Aside from the title, some familiar names like Piper, Crazy Eyes, Larry, Pennsatucky, a guard with a bushy porn-stache, a nun, a yoga lover, and a transgender diva there is not much in the book Orange is the New Black that will also be part of the Netflix series of the same name. This is not to say that the show isn't enjoyable, it is. But the book is so much more!!
In between telling us about her time in Danbury Federal Prison, Piper Kerman, a Smith graduate who made some admittedly bad choices, tells about how much she learned about herself, the kind of person she wants to be, the amazing women who helped her survive prison, and the sad state of a system that does very little if anything to prepare low-level, non-violent, offenders survive after they go home.
If you are expecting the sexy or violent episodes seen in the show you will be sadly disappointed. There was much by way of artistic license taken with the creation of the Netflix series. There are a few familiar incidents in the book but they were highly doctored and sexed up or made more violent for the screen. However, you will find heart and soul in the pages of the real Piper's story. I found her much more likable on paper. Larry was too, as were many of the women she writes about.
And she has a message in her book, the prison system needs serious reform. If you don't already believe that reading her book will make you a believer.
(Finished June 29, 2015)
Monday, June 29, 2015
Sunday, June 28, 2015
In the Unlikely Event by Judy Blume
Yet another book that follows threads of interconnected lives, and I love it.
During a short period of time beginning in late 1951 into early 1952 there are three plane crashes in Elizabeth NJ. During this time Miri is 15 years old and falls in love for the first time. She learns that not everyone tells the truth all time, even those who we love the most, and she learns about life while surrounded by death.
In the Unlikely Event left me feeling like I did when I was young and was reading Judy Blume books (Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret; Deenie; Blubber; Forever; Otherwise Known as Sheila the Great; Then Again Maybe I Won't; Tiger Eyes; and way before my time Wifey). I felt like someone understood me and my peers, someone could capture our voices and feelings, and it was glorious to know we weren't freaks but even if we were we weren't freaks alone. She did it again here, she captured the intensity of the feelings teenagers feel, but she also writes about the intensity and fear adults feel, and if that's not enough, she visits how those teenage feelings touch us when as adults we revisit the people and places of our youth.
I think it's time to reread some of the books I loved by her as a youngin' and read the adult books I haven't read yet.
(Finished June 28, 2015)
During a short period of time beginning in late 1951 into early 1952 there are three plane crashes in Elizabeth NJ. During this time Miri is 15 years old and falls in love for the first time. She learns that not everyone tells the truth all time, even those who we love the most, and she learns about life while surrounded by death.
In the Unlikely Event left me feeling like I did when I was young and was reading Judy Blume books (Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret; Deenie; Blubber; Forever; Otherwise Known as Sheila the Great; Then Again Maybe I Won't; Tiger Eyes; and way before my time Wifey). I felt like someone understood me and my peers, someone could capture our voices and feelings, and it was glorious to know we weren't freaks but even if we were we weren't freaks alone. She did it again here, she captured the intensity of the feelings teenagers feel, but she also writes about the intensity and fear adults feel, and if that's not enough, she visits how those teenage feelings touch us when as adults we revisit the people and places of our youth.
I think it's time to reread some of the books I loved by her as a youngin' and read the adult books I haven't read yet.
(Finished June 28, 2015)
Friday, June 26, 2015
Loving Frank by Nancy Horan
In 1903 Frank Lloyd Wright designed a home in Oak Park for Edwin and Mamah (May-muh) Cheney. Frank and Mamah fell in love and ended up leaving their spouses and children to be together.
Loving Frank draws upon documents written by Mamah, writings by and about Frank, newspaper articles, and writings of the period to put together a picture of their time together.
Nancy Horan tries to capture the voice of a woman who was a wife, mother, lover, suffragette, an intellectual...a woman trying to find herself and her voice in a time when women were barely allowed a voice need mind control over their own destiny.
This is a work of fiction that weaves in fact where ever possible. Did the conversations written here between Mamah and Frank happen? Maybe, who knows, but they feel real, and that is Horan's intent. Why did these two people leave their families to be together? What is more important, love, self, children, spouse?
There were times I cringed at the choices Mamah and Frank made. But one thing was clear, they loved each other so deeply, often times so intwined they couldn't see where one ended and the other began.
In among the fictionalized aspects of the story there are some interesting facts about Wright's architectural work in Oak Park and the home he built to live in with Mamah in Green Springs WI, his personality, and his money troubles. Now I am left feeling curious about them both and want to know more.
While not always sympathetic or likable they were real and made choices that many had to live with. It was a chance to see the ripples their stone made in the pond.
(Finished June 26, 2015)
Loving Frank draws upon documents written by Mamah, writings by and about Frank, newspaper articles, and writings of the period to put together a picture of their time together.
Nancy Horan tries to capture the voice of a woman who was a wife, mother, lover, suffragette, an intellectual...a woman trying to find herself and her voice in a time when women were barely allowed a voice need mind control over their own destiny.
This is a work of fiction that weaves in fact where ever possible. Did the conversations written here between Mamah and Frank happen? Maybe, who knows, but they feel real, and that is Horan's intent. Why did these two people leave their families to be together? What is more important, love, self, children, spouse?
There were times I cringed at the choices Mamah and Frank made. But one thing was clear, they loved each other so deeply, often times so intwined they couldn't see where one ended and the other began.
In among the fictionalized aspects of the story there are some interesting facts about Wright's architectural work in Oak Park and the home he built to live in with Mamah in Green Springs WI, his personality, and his money troubles. Now I am left feeling curious about them both and want to know more.
While not always sympathetic or likable they were real and made choices that many had to live with. It was a chance to see the ripples their stone made in the pond.
(Finished June 26, 2015)
Sunday, June 21, 2015
Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
The connections between people, the way we touch each other's lives before we meet or without meeting at all, is fascinating.
Station Eleven is rooted in these threads. In the future the world's population has been decimated by a mutated strain of swine flu. In this post-apocoliptic world there is a traveling theater group called The Symphony. They are a rag-tag group of musicians and actors that travel from settlement to settlement playing music and performing Shakespeare's plays.
Our POV* character is Kristen who was a child actress when the pandemic started. Right as the flu was spreading across Russia and Europe she was in Toronto as part of the cast of King Lear. The king was being played by an aging actor, Arthur Leander, with a string of ex-wives and a young son he doesn't see enough of. Arthur is very kind to Kristen, giving her his attention and two comic books, Station Eleven numbers 1 & 2, that were drawn by his first ex-wife Miranda. On this last night before a packed house Arthur has a heart attack on stage. In the audience is Jeevan who is a former paparazzo, former entertainment reporter, and current paramedic student. He runs on stage and gives Arthur CPR. This is the beginning of the story and the threads that run through it.
The story jumps from Year 25 after the end of the world as we know it, the day of Arthur's death and the early days of the new world. Slowly the connections between the characters is unraveled and we see how their lives and deaths are important to the others and are leading some of them towards each other.
Go on and get your hands on a copy and read this book.
(Finished June 20, 2015)
Station Eleven is rooted in these threads. In the future the world's population has been decimated by a mutated strain of swine flu. In this post-apocoliptic world there is a traveling theater group called The Symphony. They are a rag-tag group of musicians and actors that travel from settlement to settlement playing music and performing Shakespeare's plays.
Our POV* character is Kristen who was a child actress when the pandemic started. Right as the flu was spreading across Russia and Europe she was in Toronto as part of the cast of King Lear. The king was being played by an aging actor, Arthur Leander, with a string of ex-wives and a young son he doesn't see enough of. Arthur is very kind to Kristen, giving her his attention and two comic books, Station Eleven numbers 1 & 2, that were drawn by his first ex-wife Miranda. On this last night before a packed house Arthur has a heart attack on stage. In the audience is Jeevan who is a former paparazzo, former entertainment reporter, and current paramedic student. He runs on stage and gives Arthur CPR. This is the beginning of the story and the threads that run through it.
The story jumps from Year 25 after the end of the world as we know it, the day of Arthur's death and the early days of the new world. Slowly the connections between the characters is unraveled and we see how their lives and deaths are important to the others and are leading some of them towards each other.
Go on and get your hands on a copy and read this book.
(Finished June 20, 2015)
Tuesday, June 16, 2015
All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
Going back and forth from August 1944 and the 5 years leading up to it the story of French Marie-Laure and German Werner are on a collision course. She is a young girl who at the age of 6 went blind. He is a young boy who is an orphan living with his sister in a children's home.
Their stories are drawn together by the thread of Marie-Laure's great-grandfather's radio broadcasts which influence the life of Werner. He being German and aryan looking as well as being a wiz with radios gets sent with many young German boys to a school where they are trained to fill out the ranks of the German army during WWII. She flees Paris with her father after it becomes too dangerous. By very different paths they both end up in Saint-Malo.
Along the way there is the search for a gem that a dying German officer believes will save his life. His search has his story crossing into Werner and Marie-Laure's.
The way this story is told, jumping back and forth was really well done. When you are going through our day to day business of living you never know how what you are doing and going through might be having an effect of the lives of others near and far. When you are in the middle of things you can't see or imagine the big picture. Here we get to be observers of the big picture as it unfolds and can see the threads connecting these characters.
All the Light We Cannot See is also a story about how the accident of birth place and time can have such a major impact on who we turn out to be and the way we experience events. Werner and Marie-Laure are living through the same war but from different sides and it gives perspective on events as well as how people become who they do. Werner's story doesn't have becoming a member of the Nazi machine involved in the camps but you can see how the boys he was in school with who did go that way did so.
All of this well done story is told in some really beautiful writing.
(Finished June 15, 2015)
Their stories are drawn together by the thread of Marie-Laure's great-grandfather's radio broadcasts which influence the life of Werner. He being German and aryan looking as well as being a wiz with radios gets sent with many young German boys to a school where they are trained to fill out the ranks of the German army during WWII. She flees Paris with her father after it becomes too dangerous. By very different paths they both end up in Saint-Malo.
Along the way there is the search for a gem that a dying German officer believes will save his life. His search has his story crossing into Werner and Marie-Laure's.
The way this story is told, jumping back and forth was really well done. When you are going through our day to day business of living you never know how what you are doing and going through might be having an effect of the lives of others near and far. When you are in the middle of things you can't see or imagine the big picture. Here we get to be observers of the big picture as it unfolds and can see the threads connecting these characters.
All the Light We Cannot See is also a story about how the accident of birth place and time can have such a major impact on who we turn out to be and the way we experience events. Werner and Marie-Laure are living through the same war but from different sides and it gives perspective on events as well as how people become who they do. Werner's story doesn't have becoming a member of the Nazi machine involved in the camps but you can see how the boys he was in school with who did go that way did so.
All of this well done story is told in some really beautiful writing.
(Finished June 15, 2015)
Friday, June 5, 2015
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon
Finding out what happened to the dog, the details of the curious incident, is really not the point of this novel even if it starts out seeming that the mystery of who killed the dog is the main point of Christopher's story.
While the word autism is never used, it is pretty clear that Christopher has an ASD (autism spectrum disorder). Mark Haddon captures the tone, speech pattern, thought processes, and distinctive behaviors of an ASD teen so perfectly it was almost painful to read. By that I mean, as the mom of a child with an ASD I could relate to what I was reading and it made my heart hurt for Christopher and his parents.
It isn't easy parenting a child who can't tolerate your touch, can't verbalize love, and all of the other practical issues that come with them. Christopher won't eat certain color foods, can't have foods touch, has colors that he hates, can't stand being touched, and has a hard time with strangers and new people. But Christopher is also very smart and wants to sit his A level math exam.
When he lost his mother he and his father were managing pretty well on their own. That is until Christopher finds a neighbor's dog dead from an attack with a garden fork. Christopher is determined to be a detective and solve the crime. What he ends up solving is a mystery he didn't know existed and it changes his entire life.
The pain of not being able to hold your child when they are sad, sick or in pain is heartbreaking. Trying to parent a child under the best of circumstances isn't easy but when you have a child with autism it becomes infinitely harder, the more sever the symptoms the harder it becomes to parent. Haddon not only captures Christopher perfectly, he captures his parents perfectly as well even as he presents them from Christopher's point of view.
(Finished June 5, 2015)
While the word autism is never used, it is pretty clear that Christopher has an ASD (autism spectrum disorder). Mark Haddon captures the tone, speech pattern, thought processes, and distinctive behaviors of an ASD teen so perfectly it was almost painful to read. By that I mean, as the mom of a child with an ASD I could relate to what I was reading and it made my heart hurt for Christopher and his parents.
It isn't easy parenting a child who can't tolerate your touch, can't verbalize love, and all of the other practical issues that come with them. Christopher won't eat certain color foods, can't have foods touch, has colors that he hates, can't stand being touched, and has a hard time with strangers and new people. But Christopher is also very smart and wants to sit his A level math exam.
When he lost his mother he and his father were managing pretty well on their own. That is until Christopher finds a neighbor's dog dead from an attack with a garden fork. Christopher is determined to be a detective and solve the crime. What he ends up solving is a mystery he didn't know existed and it changes his entire life.
The pain of not being able to hold your child when they are sad, sick or in pain is heartbreaking. Trying to parent a child under the best of circumstances isn't easy but when you have a child with autism it becomes infinitely harder, the more sever the symptoms the harder it becomes to parent. Haddon not only captures Christopher perfectly, he captures his parents perfectly as well even as he presents them from Christopher's point of view.
(Finished June 5, 2015)
Wednesday, June 3, 2015
The Book of Life (All Souls Trilogy #3) by Deborah Harkness
As I mentioned in my reviews of book 1 and book 2 I had some misgivings during them that was going to end up like reboots of Twilight. Both times my fear was unfounded and I never felt it this time around. By the time I was into book 3 I was feeling the dread I feel anytime I read a book, or last book of a series, I am really enjoying. I want to keep reading to see how it ends but I am dreading leaving the world and characters so I am tempted to slow down, but can't because of the need to know what happens.
Now that I am done with the world of All Souls I already miss Diana and Matthew. I want more of the relationship that was coming for Marcus and Phoebe. I want to know if Gallowglass gets to be happy. I want to know how Jack is and heck, I even miss Baldwin!!!
I ended up being pleasantly surprised by the series. Harkness spun a tale that by degree pulled me in and left me wanting more.
Beyond just a love story between a witch and a vampire the All Souls trilogy was a story about the strength found in looking past what makes us different and seeing what binds us. It is a waring about mixing up justice and revenge and the fine line between love and hate.
Well done sister MoHo!!
(Finished June 3, 2015)
Monday, June 1, 2015
Shadow of Night (All Souls Trilogy #2) by Deborah Harkness
Some of the same misgivings I felt when reading A Discovery of Witches cropped up while reading Shadow of Night, a vampire and the one he loves not being a vampire, a central command type group not happy about it and coming after them...but again the fear of a Twilight type tale were unfounded.
The second piece of the tale of Diana and Matthew is an interesting historical fiction, it takes places in Elizabethan England and spends time in Prague. Still looking for the manuscript that started their tale in modern times they travel by magic back. Unlike most time travel tales where you can't run into your past self this story says that going back in time by magic displaces the you that would be found there. This sets up a new kind of challenge because anything you do won't be known when you return to the future and the displaced you returns.
While the couple gets to know each other they learn to share their burdens and secrets, how to be a team, and how to love and forgive despite the outside forces trying to stop their love and end their lives.
(Finished May 31, 2015)
The second piece of the tale of Diana and Matthew is an interesting historical fiction, it takes places in Elizabethan England and spends time in Prague. Still looking for the manuscript that started their tale in modern times they travel by magic back. Unlike most time travel tales where you can't run into your past self this story says that going back in time by magic displaces the you that would be found there. This sets up a new kind of challenge because anything you do won't be known when you return to the future and the displaced you returns.
While the couple gets to know each other they learn to share their burdens and secrets, how to be a team, and how to love and forgive despite the outside forces trying to stop their love and end their lives.
(Finished May 31, 2015)
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