The Banning of Books. World Book Night 2013

When I was a little girl, my mom would bring me into her bed and let me help her do crossword puzzles. For some reason, doing crosswords calmed my mom because each word, fitting in a specific way, following rules, gave her unstructured life structure. I can remember being about four years old the first time she handed me a word jumble and let me draw lines around random letters. And, I remember it was just a year later when I got my own crossword puzzle book and a small dictionary and we’d sit, in her bed, for hours every weekend working on finding new ways to say the same things.

I started reading at a very early age and, in a lot of ways, I wouldn’t be here today without books. When my mom was suffering through her depression, I read. When she beat me, I ran to my room and read. When once, she accused me of being a ghost from her past, I ran under my bed and pulled books out of the secret spaces I’d made inside of my box spring foundation. And I read.

I was 10 when I first saw the episode of the Twilight Zone with Burgess Meredith and his books. I cried when his glasses broke because I never wanted to imagine a world where I couldn’t read. I was 12 when I read Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 and, once again, I was moved to tears over the thought that a society might want to ban the one thing that kept me going when everything around me turned to chaos.

Touch & Go: A Book Review

This book was brilliant. I feel like I can start out with that and it’s not even close to how much I fell for the writing from the first page to the last.

Lisa Gardner has written a novel about the ways in which those who love us most can often do the most emotional damage to us.

Without giving away too much of the plot, this book introduces us to a husband who has had an affair, a wife who has learned about the affair and is trying to come to terms with how she feels and a teenage daughter who has her own secrets. When the family is faced with a horrible event that takes them out of their façade of comfort, the book gets even better.

Private Investigator, Tessa Leoni, is back again as a private investigator on the hunt for truth. The book opens by suggesting that pain has a flavor. In this case, the entire book has a flavor and it’s one you should consider tasting.

And now for the business language: This is a paid review for BlogHer Book Club but the opinions expressed are my own.

You can follow Lisa Gardner at: https://www.facebook.com/LisaGardnerBks or on twitter @lisagardnerbks

To learn more about this book, or to participate in a discussion on BlogHer, please visit: https://www.blogher.com/bookclub/now-reading-touch-go

What’s the Half Life of Love?

I’ve just finished reading Junot Diaz’ new book “This is how you lose her” and I am in love. No, not with Junot (I don’t know him, although I did email him yesterday – he replied, I invited him to lunch) but with his ability to make a point in simple, yet elegant ways.

“The half-life of love is forever” – that’s an epiphany reached by the main character in the book and I read it while sitting at my favorite diner yesterday during a forced sabbatical from anything having to do with thinking. When I want to read, I go to this one diner in Tarrytown and I get a booth and I spread out a books and magazines and Moleskins and I focus. The diner staff is wonderful – they come over and ask how I’m doing, ask what’s new, ask what I’m reading, then they seem to know that it’s time for words to take over and they let me sit, sometimes for hours, with my thoughts.

Matched: A Book Review

First of all, let me say that dystopia rules. Or is that dystopia, rules. I guess it depends. I mean, it wouldn’t be awesome to live in a dystopian society – but it is pretty awesome to read stories about societies that have gone right off the edge into total dysfunction – while creating a thin veil of ‘we’re all okay.’

That’s what Ally Condie has created in her book ‘Matched’ and it’s why I had such a fun time reading it over the course of five hours one night. Yes, five. I thought I’d read a few chapters here and there, but instead I grabbed some tea and read until about 2am one night and then called my writing partner and said “Wanna read this?”

In all fairness, I haven’t read many young adult books since I finished the last Harry Potter book and cried through an entire weekend. I missed “Hunger Games” so please don’t judge me – but Ms. Condie may have me rethink my own self-imposed age ban on YA works in the future.

What if, and this is just for giggles, society told you what you could do for a career and who you could marry? What if it told you when you could have children and how many? Or what if you knew the exact day you would die because, at a certain age, you have outlived your usefulness? And what if – just because we’re imagining here – you learned that your “Truman Show” life was really not about destiny but about control?

Are we, as a society, so far removed from dystopian status? Not really. Not if you really let your mind think about what you’re allowed to do and what you’re told is off limits.

In a “Matched” world, ‘The Society’ has managed to limit much of history – only the top works of art and books and music are kept for the sake of reference – DNA matching accounts for relationship statuses, not emotions – and artifacts such as pocket watches, compact mirrors and jewelry can get you ousted from the collective.

At 17, your destiny is laid out before you – or, if you’re part of the outcast society – you are sent to remote areas to live out your days. What makes you an outcast? It could be anything – since you have no real choices your destiny is decided for you – that doesn’t sound like such a utopian society even though utopia is exactly what you’re told you’re lucky to have.

“Matched” is part one in a trilogy of books following the lead, Cassia, as she ventures further and further from her designed life to find the truth about herself and the people she loves.

And yes, I am looking forward to reading the next two chapters. YA here I come…

And now, the disclaimer:

I was compensated for this BlogHer Book Club review but all opinions expressed are my own (like I’d ever post anyone else’s opinions, kidding. Just kidding)

BlogHer Sponsored Post: P&G and Olympics Fever

There was a time in the not-so-distant past when I’d buy all types of toothpaste products just to get the perfect combination of tartar control, plaque fighting, fresh breath and whitening. I’d go through a different tube every three months or so. Once A got a little older, she started following the trend of switching toothpastes, always looking for a product that would make her teeth as white as on the days we visited our dentist.

Then one day she said ‘mom, let’s try these thingies’ and pointed at a box of Crest Whitening Strips. I wasn’t so sure that was a good idea. What if they made my teeth sensitive? What if they over-whitened? What if, the opposite happened and I gained nothing but a lighter wallet?

Well, I’m happy to say that years later, A and I still use the strips twice a year in between our six-month dentist check-ins, which is why I was pretty psyched to get a chance to do a BlogHer sponsored post.

What do I get? A chance to tell you about something I use. What do you get? A chance to save 10% on P&G products if you use the link below and free shipping. Sounds like a win/win to me.

What else can I tell you about the strips? They aren’t ‘cheap’ but they are easy to use, not overly expensive if you use them in coordination with regular appointments to your dentist and they keep my pearly whites white, even through gallons of coffee a day.

Happy shopping but before you go, got any products you’ve resisted using only to find out that you actually enjoy them?

What Alice Forgot: A Book Review

I’m back and bringing you a new book review.

It’s so interesting to be reading so many fiction books at the same time. For a regular fiction book avoider (I wonder if that is the technical term) I am getting very lucky with the selections I’ve read so far this summer.

I just finished “What Alice Forgot” by Liane Moriarty and have to say that if, like Alice, I had a chance to re-do the last 10 years, I would start with spending more time doing speed work to attain that elusive sub 7-minute mile.

The Artist’s Way Toolkit: A Review

When I signed up for to review a three-month subscription to The Artist’s Way Toolkit I truly had no idea what the service was or how I would use it.

But I’m becoming quite the sucker for anything BlogHer.com sponsors so I got my password and logged in to see how the Toolkit would help someone like me. By someone like me I mean someone who often procrastinates when it comes to writing. It isn’t that I have nothing to say, it’s more like I wait for something to hit me and it’s usually a song or a passage in a book. A few words here or there can get me to thinking about a subject that may have already been on my mind, but that needed a doorway in which to wander out into the written universe.

The First Husband: A Book Review

Would you believe that in all of my years of reading – I’ve never participated in a book club? I don’t know why. It sure isn’t from a lack of thinking about it, but all of that thinking never got me to actually join a group. I think I was intimidated by the concept – or afraid we’d have to read books I wouldn’t like.

Of course, in fairness, there aren’t many books I don’t at least like. Love, now that’s another story!

So it was with this in mind that I signed up to participate in a BlogHer.com book review for Laura Dave’s “The First Husband”.

I’ll admit that I was a little nervous when the book arrived. I don’t read a lot of fiction, and I certainly don’t read a lot of, what some would describe as, chick lit, yet here I was with this brand-spanking new copy and not a lot of free time because of work.

Let’s start by saying that I had about a month to read the book and read it in two days. I’d have finished it in one, but I was working, darn it!

Sometimes, it is hard for women to understand other women who make more ‘alternative’ choices – even now when we’re clearly a gender filled with many differences and similarities.

Laura nailed a certain kind of longing and as I read along with Annie, the main character, I kept thinking that sometimes we don’t choose the life we want, but rather we choose the life we want to get away from – at least I have spent the last three point nine decades trying to not be like my mother – and along the way sometimes forgot to be like me.

I’m always amazed by how life has a way of deciding when it’s time to snap you back from the edge or ridiculousness – and it’s often better to go willingly so you don’t get bruised constantly trying to fight her.

That’s my takeaway from Laura’s book – which I loved in its simplicity – girl meets boy, boy dumps girl, girl meets another boy, first boy returns. Hey, that’s almost like my tagline. Does Laura know me? Would she like to? I read that this book is for anyone who’s had their heart broken. I’d agree and add it’s for anyone who has ever listened to their friend’s heart break.

So friends, I have one dog-eared copy of “The First Husband” here and I’m super happy BlogHer.com sponsored such a fun read.

Will everyone like “The First Husband” – well, no, but not everyone likes chocolate ice cream – doesn’t mean chocolate ice cream isn’t delicious – it simply means you’re at a time in your life when your taste buds aren’t connecting to cacao.

It was a pleasure to read this book – it was exactly what I needed and I’d love it if one of my friends out there would take me up on a chance to read a copy (I’ll provide) and let me know what they think!

In the meantime, I’m now reading Manning Marable’s autobiography of Malcolm X: A life reinvented.

See how I (literarily) roll?

And, for the legal lingo: