The Only True Genius in the Family by Jennie Nash

My mother has me pick out books for her while I am at work and more than once she has asked me for the "type of book where nothing bad happens". I was always curious about what this would look like. I have generally thought that novels were about bad things happening and people dealing with those bad things.

This book fits the bill and the results were, well, boring.

Claire is a food photographer. Her father was a famous landscape photographer who recently passed away and left control of his art to his granddaughter, Bailey, whose own art career is about to take off. My problem with this whole book is that Claire is so passive that she lets her father and her daughter push her back and forth. She doesn't feel her own worth because she constantly compares herself to her family. She barely makes a move in this book and most of what she does is blindingly horrible. (For instance, she paints on one of her daughter's paintings. She seems to know this is wrong but goes into something like a daze.)

In the end, this was a book about a woman trying to find her own worth. She does, eventually, but the reader has to sit through the type of story that doesn't excite any true emotions to get there.

Total Money Makeover by Dave Ramsey

A number of people suggested this book to me. About the fifth time it randomly came up in conversation I decided to give it a try. I generally enjoy personal finance books so I figured that it couldn't possibly hurt.

I was delightfully surprised.

Ramsey lays out nine "baby steps" to set yourself on very stable financial ground. The fist step is probably the easiest. You start by getting $1000 away in savings as an emergency fund. The second step is paying off all of your debt. Ramsey claims that many of his clients complete this step within two years of starting the program.

This is where stuff gets a little sticky for me. Ramsey repeatedly states that if you will live like others won't now then you will be able to live like others can't later. I forget the exact quote but that's the basic idea. He pushes doing anything you can to get out of debt. This is a wonderful idea. Making extra money whenever possible and budgeting so that you can get out of debt is awesome. However, reading stories about people who worked 20 hour days and never saw their families and sold everything they owned kind of made me leery. It gave the whole program a cult-like feel.

I started working on a total money makeover. Having a plan for my money made me feel much more at ease and purposeful. I even paid off my car about ten months early. However, I lost a little bit of steam and decided to buy a house. I would suggest this book to people who are unhappy with their money situation and want to do something. However, I would warn against getting so caught up in it that you alienate the people you love. As my mother said, "You aren't poor. Why are you acting like you are? Quit stealing my floss."

By the Time You Read This, I'll Be Dead by Elizabeth Peters

Wow. Talk about a book that hits a little close to home... Daelyn, the main character, was the fat girl. When her parents sent her to fat camp, her measurements were 5'2" and 176 pounds, which were precisely my measurements at one point.

Throughout her life, Daelyn has suffered from bullying. She has learned a long time ago that it does no good to tattle. The girls are mean, constantly. A group of boys violated her, though didn't rape her, when she was in middle school. Now she tries top be invisible. Daelyn has attempted suicide a number of times before, the last attempt rendering her mute for most of the book.

Daelyn is also using a website for people who plan on being "completers" this time around. She is set on actually dying this time and she starts to set in motion her plan. The chapters count down from 23 days to her DOD. However, these 23 days could change everything. People are reaching out to here, but why now?

This was a great book. It managed to be both heartbreaking and amusing. Peters writes well enough that more than once I thought that I couldn't speak!

A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline L'Engle

One of my best friends was a page with me at the library when I was 16. This was her favorite book. Everytime I have come across it in the past decade I've thought of Liz and smiled. I have always meant to read it but, as previously discussed, there has always been a large number of books that I have meant to read. Neither fantasy nor scifi have ever been my bag and this book falls right in the middle of these categories. Then it came up on a list I'm working on (20 Books Every Teenager Should Read) and it finally got its chance.

L'Engle is popular for a reason, that is for sure! Her writing has a wonderful quality to it. I was easily sucked into the story.

A Wrinkle in Time is the story of Meg Murry, a plain girl who is outshined by the geniuses in her family. Her mother is a biologist. Her father is an astrophysicist. Charles Wallace, her little brother, is a super genius who has a keen understanding of, well, everything. All that Meg has going for her is a list of faults from being angry to being stubborn.

Mr. Murry has been gone for a long time. He was working for the government when his letters suddenly stopped. Mrs. Murry has hidden her feelings from her children very well and continues to care for them by herself. Charles Wallace is the one who discovers the three women in the abandoned house in the woods, Mrs. Who, Mrs. Which, and Mrs. Whatsit. The Mrs. W's take the children, including a new friend named Calvin, through a wrinkle in time and send them on a terrifying mission to save their father from The Dark Thing.

The characters and situations here are so extraordinary but so wonderful that I don't think I will ever be able to imagine the world without this story.

After Dark by Haruki Murakami

One of the problems with having an extensive "To Be Read" list (mine is over 1600) is that books can stay on the list for so long that you forget why you added them in the first place. It has happened many times. I pick up a book that's on the list and read the description. It doesn't sound like something I would read. How did it get on the list? Did somebody suggest it? Did I read a review?

That's how this book was.

I was afraid from the description that it would be too violent (I'm shying away from violence since the whole American Psycho fiasco) and too dark for me to enjoy. I was wrong.

After Dark takes place in Tokoyo on one night between about midnight and 7AM. The main character is Mari. Mari is a student and a bit anti-social. We meet her in a Denny's when she is approached by Takahashi, a trombonist who once went on a double date with Mari. Mari doesn't recall him but Takahashi recalls that she didn't talk much but swam with abandon. This chance meeting moves the night forward. A manager of a love hotel, Kaoru, asks for Mari's help with a Chinese prostitute who has been beaten and robbed. The people who work in the love hotel are each different and interesting.

The most disturbing parts occur in Eri's room. Eri is sound asleep and The Man with No Face is watching her from her television. The strange events that occur while she sleeps were a little unsettling and I couldn't wait to get past these chapters and into the more solid ones.

I'm glad that I occasionally read something on my list. This was a great book and well worth my time.

The First Book

I received a very wonderful compliment from Rayce's mom the other day. She told me that I am the more passionate about books than anyone she has ever.

When I was upset last weekend, Rayce looked at my To Be Read list with me and it made me feel much calmer and happier.

I am a reader. But I wasn't always a reader. I actually spent two years in the phonics program in elementary school and after that I was still barely scraping by. I remember being in sixth grade and having to choose between reading Old Yeller (the selection meant for the boys) and Where the Lilies Grow (the selection meant for girls) and being so frustrated that I could not read either book. I could make out the words but it all felt like gibberish to me. I didn't want to read either one. I wasn't a reader until junior high.

Currently I am reading a little nonfiction book called The Power of Reading by Stephen D. Krashen. The book was suggested at a conference I went to about bringing boys and books together and it is based on the theory that Free Voluntary Reading programs benefit children more than traditional English classes. The one point that really stood out was that most readers can tell you what their first book was, the book that made them want to read more and more.

Mine was Carrie by Stephen King. Before this book there were a few that I enjoyed reading but Carrie was the first book that I literally could not put down. I remember spending one late summer day, the entire day, sitting in my room. My back was against the wood frame of my bed and my feet planted on the wall, not the most comfortable position, and I read that book cover to cover. I couldn't put it down.

Strangely, I didn't pick up another King book until about a year later but I did read book after book after book until today.

Thank you, Stephen King, for making me a reader.

American Psycho- Bret Easton Ellis

When I first met my boyfriend, we had an actual conversation about books. My ex didn't read so I was completely enamored with this boy from the start. When he asked what my favorite books were I rambled off the standard list and asked for his favorite. This was the book he named and when I said that I had never read it and he said that I should, I knew I would order it as soon as I got back to the library.

In retrospect, if I had read it before I met him I would have been a little more cautious about dating him. I would be worried he was going to pop my eyeballs on the first date.

Let's talk about the good before I completely slam this book. American Psycho is a satire of the yuppies in the 1980's. The characters work on Wall Street. They have the best of everything. They all look so much alike that they constantly mistake people for different people. Women are valued for their physical beauty and how tolerant they are of their boyfriend's affairs. Every time a character enters a scene, his or her clothes are described in great detail down to the designer. They are constantly eating out and if the bill is less than $300, it's not worth it. Everything is mixed up and crazy without the hallucinations, which are a huge part of the book.

Now the bad. I read an article about how violence only takes place in about 5% of the book. However, the violence is so intense that it overrides the rest of the writing. What I will take from this book is not the message that is being conveyed but gruesome images of torture. The kicker is that Patrick Bateman, the main character, is on so many drugs that he hallucinates constantly and it's been said that all of the violent scenes are hallucinations. The whole thing is written in train of thought and towards the end we also get clued in that Patrick has a split personality. Sometimes he refers to himself in the third person as Patrick and even gets upset with Patrick.

One sign that Ellis could be a better writer is that he uses what I began to call "come down chapters". After a particularly nauseating and violent scene, he will cut to a chapter that details music or electronics in such a manner that it calms the reader down and allows him/her to read on. This, I thought, was a brilliant tool.

I was disappointed in this book and I honestly only made it through because I felt I had to prove that I could. I wouldn't really suggest it and the ending really gives the reader no peace.

I'm ready for something a little more fun now..

Going Full Circle with Nick Hornby

One of the most amazing things about books is that the perfect book always seems to find you when you really and truly need it.

That's how Nick Hornby's High Fidelity was for me.

My favorite book of all time, I first read High Fidelity when I was fresh out of high school. I was afraid that I was going to get swept away into the world and become nothing. Reading about Rob and his misadventures in romance made me feel like I could at least be better off than this bloke. The second time I read the book I was dealing with an intense fear of death, which Rob also deals with. But the third time I read it was possibly the most intense experience ever. I read this book directly after the worst break-up of my life.

High Fidelity is the story of Rob, a bachelor living in London. It starts as Laura, Rob's long-term live-in girlfriend, is leaving him. What follows is a play by play of a break up. There are the hang up phone calls, the discovery that your ex has taken a lover, and a series of confessions that makes the reader reconsider whose side he/she is on. The ending is perfect even if it seems unlikely from the dance that takes place throughout the whole book.

Why am I calling this going full circle?

A few months ago I came across Juliet, Naked, Hornby's latest novel. This is also about a break up between a long-term live-in couple. (Maybe you are guessing what kind of break-up I had now and you would be correct.) Duncan is obsessed with retired musician Tucker Crow. He is so obsessed that he takes his girlfriend, Annie, on a tour of Tucker related sites in the US. Once home, though, Annie finds herself fed up with where her life is and when a new album about to be released by Tucker shows up in the mail (a demo version of his famous Juliet album titled Juliet, Naked), Annie defiantly listens to it without telling Duncan first. Duncan becomes angry and bitter then finds himself in love with a new woman at work. Annie is left to herself in her house and through a series of events begins an e-mail relationship with the actual Tucker Crow who has been living a wasted life in Pensylvania.

There are some similarities in these books and a number of reviews I read accused Hornby of trying to hone in on the popularity of High Fidelity with the subject matter of Juliet, Naked. Maybe it is because I came through similar situations and was in a different place when I read the second, but I found these books to be just stories of failed relationships and people putting their lives together.

Both books will make you laugh out loud and will touch some nerve. I suggest both.