Book Review, 2013

Top 2013 Books I'll have to qualify this one a bit. For one, these are books that I read in 2013. Not books that were published in 2013. For two, I guess I didn't even read 10 books in 2013. And the books that I read are really not that great. Really. So feel free to pass jUgdegment--I know I would. -Orange is the New Black by Piper Kerman -The Girls Who Went Away: The Hidden History of Women Who Surrendered Children for Adoption in the Decades Before Roe v Wade by Ann Fessler -sisterland By CUrtis Sittenfeld -Special Topics in Calamity Physics Marisha Pessl -Once Upon a Secret: My Affair with JFK & its aftermath by Mimi Alford -The Power Broker by Robert Caro *did not finish -The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt *Did not finish -The Magic Room by Jeffrey Zaslow There you have it. OF the 8 books on my list, I didn't even finish 2 of them. I definitely plan to finish "The Goldfinch" but after about 500 pages, I skipped to the end. This book, plainly stated, is just not good. While it certainly seems realistic and it is well-written, there's just nothing in it that compells us to care about the protagonist. A terrorist attack, a wealthy family, an antique dealer and a seedy underbelly of Vegas lifestyle keep us going, but even that wasn't enough to keep me from skipping to the end to see what happens. The protagonist inadvertantly steals a painting from an art museum and keeps it hidden throughout his life. This is the theme that ties the story together, but honestly, his logic for holding onto it isn't compelling enough to care about him. Donna Tartt doesn't bring the mystery to this book like she did in "The Secret History." She does bring the drugs, though, and that nearly makes it a turnoff. The other book I didn't finish was "The Power Broker" by Robert Caro. I definitely wanted to finish this book, but it's over 1,000 pages long and I only get 3 weeks to check this out at the library. Ain't gonna happen. It talks about the creation of most infrastructure in New York and how Robert MOses built it without a care for anyone besides himself, and how this consequently affected mass transit & many population's continued disenfranchiesment in the city. What does that leave us? THe best book, of course, was "Orange is the New Black". It isn't too much like the TV show, but the TV show has created the same characters from the book, obviously. MOstly this shows all of the despondency of federal prison, but the most pivoting scenes haven't happened in the TV show yet. There is no secret revelation behind "Crazy Eyes" in this book and there's a lot more subtle mistreatment of inmates. I vaguely felt sorry for people in prison before, but now I really feel sorry for most of them. Even people who deserve prison aren't receiving the rehabilitation needed and the programs preparing people for the real world are described here. And good grief, we should be outraged at the great disservice happening here. I spent my Freshman English class reading books about prison, books like "Prison Journal: An Irreverent Look at Life on the Inside" and "Newjack: Guarding SingSing". We discussed the merits of prison rehabilitation vs restitution, and determined if prison really serves either angle. At length. So I guess it was time to revisit those topics again. I definitely suggest this book to you. To everyone! IN the middle are then "Sisterland" and "Special Topics in Calamity Physics" I loved the author of Sisterland, Curtis Sittenfeld. I love almost all of her novels, mostly because she writes very plausible, real, and very weak female characters. It's easy to chart their mistakes and draw their flaws, if you're looking closely. But this book was a little too close to home. No, I don't have a psychic twin sister. But the book centers a great deal around motherhood & nursing babies, which is what I spent my year doing, and I wondered if perhaps I identified too closely with this main character to see her weakness, and if I couldn't see her weaknesses as plainly, if it meant that I then had the same flaws. This was a cute book, but it wasn't as literary as the rest of her novels. The ending, though, is killer. Special Topics In Calamity Physics: I don't think I can summarize this one. I think you'd be served just as well by reading an online review of the book. EXTREMELY picturesque speech. Each line is quoteable, forever, but that's part of the problem. Sometimes you just want a memorable line once every few pages, so that these lines stand out more. That brings me to the most easily disregarded book: The Magic Room. I checked it out right before or right after I had the baby, and I knew it would be the biggest bubble-gum book ever. But when you've just given birth, the crazy post-partum hormones can send anyone into tears, very easily, so I knew I needed a bubblegum book to hold me over until the first few days of sentiment pass. I'd say if you were going to read another book on my list this year, you should definitely read "THe Girls Who Went Away." The Institutional coercion of sending unmarried women to a birthing center and quite nearly forcing the women to relinquish their children is just horrifying. This book is a collection of each woman telling her story of how she got pregnant, how she ended up relinquishing her children, and then, in some cases, how they found their child later. There are so many lies in this system of adoption, from "convincing" the women that their children were better off being adopted somewhere else, to falsifying records, manipulating signatures and then covering up the adoption records later, making it very difficult for a legal search to take place. I read this book in the first few weeks of bringing Esme home and it was a heartbreaking read. But I felt it must be done, in order to fully understand the plight of these women forced to give up their children. WHile this practice has hopefully ceased (mostly?) in the United States, it still occurrs internationally. (like the story of Philomena, the movie) That's all I've got, folks. Thanks for reading!