Category — book review

Title: Bossypants
Author: Tina Fey
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Pages:277
ISBN: 978-0-316-05686-1
Price: $16.96 (USD – hardcover)

So, I’ve had this book for a couple of days now and I finished the last few chapters last night as I lay around in bed. I grinned and giggled to myself (mostly) trying not to disturb Joe, who was playing a game quietly on his iPad. And then I read a passage about breast milk vs. formula that made me have one of the worst laughing fits I’ve had in ages, a fit so bad that it made my abs (such as they are) hurt:

“However, the baby was thriving. I was no longer feeling trapped, spending thirty minutes out of every ninety minutes attached to a Williams-Sonoma Tit Juicer. But I had an overwhelming feeling of disappointment. I had failed at something that was supposed to be natural.”

I’ve never had a baby, and thus never had to take sides in the breast-milk vs. formula debate, but this struck me as absolutely perfect – and hilarious. Maybe it was the very idea of Williams-Sonoma selling something called a “Tit Juicer” – or maybe it was that only Tina Fey could make something so damn funny out of a subject that other people get into heated debates and fights over – whatever it was, she nailed that part. I laughed until I hurt.

I had been a bit skeptical about reading this book when my friend loaned it to me. It’s not that my friend has terrible taste in books, or that I thought she was lying about the book being good, but more that I’ve always thought that books by celebrities were always poorly written, shameless money-grabs about rehab, sex-tapes, and buying expensive cars.

Well, I was wrong about this one.

Tina Fey writes about her life, and her beginnings in comedy and showbiz with both humour and grace. I learned that showbiz, and comedy in particular, isn’t necessarily a glamorous business – it’s a lot of long hours, a lot of rejection, and a lot worry that what some executive loves today, might put 200+ people out of work tomorrow because he’s changed his mind and decided to cancel whatever you’re working on.

She writes quite naturally and unaffectedly about the people she’s worked with – some of them are very well known, big names in the business too – and I liked her total lack of snobbery about it. It was never, “…and then, I had lunch with Mr. Hollywood Movie Star, and he was just darling!”, it was more, “So I worked on SNL for a long time, and I got to meet some really awesome people – how lucky am I to have such a cool job?”

I was also impressed by how she handles her personal life in the book. She tells just enough to give you the general idea, but never so much that you feel like you’ve just witnessed a yearly, full physical exam.  Her life is exactly like most people’s:  she’s a working mom, she works ridiculous hours at her job and she’s just one of the lucky ones who actually enjoys her work and, I assume, makes a good living at it. The way she writes about her life made me feel like she’s someone I could be neighbours with – she’s that normal and down to earth.

While some of the humour in the book fell a bit flat for me because it seemed to be trying just a little too hard, I took that in my stride. I’m sure for the few, clearly meant to be funny bits, that I didn’t laugh at, there are any number of people who laughed themselves silly.  It’s no different at a comedy club, or watching an SNL skit, really  – some people will laugh, and some people won’t. Humour is a personal thing.

I loved reading about her working with Sarah Palin, and the pains she took to ensure that Mrs. Palin wouldn’t be booed offstage, or embarrassed; while Tina Fey had no problems poking fun at her, she’s not mean and she put any personal feelings and politics aside to make sure a fellow human being was treated with some measure of respect and dignity. Would that we were all so decent and professional! On the other hand, readers are also treated to stories of the more bizarre aspects of working in comedy (it involves jars of pee, I will say no more).

Tina Fey also shares some excerpts from her favourite bits of writing and comedy written by people she genuinely admires, and while I won’t spoil your own reading by talking about all of them, I will quote my favourite here from 30 Rock:

C.C.
(giving in)
No one can know we’re together,
Jack. Not even your friend Tracy
Jordan out there.

JACK
I don’t think we have to worry
about Tracy.

CUT TO: Tracy in front of the building, talking to a pigeon.

TRACY
Stop eating people’s old french
fries, little pigeon. Have some
self-respect. Don’t you know you
can fly?

That right there? That’s some good writing – I can tell because it made me laugh.

If you’re looking a for a good read that will make you laugh (and reconsider everything you think you know about magazine shoots and the supposed “glamour” of it all) – this is the the book to pick up.

Title: PopCo
Author: Scarlett Thomas
Publisher:Harcourt
Pages:512
ISBN: 015603137X
Price: $5.46 (USD)

I enjoyed many things about this book – so much so that I read it cover to cover over the space of a day.

Alice Butler, an employee of PopCo in the Ideation and Design section, is headed to Devon, England for a company sponsored “Thought Camp” where she and her fellow employees will try to come up with new ideas for the next toy craze to hit the shelves.

While the work she does on the trip is very interesting, equally interesting to me was the story of her childhood and the mystery surrounding a necklace her grandfather gave her as a kid. The necklace has been engraved with a number that, if she can crack it, holds the key to a location containing millions of dollars in treasure. Much of Alice’s childhood revolves around learning the math that goes with breaking codes and ciphers. As a non-math person, I was really impressed by how Thomas (via Alice) explains codes and ciphers. You don’t need to have a background in math to understand what she’s talking about, and even if it still leaves you confused (or bored as some readers complained of) the mystery of her necklace and the treasure are more than enough to keep you interested.

I really enjoyed Thomas’s ability to remember what it was like to be a kid – the desire to be liked (or at least not teased) by the popular kids. The need to fit in and, at the same time, anger at having to fit in with the right clothes, hair, lipgloss, or whatever thing was currently cool. And the horror of having to hide those things that you were certain would cast you so far down the social ladder, you’d be reaching for the bottom rung – I think Thomas actually says almost exactly that at  some point in the novel. Alice’s ability with codes, ciphers, math and chess – and the fact that she lives with her grandparents – are things she wants to hide from the kids at school – especially the popular girls who seem to have accepted her as one their own.

I also liked that she understands the ways in which all those childhood things carry over into adulthood too. It’s the same sort of stuff even when you grow up (wanting to fit in, irrational worries that other people don’t like you or are upset with you and won’t tell you, trying to figure out what people want from you and what you want for yourself, feeling compelled to do things you don’t like in order to be “normal” etc.). Yet, with all these insights into her mind and being human, I found Alice’s sudden sexual relationship with another Thought Camp attendee, Ben, a little puzzling. Don’t get me wrong, it seems like a great way to pass the time and have fun while at a sometimes dull or pointless work outing – but given her repeated mentions of her shyness, her awkwardness and general lack of interest in being very social at all, I was surprised by the wordless/nameless sex she and Ben have. Their relationship does become more normal, but its beginning was a little jarring.

Despite that awkwardness – and who knows, maybe flings with colleagues happen like that all the time, and I just don’t know because I’ve never had one – I found myself intrigued and delighted with passages such as this:

“…I walk to the bus stop in town, breathing the bonfirey, marshmallowy smells of autumn. I love this time of year, when people start to rehearse for Christmas plays and pantomimes and the air feels like it’s full of magic spells. This is the time of year when arriving home after school feels cozy, like going back to bed.”

Maybe this only resonated with me because  I love autumn, but I found myself thinking, “Yes! That’s it exactly!” – and then bookmarking it. I also enjoyed her thoughts on marketing age-appropriate things to teenage girls (relevant to the plot, but I won’t spoil it for anyone) – and how many things are targeted at these young people but have insidious, adult meanings. Specifically this passage:

“I find it disturbing that there’s so much childishness in those magazines, and so much about sex at the same time…You are encouraged – in a playful, “childish” way – to pay so much attention to the detail of your “cute” socks and your “cute” bag and the cut of your…jeans and your bubblegum-coloured nail varnish because, well, basically because you want boys to think about fucking you. They don’t say that explicitly, though. They talk about fancying and snogging and crushes. What they don’t say is, “Here’s how to make boys your age want to fuck you.”

She goes on to talk about how that ends up making grown women, who are no longer the smooth-faced, thin and small 16 year olds they once were, want the illusion presented by the same magazines too, and so they end up buying age-inappropriate clothing and accessories as well.

It’s not that I had never thought of this, or noticed it, but Thomas put it so well that it was impossible to not think about it once I’d read it. And there are several other succinctly put observations about perfectly ordinary things throughout the book that made me think, “That’s exactly how I would have said it – if I’d been able to think it so clearly!”.

My only truly negative thought about this book involves the ending. Like other readers, and you can check out the reviews on Amazon.com for this, I was disappointed by the ending. The first 2/3 of the book is interesting and moving along at a good clip, and then it just…sort of…ends. I didn’t feel there was any resolution to anything. What sort of stuff was she doing with NoCo? What happened with her and Ben? Where was the treasure (and what was the treasure)? I didn’t feel that Alice had finished becoming whoever she became when the book skipped ahead through her further adventures after Thought Camp and then ended so abruptly.

However, there were many other who felt that the book ended exactly as it should have and I can see their point in this. Alice is smart and resourceful – thinking outside the box is second nature to her, what she does after Thought Camp may even be perfectly obvious, and the exact goings-on between her and Ben are not really crucial to the story anymore. For me, despite all this logical “I can see it your way too” thinking, the story felt unfinished to me. That being said, I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing – because of it, I know that I will go back and re-read this book to see what I missed; to see if the things I missed make the ending better for me. And really, what better praise for a book about a treasure hunt is there than knowing the reader is going back a second time to look for more treasure themselves?

Title: The Adventures of Benjamin Skyhammer
Author: Nicole Sheldrake
Publisher: Amazon e-publishing
Pages: 310 (on Kindle)
ISBN: 9780987670700
Price: $2.99 (USD)

The titular character of Benjamin Skyhammer is a guy that pretty much everyone can identify with on some level: he doesn’t fit into society very well, he hates his day job (but loves his hobby), and he spends a good deal of time dreaming about the day when things will change for him. However, it’s all the reasons behind why he’s so easy to relate to, that make Benjamin Skyhammer stand out.

Skyhammer lives on Pingala, a world where everyone uses magic in their day to day lives – everyone except for him. Born without magic, Skyhammer is looked upon as something less than fully human. At their best, his fellow humans go out of their way to avoid any sort of contact with him; at their worst they openly taunt him (at rather low point in his personal history, a group of kids turned him into a snake for a lark).

As Keeper of the Retrograph Vault, a job he was forced into by virtue of being the only one able to get into the vault in the first place, he’s expected to be grateful and happy with such a cushy and easy job. Given that his predecessor spent most of his time as Keeper completely intoxicated, most people think the job is more than Skyhammer deserves as a magic-less outcast. Skyhammer, however, feels the job is a sort of boring punishment and is not content to sit on his laurels and take the easy way out. Instead, he and his best friend – his only friend really – Higgins, (a clever young lady, proficient in wizard level magic) spend the majority of their time hunting down the one Relic – a glove – that could bestow magical powers on Skyhammer and finally make him equal to everyone else.

During his various quests for this glove, Skyhammer finds other Relics and sells them as a source of income. This income goes towards paying informants who are helping him track the location of the Relic. When Skyhammer finally gets a solid lead on the whereabouts of the glove, he and Higgins are caught up in a race against time to get to it before someone else does

Without giving too much away, things go horribly awry and the fallout sends Skyhammer and Higgins on an adventure that ends up becoming far more complicated than either of them could ever have dreamed. Unexplained murders, political intrigues, and battles become the norm as they brave both beautiful and harsh landscapes to find the truth and to fulfill Skyhammer’s only desire. As might be expected, Skyhammer learns a few things about himself and the people around him along the way. Finding the truth, and seeking out your heart’s desire is hard, and sometimes frightening, work – but the rewards are great.

There are many things in this book to interest readers,  and of all the interesting things in it, I was most intrigued by the concept of the Retrograph.

Retrographs are pictures that are taken every minute of an individuals life – picture having a sort of camera as a third eye that takes a snapshot of one moment in time, every minute you’re awake. These Retrographs can be viewed at anytime – but only by the person to whom they belong. No one knows why the Retrographs exist, or for what purpose (those answers died with the ancients), they simply are – and every human, magic or not, has their whole life captured by this inner-eye. I have to admit, if we had anything like that now, I’d want the option of a delete button. After all, who’d want to look back on all the times you brushed your teeth or went to the bathroom (or worse!)?

I also enjoyed the wide variety in races (everything from humans to amoebas that like to knit) and the interesting technology too (flying carpets, magic slates, whole cities that float); it’s a world that is nothing like our own, but its inhabitants make it feel familiar and comfortable. The names of some of the inns that Skyhammer and Higgins pass through gave me the giggles as did the stories the locals feed the tourists regarding the name of their town, Four Hills (all I have to say is “conjoined princesses” – you’ll see).

The story itself moves along at a pretty quick pace. There were a few spots where I felt it went a little too fast, and the landscape, people and conversations went by in a bit of hurry. I’m a greedy reader, I like detail and back story (in the right measure). And there were some questions that I felt were not answered (perhaps the answers I wanted were deliberately not given to add an air of mystery – but I felt a little disappointed at not being let in on it)  and I must also be a little bit voyeuristic, as I would have liked more inner-dialogue – especially from Skyhammer – or at least more description of how the characters were feeling about certain events.

The only other thing that gave me a moment’s pause while reading, were the two instances where I felt that Benjamin Skyhammer acted wildly out of character. He generally seems like a fairly sweet sort of guy – the kind you take home to mother – even a little goofy and helpless at times. I had a hard time reconciling that Skyhammer to the two instances in the story (I could tell you which ones, but I don’t want to, a) spoil the plot or b) put ideas in your head about how you should react before you’ve even read it.) Let’s just say that I couldn’t (and still can’t) see someone of his character doing such things.

All in all, The Adventures of Benjamin Skyhammer is a good, fun read set in an interesting world that you’ll find yourself wishing you could visit for real.