Average Girl Reads

Women, Food, and God: An Unexpected Path to Almost Everything by Geneen Roth

Genre: self-help
On my TBR list? No


My rating: 2 of 5 stars


I belong to an online weight-loss support group and we decided to read this together. One of the women abandoned the book after the second chapter. I probably should have done the same, but I am compelled to finish books that I start.

This isn't a bad book, but it isn't for everyone. If you know or suspect that you are a compulsive eater and haven't found a way to deal with that issue, then you may want to read this. Since that isn't my problem, I found myself reading story after story about women who were nothing like me with eating behaviors that I found strange. I was also mildly offended by Roth's strong suggestion that everyone who is overweight has gotten that way through emotional eating and low self-esteem (barring a medical problem, of course).

Another thing to mention is that the "God" in the title is not the one of Judeo-Christian tradition. I imagine that calling the book "Women, Food, and Whatever Supreme Diety or Life Force You Believe In" would have been a mouthful. Roth draws from Buddhism and many other spiritual practices for her beliefs. I'm not bashing her for that. It is just worth noting that if you are looking for one of the many Christian guides to good health, this isn't it.

There are probably many women who will get something out of this book, especially if they are the type who find that they have inhaled an entire cake without remembering taking the first bite. However, I find it difficult to believe that, in this era of abundant information, there is a woman my age who hasn't read most of Roth's advice somewhere else.


View all my reviews >>

A Bad Day for Sorry: A Crime Novel by Sophie Littlefield

Genre: crime fiction
On my TBR list? Yes, since July 2009

Book one of an ongoing series

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Summary, from Goodreads:

Stella Hardesty, our salty, unlikely heroine, runs a sewing shop in rural Missouri. She also has a side business helping battered women with their abusive boyfriends and husbands. When Chrissy Shaw askes Stella for help, it seems like a straightforward case, until Chrissy’s no-good husband disappears with her two-year-old son. Now Stella finds herself in a battle against a more formidable enemy as she risks her own life to recover the boy.

This book was suggested to me by Rachael Herron of Yarn-A-Go-Go. I don't normally read crime fiction, but I've liked a lot of other books that she's read so I thought I would give it a try.

Another factor that made me crack the book open was the cover. A gal with a gun captures my attention. The weapon up against the floral dress makes me think of that old saying about watching out for the quiet ones, and the denim poking out underneath brings in the down-home element. With a cover like this, I expect to delve into the novel and read about some no-good Bubba getting his comeuppance at the hand of a sweet woman who has had just about enough of his nonsense.

The main character Stella Hardesty isn't Miss Marple or Jessica Fletcher, little old ladies who solved crimes mainly with their above-average deductive reasoning. She is an average-looking fifty-something woman who has taught herself how to use weapons. When she comes to a conclusion, you think to yourself that you would have made the same choice. It doesn't feel like you've figured out the plot ahead of time, though; Stella is doing what you would do in the same situation and you're read to follow her to the next step. Stella could be your next-door neighbor, or at least she could be mine: hard-working, doing her best to make ends meet, a little too busy to clean house or indulge in hobbies as much as she would like. I had no trouble relating to her.

The description mentions that Stella runs a sewing shop, but this is not a "novel+" with quilting tips in the back. I enjoy that genre from time to time, but in this case I think including a pattern would have ruined the work that the bad-ass cover has done. My male coworker, a guy who never reads novels, was intrigued by the cover enough to ask me about the story. There's a better chance of getting a "guy's guy" like him to read it if he doesn't think it is a chick's book.

Overall, this book is a fun read, which I never expected to say about a crime novel. I would recommend A Bad Day for Sorry to anyone, even if they don't normally read crime fiction. I'm looking forward to the day when my library has the second book in the series available.

View all my reviews >>

We will be heading for a family vacation in about 10 days, and most of you avid readers know what that means: deciding what books to take! Unlike many book lovers, I don't take piles of books with me on a cruise because my husband would not put up with me sitting in a deck chair reading for five days. However, my 13-year-old C1 is free to do that, so we need to find a couple books for her to take. ABM won't allow her to take library books for fear of them getting lost. That means I have to suck it up and actually buy books. I don't want to buy anything that is part of a series (unless it is the first book), and I would prefer to buy something that's not available at our library. Most likely, I will only have one opportunity to make to the bookstore before we leave, so I better figure out something soon. Any suggestions?

REVIEWS: I have reviews of A Bad Day for Sorry and Women, Food, and God coming up this week.

UP NEXT: I'm not sure what I want to read next. I'm leaning toward The Little Lady Agency, but it also seems like a book I would enjoy while sitting by the pool so perhaps I should save this as my book for the cruise. The other books I have on hand are part of a pioneer series; while I enjoy pioneer books, they don't seem like fun summer reading. I may have to scour my TBR list and see what other light dishy books I have listed.

Eighth Grade Bites by Heather Brewer

On my TBR list?: No
Genre: supernatural fiction, middle school

Book 1 of an ongoing series

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Summary, from Goodreads:

Junior high really sucks for thirteen-year-old Vladimir Tod. Bullies harass him, the principal is dogging him, and the girl he likes prefers his best friend. Oh, and Vlad has a secret: his mother was human, but his father was a vampire. With no idea of the extent of his powers, Vlad struggles daily with his blood cravings and his enlarged fangs. When a substitute teacher begins to question him a little too closely, Vlad worries that his cover is about to be blown. But then he faces a much bigger problem: he's being hunted by a vampire killer.

Eight Grade Bites came home with me from the library because C2 asked for it. Apparently, it is popular at the middle school; her twin C1 called it "witty and exciting". I wasn't going to read it myself until I ran across an article that attempted to put the fear of God into parents about the evil that lurks behind the covers of YA novels. It made me realize that I had fallen down a bit on my book screening duties, so I put on my Good Parent hat and read it.

Unfair though it may be, my brain immediately made comparisons to the Harry Potter series. This series deals with the supernatural and is set up where each book covers an entire school year, but I think that is where the comparison should end. Brewer isn't as verbose as Rowling, which can be seen as a good or bad thing. The books are shorter and easier for a reluctant reader like C2 to get through. The downside is that many of the characters surrounding Vlad aren't as fleshed-out as Ron, Hermione, and Draco in the Rowling series.

Brewer takes a little too long to set up the "big bad" for the series, but otherwise the book was enjoyable. I found the descriptions of how the main character works blood into his diet without biting anyone to particularly inventive. Also, I appreciated the fact that Brewer doesn't shy away from the fact that vampires do bite people and those people sometimes die. It is a testament to her skill that she does it in a way that isn't too gory for the average middle-school kid.


View all my reviews >>

Calamity Jack by Shannon Hale

On the TBR list?: Yes, since Dec 2009
Genre: graphic novel

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



Shannon Hale is one talented dame. I am accustomed to reading work by authors who stick to one genre or age group, but she has written for adults, young adults, and middle schoolers. She's written romances, fantasies, and graphic novels. For all I know, she's working on a cookbook next!

Calamity Jack is a follow-up to the superb Rapunzel's Revenge and I found it just as delightful. It gives the reader some background on Jack before he joined up with Rapunzel in the first book. As you may have expected, the Hale trio take the "Jack and the Beanstalk" fairy tale and give it the action-hero treatment. As a bonus, they throw in some romance and a self-esteem lesson, too.

I say hand this to your 13-year-old, especially if she is a reluctant reader like mine, but don't forget to read it yourself when she's done. Just a warning: the gorgeous full-color panels may make it difficult to go back to reading the black-and-white graphic novels that are more common in this genre!

View all my reviews >>

Last week, I spent a lot of time in bed as my body betrayed me. By Saturday, I was determined to force myself to do something constructive, no matter how I felt. Yeah, right. I only managed to get my bedding changed and my cluttered bedside table/bookshelf cleared before I had to return to my bed, where I turned my energy to some virtual clean-up. I tightened up my Google Reader subscriptions, did some reading, and wrote a few book reviews. Next up: my TBR list!

As many of us know, there are books that you add to the TBR list under the influence of the buzz that comes from a great book review only to wonder months later why you wanted to read them. Removing books from the list feels like cheating, but having them sit there is slowing down my progress. I like to do things in order, and part of me feels like I should finish reading those books at the beginning of the list before I read the rest. However, I give myself permission a couple times a year to be ruthless and delete titles from the list left and right. Today, 220 titles. Tomorrow, who knows?

REVIEWS: I have reviews of Eighth Grade Bites and Calamity Jack coming up later in the week. On Friday, I posted my impressions of How to Knit a Love Song which was written by knit blogger Rachael Herron.

CURRENTLY READING: I jumped straight from romance to crime fiction with A Bad Day for Sorry. This is not my usual genre, but a gal needs to break out every so often :-).

UP NEXT: Remember me saying that I agreed to read Women, Food, and God with some online friends? Well, I finally made it to the head of the library queue and I have it in hand. I have a feeling that I am not going to like it, which will probably make it difficult to slog through but I already agreed. Yikes!

How to Knit a Love Song: A Cypress Hollow Yarn by Rachael Herron

Genre: romance, Novel+
On my TBR list? Yes

1st book of a possible series

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Synopsis, from Goodreads:

Abigail is more than ready for a change when she inherits a cottage from her beloved mentor, knitting guru Eliza Carpenter. Leaving the oppressive city for the greener pastures of a small California beach town, she intends to turn her cozy little windfall into a knitting shop and spend her days spinning, designing, and purling. But she's not going to be welcomed with open arms by her new neighbor. Eliza's disgruntled nephew, the gorgeous Cade, now owns everything surrounding Abigail's ramshackle new home, and he views this sexy city girl as an unwanted interloper.

From the start, I've felt a strange connection to this novel. I am a long-time reader of Rachael Herron's blog Yarn-A-Go-Go, dating back to the days when all she really talked about was her knitting. I've read about her wedding, her mother's funeral, her move into a new place, and all kinds of crazy things that have happened at her workplace. There is no illusion in my mind that we are friends, but I know more about her than I know about any other author whose work I've read.

This is also a book that I've been waiting to read for a long time. Usually when I am looking forward to the publication of a book, it is part of a series so I have a good reason; I'm already invested in the universe and the story line from previous books. In this case, I was looking forward to How to Knit a Love Song based only on the reading of a single chapter. Herron entered the chapter in a contest on Gather called First Chapters back in 2007 under the name Love Spun. She didn't win, but her entry got the attention of an agent and now she's got a published book under her belt.

So what did I think of the book? One thing that struck me is how sexy it is. It's not soft-core porn or anything, but it is sexier than one would expect from a book with a basket of yarn on the cover. However, all the love scenes are written in such way that the reader will get an inner glow without having her face turn red while reading this in the doctor's office.

This is what I like to call a "novel+", a genre of novels where a recipe or pattern is included. Usually with these books the crafting bit feels tacked on like "OK, we're talking about knitting now for all the knitting fans. See, we know all the cool lingo!" Perhaps it is just my bias because I encountered Herron as a knitter first and then found out that she earned an MFA in Creative Writing, but the knitting talk felt more natural to me. I especially enjoyed the way she had her characters acknowledge that the knitting world can be an insular community with events that mean very little to the world at large. At the end of the book, there is just a pattern -- no book club questions or instructions for the beginning knitter. Brava for keeping it brief!

The other elements of the book rang true, as well. In my mind, the mark of a bad romance novel is when the guy and gal are kept apart by ridiculous circumstances. When I read these books, I find myself yelling at the pages, "Go talk to him already!" because it is evident that a five-minute conversation would clear up the whole situation. Luckily, Herron avoided this trap. I could easily imagine myself in Abigail's or Cade's place and understand why it took so long for them to get together.

My only quibble with the book, and it is a minor one, is that the author went for what I have come to think of as the "Lori Wick epilogue" (I've learned that other romance authors use it, too, but I've encountered it over and over in Wick's books). I won't give away what is in the epilogue, but if you read a lot of romances, then you probably know. I can't be too mad at Herron for including it, though. I should have known better than to read the epilogue.

The subtitle on the cover says "A Cypress Hollow Yarn", which usually indicates that it is the first of a series. This book did not end in a cliffhanger, so I can only imagine that if there is another book it will follow other characters in the community. I would definitely add the next book to my TBR list.

View all my reviews >>

Losing My Cool: How a Father's Love and 15,000 Books Beat Hip-hop Culture by Thomas Chatterton Williams

On my TBR list?: No
Genre: memoir

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


DISCLOSURE: I obtained this book for free through the Goodreads' First Reads program. They don't require a review, but it is strongly recommended if you want to be considered for more books.

Synopsis, from Amazon:

Growing up in Westfield, New Jersey, with a father who loved wisdom and ran an SAT prep business in a home crammed with books, Williams blithely ignored all that in favor of the hip-hop culture he heard and saw on BET. He spent his youth meticulously studying and imitating images of cool and thuggishness and listening to music that glorified misogyny, violence, and bling. The objective was to be "authentically black", despite his white mother and erudite father.

This book touched me more than I expected it, too. Even though I am not biracial, my mother is, and she was raised completely by the white side of her family. So she didn't know anything about "keeping it real"; it was almost like having a white mother myself. As a result, I could identify with Williams' acute awareness as a child that he was not like the other black kids in his neighborhood. The difference is that I didn't want to be like them, whereas Williams dove headlong into hip-hop culture in a effort to fit in and appear more black.

The best parts of the book for me were in the beginning when the author is chronicling his high-school experiences. I was fascinated by how self-aware he was. He was able to fit in and appear authentically "street" while still realizing that the way he was acting may not have been the best way to behave. The book became more difficult for me to understand toward the end when Williams started talking about philosophy and things like the Master-Slave Dialectic. Also, there are some spots where I think he was a little harsh on hip-hop music, as if it was BET's fault that he spent his teen years as an imitation thug. Overall, this is a book that lets people know that there is more than one way to be black and that everyone's journey is different.

View all my reviews >>

Last week I started reading Losing My Cool: How a Father's Love and 15,000 Books Beat Hip-hop Culture. I won it through the Goodreads' First Reads program. This is the first time that I have actually won a book through their program, but it is not my first review copy. Early in the life of this blog I got a review copy from Harper Collins. Back then, I had never heard the term "ARC" and didn't realize the unspoken responsibility that came with accepting one. All I thought was, "Yay! Free book!" Silly me.

Now that I know that it is good manners to actually review the ARCs that you have accepted, I am a bit intimidated by the idea of soliciting them. As regular readers know, I do not consider myself a proper reviewer. I read a book, I throw out a few impressions on my blog, and I'm done. My posts don't come anywhere near the deep analysis that I've read on other blogs. However, I am trying to get better at writing reviews, and I thought that accepting a few ARCs might give me more incentive to improve. So look for my review of Losing My Cool later this week.

What else did I do last week? Well, I finally got around to watching the movie Julie and Julia. You can find my thoughts here. I also read the first book in The Mother-Daughter Book Club series.

What's coming up this week? I went crazy and checked out five books from my TBR list. The battle between my TV-watching self and my reading self will rage on in earnest!

Several months ago, before reading any reviews, I picked up the book Julie and Julia. Eighty pages later, I put it right back down again because I found the voice brought to life by Julie Powell's words to be annoying beyond mere snarkiness. I could care less about the vulgarities with which she peppers her prose. It was her attitude toward her job (talking to the families of 9/11 victims) and everything else that eventually turned me off before I could finish the book.

I finally got around to watching the movie Julie and Julia this week. Even though the commercials were charming, the memory of how much I dislike Powell's writing made it difficult for me to rent the film. Eventually, the reviews of Meryl Streep's and Amy Adams' performances won me over and I watched it when it showed up on the Netflix Instant Streaming service.

In a nutshell, I should have watched the film sooner. In the time since the film was first released, I have since read scathing reviews of the book and Powell's subsequent book, Cleaving. I've also read comments left on book blogs by people who had been readers of Powell's original blog until they actually corresponded with her and found her rude. All of this was swimming around in my head as I watched the movie. Amy Adams -- an actress that I found charming in this and her previous film Enchanted -- could not wash away the bad taste I get in my mouth every time I think of Julie Powell now. At the end of the film, I found myself wishing that Meryl Streep had done a movie about Julia Child without all the "Julie" bits.

This is the first time that having read the book has ruined a film for me. There are rare occasions where the movie has included everything I remember, like The Color Purple. There are even times where I can appreciate the screen adaptation as a separate entity that I enjoy equally, as with the TV series True Blood. This is the first time that I wish I could un-read everything by and about Julie Powell and enjoy the film on its own merits.