The Second Coming, plus an addition to my Must List

I will admit that I am terrible about declaring a book amazing and wonderful based on a good first chapter or so. Oftentimes the rest of the book doesn't merit the gushing I did about the beginning, and I feel bad about recommending it to everyone I know. However, I refuse to believe that this is the case with Jonathan Tropper's This is Where I Leave You. Holy crap, this book is amazing. The way Tropper writes is better than just about anything I have ever encountered. Of course, I am only on page 44, but I don't think I've ever read a better 44 pages. I've heard critics describe a book as searing, but I've never thought that myself until I read Tropper's description of Judd Foxman walking in on his wife in bed with his boss. The entire chapter is wrenching and heartbreaking, but also laugh-out-loud funny in places. Chapter 3 begins, "My marriage ended the way these things do: with paramedics and cheesecake." Please read it so you can find out the purpose for the cheesecake (heartbreaking) and where it ended up (hilarious). Also: flaming testicles. What more can I say?

[Here's what more I can say: Judd's brother is described as "the Paul McCartney of our family: better-looking than the rest of us, always facing a different direction in pictures, and occasionally rumored to be dead" (Tropper 4).]

Oh, and my Must List: I have to add Hoyt from True Blood. On a show that often goes too far for me (Bill and Lorena's '20s tryst? Gag, vomit, shudder), his sweet manner with Jessica is a nice counterbalance. His relationship with his wicked-witch mother is great, too. I loved the scene in the last episode in which he goes through the laundry list of everyone she hates: "You hate African Americans!" "Shh! That's a secret!" I almost fell off the couch.

Catching up, yet again

It's a red-letter day: I picked up three books I had requested at the library today. Yay! So my reading menu in the next couple of weeks will include Jennifer Weiner's Best Friends Forever (Weiner is the queen of brainy-yet-breezy chick lit), Jonathan Tropper's This is Where I Leave You (good buzz on that one), and Trenton Lee Stewart's The Mysterious Benedict Society (a kid's book, but it seems interesting). In addition to those, my fantastic almost-lawyer friend lent me Junot Diaz's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (Pulitzer Prize winner) and Jen Lancaster's Bright Lights, Big Ass (doesn't the title just say it all?). I'm thrilled to have a packed shelf, but this means that my Ulysses project might have to fall by the waistline (as a former colleague of my mother's would say). I still want to read it a bit at a time (unless it just grabs me and I can't put it down), but with so much highly anticipated reading at my fingertips, I just don't know how that's going to work out. I'm still going to read it, though--I mean it!

Wow, I think I OD'd on parentheses in that last paragraph. (Such a shame.) Anyway, I've finished the following books in the last week or so:

• Miss Harper Can Do It, by Jane Berentson: As I mentioned in my last post, the first half of this book is fan-freaking-tastic. Annie Harper is a young elementary school teacher who is attempting to write a memoir during her boyfriend's deployment. Her voice is so engaging, and I could really relate to her. She does not feel like an army girlfriend; I never really felt like an army wife. On p. 8, she describes the day that David, her boyfriend, left:

"That morning there had been this big flag-waving, yellow-ribbon, send-off hoopla. I hated it. I hated the other women waving yellow ribbons and white handkerchiefs. Actual cloth handkerchiefs! Who even uses those anymore?"

When Mark left for Iraq, I went through something similar. Someone was walking around passing out tiny flags, and I remember thinking, "Please don't give me one of those." I'm just not a flag waver. Anyway, I could see that Annie and I had a lot in common. As the book continues, though, it takes a turn toward the conventional. It's still enjoyable, but it doesn't live up to the promise of the first half of the book.

• In Her Own Sweet Time, by Rachel Lehmann-Haupt: This is part-journalism, part-memoir detailing Lehmann-Haupt's quest for possible motherhood. Definitely interesting, and it gives you a lot to think about. For example, Dr. Eleonora Porcu, the Italian doctor who pioneered egg-freezing technology, doesn't feel that women should actually use it. She believes that society should change to allow women to have children young without derailing their careers. Like I said, interesting. However, like that supermom/slacker mom book I wrote about a while back, it really details a problem mostly encountered by the affluent.
• Twenties Girl, by Sophie Kinsella: It's still summer--don't judge me!

A challenge (to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield!)

According to the inimitable Mark Twain (actually, he is imitable, since Hal Holbrooke's been doing it for decades, but--already!--I digress), "A classic is something everyone wants to have read and nobody wants to read." I laughed when I first saw that quotation, because I had recently had that exact thought about James Joyce's Ulysses. I really want to be a person who has read it, but I've never necessarily wanted to put in the work to make that happen. Well, I have decided that, no matter how long it takes or how crazy it drives me, I am going to be a person who has read Ulysses. My attitude toward this project can be summed up by those inspirational words from the other "Ulysses," hence the title of this post. I am not going to yield, no matter how loopy the stream-of-consciousness narration gets, and I will post here about the experience.

So far, I have checked the book out of the library. I'm afraid the easy part is over.

My poor neglected blog

You would think that summer would be the perfect time to catch up on my blog, and yet that has not been the case. I have been reading like a fiend, but I've been too sorry to write about it. Oh, well. Just for the sake of keeping tabs, this is what I've read lately:

• The Little Stranger, by Sarah Waters: A good read, but I got really frustrated with the main character.
• Heart and Soul, by Mave Binchy: I love Maeve Binchy! She's probably my favorite guilty pleasure author. There's something so comforting about her books, and I love how everyone is always "mad" or "desperate."
• The 19th Wife, by David Ebershoff: My Big Love addiction leads me to read anything I can about polygamy and the FLDS. See, TV is not bad for you.
• The House on Mango Street, by Sandra Cisneros: I assigned it to my students for summer reading, so I figured I should read it myself.
• The Mating Habits of the North American WASP, by Lauren Lipton: Chick lit at its finest. I seriously did have a hard time putting it down; not much got done the day I read this.
• Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, by J.K. Rowling (like I needed to tell you that): I just saw The Half-Blood Prince, and I couldn't remember what came next. It was my first re-read of a Harry Potter book, and it turns out they are just as addictive the second time around.
• Living La Vida Lola, by Misa Ramirez: I read Janet Evanovich. Misa Ramirez, you're no Janet Evanovich.
• The Local News, by Miriam Gershow: A high school student deals with her brother's disappearance. This is all complicated by the fact that she doesn't really like her brother.
• Miss Harper Can Do It, by Jane Berentson: I just started it this morning, and already I am in love. The main character is me. Can't wait to read more!

I think that's it. I've been doing a horrible job of keeping track.

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, by Seth Grahame-Smith (Guest Post!)

Yes, I've gotten so sorry at keeping up with this blog that I now have to farm it out to other people. No, really, I am quite honored that my former student (not that I actually taught her anything) and one of Massey Hill's finest graduates, the frightfully smart and delightfully droll Caroline Thomas, agreed to write a guest post on Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, which I haven't quite finished yet. I now hand it over to her with my greatest appreciation:



Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is a new literary masterpiece. It will be read by schoolchildren for centuries to come. Author Seth Grahame-Smith uses a lot of Jane Austen's original text (Pride and Prejudice) and adds a zombie subplot and makes a few changes. It's amazing. To start on a serious note, it has been a while since I read the real book; for the last few years, I've been living off movie versions of it (Colin Firth's 1995 gift to women everywhere [amen to that, Sister--JMC], and Keira Knightley's respectable 2005 attempt), spoofs of it (UK miniseries "Lost in Austen"), and things based on it (The Jane Austen Book Club, Bridget Jones's Diary) so much that I had forgotten that there are so many things you can only get from reading the book. So I'm grateful to Seth Grahame-Smith for giving me a chance and a reason to read Austen's text again, albeit slightly altered. It still makes me smile like a little girl.

The characters in Pride and Prejudice and Zombies are a little edgier than in the original; obviously, some of them slay zombies, and others vomit occasionally, but, aside from the obvious, they do and say things that readers have always wanted them to do and say, but propriety always got in the way. For example, Darcy is meaner to Caroline Bingley, which readers know she totally deserves:
Caroline: You write uncommonly fast.
Darcy: And you prattle uncommonly much ... Miss Bingley, the groans of a hundred unmentionables would be more pleasing to my ears than one more word from your mouth. Were you not otherwise agreeable, I should be forced to remove your tongue with my saber. (40)
There's obviously body humor that comes naturally with zombies and the slaying thereof: blood, brains, "soiling", vomiting. Even Elizabeth vomits a bit when, at the Collinses' home, one of the skin sores on zombie Charlotte's face bursts, and blood drips down into her mouth, which she apparently finds delicious. And that's where another aspect of humor comes from—watching poor Charlotte Lucas's transformation from regular old maid to a nine-tenths dead zombie married to such an odious man as Mr. Collins. Poor Charlotte. What did she ever do to Seth Grahame-Smith? It is hilarious but a little painful and sad to see her deteriorating, mumbling incoherently through conversations, and coming very close to copping a squat and being really sick in Lady Catherine's drawing room (she is rescued by Lizzie, seemingly the only one aware of Charlotte's undead condition, who takes her to the restroom).

Another refreshing addition to the dialogue is ball jokes. Yes, jokes about balls. Darcy makes one to Caroline Bingley that she is totally oblivious to, but Elizabeth catches it and is pleasantly surprised at "his flirtation with impropriety" (45). When Elizabeth later visits Pemberley and encounters Mr. Darcy, he gives her a gun to defend herself and her party on their walk. At the end of the visit, he reclaims the weapon. Then she "remembered the lead ammunition in her pocket and offered it to him. 'Your balls, Mr. Darcy?' He reached out and closed her hand around them, and offered, 'They belong to you, Miss Bennet'" (205). When her sister Jane asks how long she has loved Mr. Darcy, Elizabeth replies, "It has been coming on so gradually, that I hardly know when it began. But I believe I must date it from my first seeing the way his trousers clung to those most English parts" (305).

It is this kind of juvenile humor (balls, zombies, barfing) that makes these characters and this novel endearing and real for a 21st Century audience, and it keeps the material light: when Darcy first proposes in that ungentlemanlike manner, Lizzie delivers a blow that sends him crashing into the mantelpiece. Right after they finally declare their love for one another, they come across a group of zombies "crawling on their hands and knees, biting into ripe heads of cauliflower, which they had mistaken for stray brains" (302). Whenever Austen's original contains moments that border on serious or important, Grahame-Smith throws in some fighting or zombies or ninjas (yes, there are ninjas, too).

The book is chockfull of other goodies as well. There are more than ten graphic and hilarious illustrations, including the one on the front cover, which depicts a woman (Lizzie?) missing half of her face and with blood on her dress. There are ten discussion questions at the end to help guide your deeply philosophical conversations about this novel:

6. Some critics have suggested that the zombies represent the authors' views toward marriage—an endless curse that sucks the life out of you and just won't die. Do you agree, or do you have another opinion about the symbolism of the unmentionables?
7. Does Mrs. Bennet have a single redeeming quality?
8. Vomit plays an important role in Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Mrs. Bennet frequently vomits when she's nervous, coachmen vomit in disgust when they witness zombies feasting on corpses, even the steady Elizabeth can't help but vomit at the sight of Charlotte lapping up her own bloody pus. Do the authors mean for this regurgitation to symbolize something greater, or is it a cheap device to get laughs?

The book is a lot of fun. It's probably best for those who have read the original, but it's good fun either way. I've heard rumors that Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters is on deck, and we may be able to expect Persuasion and Poltergeist after that.

My Must List

I'm taking a cue from one of my favorite publications, Entertainment Weekly, and writing my own Must List: everything in entertainment that is making me happy right now. Most of it isn't reading-related, but who cares?

• The supporting cast of Nurse Jackie: Of course Edie Falco is wonderful; who had any doubts about that? But I am really loving (most of) the rest of the cast, especially the adorable Merritt Wever, who plays the loopy, sincere, kindhearted nursing student Zoey. I'm also liking Peter Facinelli as Dr. "Call Me Coop!" Cooper, who mindlessly grabs the nearest boob when he's nervous. His offer to treat pharmacist Eddie to Quizno's made me laugh like a lunatic. An offer of Quizno's doesn't sound funny? It's not, really. That's Facinelli's gift.
• Lady Gaga: She opened for my beloved NKOTB when I saw them back in the fall, and I really liked her delightfully weird set. I never imagined that she would blow up like she has, though. Each of her three singles has found a home on my iPod. Should I feel guilty about my daughter's hearing "I want to take a ride on your disco stick" fairly often in the car? Yes. Do I? No.
• Bound South, by Susan Rebecca White: I picked this up after a quick scan of the back cover when I was desperate for a beach read, so my expectations weren't terribly high. However, I was floored by this book. I'm serious; I absolutely loved it. The characters were fantastic: relatable and not at all stereotypical (always a concern when an author writes about the south). I also like they way that White plays with chronology: the book jumps ahead in time fairly often, and it just works. Bound South is the perfect blend of entertainment and literary quality, and I think that everyone should read it.
• Daisy of Love: Awesomely bad trashy "reality" TV. If only they could bring back Weasel and his tingly yam. I've missed him since his second-episode elimination.

Cocktails for Three, by Madeleine Wickham

Does it matter what this book is about, or whether it is any good? I read it with my toes in the ocean; therefore, it was delightful.