Book 22 - Diary of a Wimpy Kid

I've decided to add a feature to my book blog posts and give you all a heads up on how long it takes me to read each of these books. Diary of a Wimpy Kid only took me a day (which is about what I expected) and I can't help but feel a little cheap counting it as 1 of the 52. That said, I LOVE reading quality kids' books and this book was 217 pages so I don't feel that cheap.

Diary of a Wimpy Kid by Jeff Kinney is just delightful. It's everything you want a kid's book to be - both for yourself and (I can imagine) for your kids. The voice is very much that of a young boy (and a middle child) and I love the addition of the drawings.

I know I'm not the target audience here but I really enjoyed reading it. It was funny and silly and ridiculous but totally great too. I will be reading the additional installments and I have a strong feeling I'll be netflixing the movie version.

• Want to know what an actual kid thought of it? Check out David's Book Review (spoiler alert: he agrees with me!)
• And the Official Diary of a Wimpy Kid page (complete with information about the books, author, movie, and... video clips - yes!)

Book 21 - Friends Like These by Danny Wallace

Oh Danny Wallace... Danny Wallace who created his own cult (Join Me) and Danny Wallace who said yes to everything that was asked of him (Yes Man) and Danny Wallace who started the stupid boy project of finding "loads of people named Dave Gorman" (Are You Dave Gorman?). Danny Wallace who makes me laugh out loud on my commute and makes the yuppies on my bus stare at me in confusion.

Needless to say, I was pretty excited when I discovered that Danny Wallace had written another book. Friends Like These: My Worldwide Quest to Find My Best Childhood Friends, Knock on Their Doors, and Ask Them to Come Out and Play is exactly what you expect it to be. Danny Wallace, on the precipice of turning 30, has what amounts to a minor freak out and spans the globe (for real, the globe) looking for his childhood friends. Some people have Facebook - Danny Wallace has world travel. Must be nice.

The book is, as expected, pretty funny. I wouldn't say that it lives up to Join Me (my favorite Danny Wallace escapade) but it did make me crack up in public and embarass myself. Additionally, it turns out I'm only a few years behind Danny Wallace in the march towards 30 and I see all around me the things he's afraid of. We're talking multiple types of hummus in the fridge, your friends having babies, shotty construction work - YUPPIEHOOD.

Danny Wallace is delightful and his books are too. They make you want to be his friend and take part in his silly little boy projects. You want him to find all of his friends and you want them all to be just as happy as you are that he has found them!

Danny Wallace Google Videos!

Danny Wallace's Own Web Page! Woot!

Book 20 - Drown by Junot Diaz

Drown, by Junot Diaz, is a collection of short stories - not actually my favorite type of reading. If you haven't caught on yet, I'm a giant, dense novel type of gal and I like me some complicated plot lines and intense character development. Even though I loved Diaz' novel (The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao), I was nervous about trying out the short stories. He's a great writer but everything that I truly love about writing and reading has to do with the longer form a novel - don't even get me started on novellas.

In the end, Drown did not feel to me like a collection of short stories. Instead it felt very much like a novel - with a slightly disjointed version of time. The stories were clearly of a theme and were tied together by commonalities rather than driven apart by their differences. I've since read that the narrator stays true through the stories of Drown but honestly, I didn't feel that. The narrators could have changed but the ideas were the same, the experiences and the feelings. It was easy to feel like Diaz was speaking about a type of person rather than a specific person. My gut tells me that Diaz knows this, that based on his own experiences he's know countless people that could fill the role of this narrator. He colors it with his own obvious intellect and "nerdiness" (as he does in Oscar Wao) but the voice of his stories always seems to come out as both accessible and just beyond your grasp.

Drown, again like Oscar Wao, dabbles in the disgusting with a little too much information regarding bodily functions, etc. but it feels perfectly at home in the writing. You're not startled as much as your as embarrassed, which I again feel is part of the point. I can't speak from experience but I feel like if I met Junot Diaz at a party he would make me squirm and make me want to be his lifelong friend. His writing feels that way at least, though I worry that it will reach an end. I am intrigued to see what he does next - how he is able to evolve his writing style and story line without losing that connection I feel.

The NYTimes, it turns out, offers a wealth of links for those searching for more information on Diaz:

• Junot Diaz NYTimes Topic Page
• An abstract from Diaz' story "How to Date a Brown Girl..." from Drown (which was also contributed to This American Life - one of my favorites!)
• And an interview from This Week in Fiction

Book 19 - Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris

I read Joshua Ferris' first novel, Then We Came to the End, directly after e Squared - Okay, there was the minor speedbump of David Sedaris' Holidays on Ice but let's be honest, it was a literary catnap. So back to the twin sides of the literary ad agency. Where Matt Beaumont's novel is a farcical, satirical visit to an ad agency that is so ridiculous it feels fictional even while you're identifying with its form, Ferris' story is bitterly familiar.

I've read a number of reviews that have called Then We Came to the End "funny", "hilarious", and even "laugh out loud" (Reading Local: Baltimore AND Flourish & Blott's Book News) - and I suppose it is funny, in a way - but I have to be honest with you here; what has stayed with me from this week (yes, yes; I'm late in writing my review by about 2 weeks) wasn't the humor or comedy it was the painful vulnerability of the people around you.

The book is written in the first-person plural (we) - most likely a technique meant to give the reader an extra connection to the story - but I'm not entirely sure the book needed that ploy to get me to feel connected. Of course I understand working in an office. Of course I've had coworkers I've liked and disliked (you have been reading this blog right?). I'm even reticent to say but of course I identified with the idealistic yet somehow jaded yuppies that pervaded Ferris' fictional Chicago agency. But, really, for me, that wasn't where the connection was.

Most of us are familiar with the intimate, yet removed relationship that we have with our coworkers - people that spend as much (if not more) time with us than our families, people that see us in a place that does (even if we don't want it to) partially define who we are, people who share our daily moods and functions. Ferris does an amazing job of outlining these people in a way that is both deliberate and vague enough for you to see them and know them - and with the added layer of texture that gives them a vulnerability that can be difficult to attribute to our own coworkers. I found myself cringing for these people, cheering for them and rooting for them even in moments that I knew were fruitless. I identified with each of them in turn, with the different aspects of their personality that made them like me... but different. Like you... but different.

I've heard some grumbles from the literary blogosphere that Ferris' second book (The Unnamed) did not live up to the expectations that Then We Came to the End built up but I'm going to give it a shot. Ferris' book got to me in a way I didn't even know about when I was reading it. His writing is clever and accessible as well as personal. I often have trouble fitting my reviews into this blog length format (I talk a lot - ok?) but this one is extra hard.

And I have to admit, I'm still not sure who the narrator was. (Should I admit this to you?!)

As usual, some other thoughts:

• A fabulous round up of opinions from A.V. Club
• An interview with Joshua Ferris from Read Roll Club
• If you've read the book, check out Ferris' website - there's an AMAZING map of the floor on which most of the action happens (also click on a nav item and just see what happens!)

And a quote, just because there were quite a few good ones:

"We loved killing time and had perfected several ways of doing so. We wandered the hallways carrying papers that indicated some mission of business when in reality we were in search of free candy. We refilled our coffee mugs on floors we didn’t belong on. Hank Neary was an avid reader. He arrived early in his brown corduroy coat with a book taken from the library, copied all its pages on the Xerox machine, and sat in his desk reading what looked to passersby like the honest pages of business." - Thanks Adventures in Coffee Sipping


P.S. Word on the street is that Kathryn Bigelow (you remember her right?) is working on an adaptation of the book.

Book 18 - Holidays on Ice by David Sedaris

I'm a big fan of David Sedaris in certain doses and situations - I've seen him live, I've read his books, I like his additions to This American Life.

That said, I wasn't thrilled with Holidays on Ice. I've heard a number of these stories through This American Life so I'm familiar with them but there was something missing in the reading of them - maybe that something was David himself. I felt myself going through the motions reading this one. I read the entire book in a day (it's fairly short) and moved on. There wasn't a lot of interaction, I didn't laugh out loud (which I usually do with David Sedaris), there wasn't a lot to say.

I am, however, another book down on the way to 52!

Rant: Boston is Falling Apart

I know this blog is about books... er... goals... er... unemployment? Wait, what is this blog about? Hmmmm. Well, any way you slice it, it's not typically a ranting blog but sometimes... SOMETIMES, you just have to rant. It's been nearly five months since my last rant post (Why Consumer Electronics Brands Need a Valium), and it's just about time for the next one.

A quick disclaimer before I dive right in: This post is for comic affect, it is meant to make you laugh. I know that I have it pretty good and millions of folks have it much, much worse. Just for the record.

So, let's get things started. I don't typically delve into my personal details here on Quitsville but the sharpest of you may have realized that I live in Boston - or you know this because you personally know me - which means, ostensibly, that I like the Red Sox and Dunkin Donuts coffee (one of those true). What it also means is that for the last few days I have been watching the city fall apart.

To start things off, the much-beloved MBTA (that's a joke for you non-locals) suffered an electrical fire last Thursday (April 29th). To be specific, it was on the Red Line - the line I use for the record. Since Thursday, the Red Line has been experiencing 10-15 minute delays at all times as repairs are made. Also, for the record, 10-15 minutes is generous... to the MBTA, not to us.

So great, we've got the picture started; however, a red line delay (sadly) is not news. What's news? I hear you asking. Well, how about the breach in a 10 foot water pipe outside of Weston, MA that supplies water to the entire Greater Boston area? Yes, I think we can all agree that that is news. Early Saturday morning, that did in fact happen - a great break in our main water line causing the city of Boston (and oh, about two dozen neighboring towns and cities) to be immediately without drinking water. Don't get me wrong, we have flowing water - safe for bathing and... little else - but we can't drink the water. There is a "boil water order" in effect, requiring us to boil anything we want to drink, wash dishes, brush teeth, etc. with. Or use bottled water.... which, not surprisingly has been in short supply due to the panicking masses.

Great.

When this all started it was like a little mini adventure. No water! Crazy! But then it kept going. The line has been fixed but we're still 24-48 hours (best case scenario) our from being able to drink our water (or do our dishes - OCD panic attack ensuing). Add on top of that the fact that it's been roughly a million degrees and humid as hell here in Boston and you've got a pretty cranky populous. Just for fun, it's also started to rain this morning. And just for the record, no water means no coffee.

*Shakes fist at sky*

For those of you on Twitter, follow the fun at #aquapocalypse and #h20OMG.