint rented cottage by the sea, the girls will enjoy cool breezes, cocktails, and crowds of gorgeous men. But no matter which way they turn, Abby and Grace discover that in this era of social media—when seemingly everyone is preserving every last detail of their lives online and prying eyes are everywhere—there is no real escape. Truth to tell, dating has never been easy. But now that the rules have changed and the boundaries are blurred beyond recognition, will they ever find true love? And if they do, how can romance stand a chance when a girl's every word and move can go viral with a single click? As the summer winds down to Labor Day, Abby will make some surprising discoveries—about love, men, friendship . . . and, most important, herself. ~amazon.com

Review: I loved Abby. I loved how she was a mess, then not such a mess, back to being a mess and then finally figuring it out. I mean haven't we all been there before? Ok, maybe not jilted while trying on wedding dresses, but dumped by someone and didn't see it coming? My heart went out to her. That's not saying that at times I didn't want to tell her to pick herself up and get over it, but most of the time I found her plight funny and relatable. Not only that but I bet most of us has sunk some sorrows into a few pints of ice cream in our lives.

Not only is Abby great but the rest of the people that she is surrounded by are wonderful as well. You've got her best friend, Grace, who has her own relationship woes; Bobby, who is always ready with a zinger at Abby's expense and Wolf, the German who is always getting slang mixed up. Together they are hilarious and have great chemistry. They all have a true friendship that builds over the course of a summer.

On the Rocks is full of humor, quips but it's also got some life lessons thrown in. It's about realizing that maybe you are better off without that person, figuring out who you are without them, and figuring out who you want to be.

Even though I've never experienced dating in the new social media world, I could feel her pain, her humiliation and indignation. I don't think I would want to be single in this new world, it would feel as if you always had to be "on" and to be judged by your profile and the pictures on your account.

Ms. Duffy had a great way of reeling you in and keeping you hooked. It is her portrayal of friendship that I truly enjoyed. I loved that Grace and Abby had been friends since grade school and were still as close as sisters. I loved Abby's dysfunctional family, because don't we all operate under some dyfunctionality?

If you are looking for a book where you will just enjoy the ride and have a few hearty laughs along the way, then pick up On the Rocks.









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