Sisterland by Curtis Sittenfeld

Liz and I met for lunch a couple of weeks ago just after finishing our 100 continuous days of posting. We knew we had to give the readers exactly what they didn’t want, frequent and consistent with posting. We stuffed ourselves silly, got really sleepy and then forgot all about the blog. Fast forward two weeks later and Liz reminded me that we have a blog. In short (too late), we’re lazy but Liz just had a baby and things are really crazy right now. [Huh. The things I learn while proofreading this blog.]

Oh joy, Curtis Sittenfeld has a new book! Super joy, it’s about twins!! Holy shit joy, it’s about twins with ESP!!! That my friends is the trifecta. You know Liz is a twin. [Dang. The bullets are flying at me today.] Explains several things, right? Anyway, turns out that what Sisterland is about really is family. Half the book is in Sittenfeld’s sweet spot, adolescence. Fans of Prep won’t be disappointed, and the readers of American Wife will love the storyline and really strong writer.

Set in St. Louis, Missouri (why doesn’t that happen more?) twins Vi and Daisy are the very best of friends growing up. [That's how you know it's fiction.] It becomes apparent at an early age that the girls have “senses."  As the girls enter high school, the personality differences in the sisters become sharp. Vi is the fearless one and Daisy yearns to be popular. As the girls turn into women, Daisy attempts to bury her abilities, while Vi becomes a medium for hire.

Things heat up when Vi publicly predicts that an earthquake will hit St. Louis in the weeks to come. The prediction turns their lives upside down. Is that a pun of some sort? I can’t decide.

If you haven’t read Curtis Sittenfeld yet (what is wrong with you?) and if you  like Chris Bohjalian, Meg Wolitzer, or Jonathan Tropper, you can’t go wrong with any of Sittenfeld’s work. Bring Sisterland  on vacation, it's the perfect book to travel with!

Good and Cheap (Books)! Day 20

so much fun on vacation!

Curtis Sittenfeld is someone you should bring on vacation this summer. And of course when I say "bring Curtis Sittenfeld on vacation this summer," I mean bring Man of My Dreams, Prep, or American Wife. I’m not saying not to ask her on vacation if you think that’s what you want to do; personally I think it's creepy, but whatever.

I read Prep at the urging of the literary director of the Texas Book Festival and ended up devouring it on my seven-hour flight to Alaska a few years ago. It was the only book I brought with me, so I was pretty much forced to look at nature and make conversation for the next ten days.  Prep follows Lee Fiora as she leaves the Midwest to attend a prestigious prep school on the east coast. The book is told semester-by-semester, culminating at graduation. It clocks in at just over 400 pages but believe me, you won’t believe how quickly it goes.

Intense teenage girl relationships and general young adult angst not your thing (really, what’s wrong with you)? Well may I suggest American Wife, a novel loosely based on Laura Bush? I’ve written about this novel a couple of times so won’t drone on here but to say, for me, this was a novel about how smart, ambitious women can easily get lost behind a powerful man.  This book exceeded my expectations in every way.

Sittenfeld has a new book due this June, and yes, I will be bringing it on vacation.

Presidential Reading

Yesterday being President's Day, I went out of my way not to do anything. I did eat apple pie for breakfast because I'm an American. I do my part for the country. I don't really like that Lincoln's and Washington's birthdays have been reduced to one Monday day off. I was a bit obsessed with the Presidents when I was a kid, which led to a lot of useless trivia; we probably shouldn't elect another Quaker (Hoover, Nixon), for example. Also, let's face it, I was a weirdo. I named the toenails on my right foot after less well known or more notorious Presidents. I hesitated to include this information here, but Gianna's freaked out by feet and this paragraph is payback for her inability to actually deliver cookies to my house when she says she's going to bring them right over. The piggy with the pointy cornered nail was Franklin Pierce. Millard Fillmore was the big toe; that name just screams "plus sized," right? Warren Harding and Chester Arthur filled in the middle and Nixon was the little piggy who went wee wee wee all the way home.

I digress.

Shall we talk about books and the Presidency?

President #26: Theodore Roosevelt. Teddy is the subject of many books including Edmund Morris's excellent biographies, but my personal favorite of the ones I've read is Candice Millard's The River of Doubt. After Roosevelt lost an attempt to be reelected as President a decade after he left office, and facing a crisis of age and confidence, Roosevelt and his son Kermit decided to become Amazon explorers. They set off on an expedition down a previously uncharted river that almost cost the President his life. Tropical plants and critters, fish that swim up your urethra, die, and lead to penectomies (we don't use that word often enough on this blog), and savage territory only made Roosevelt's lack of experience and preparation all the more obvious. Who doesn't love arrogant white guys brought to their knees by nature?

President #37: Richard Nixon. Yeah, there's plenty to say about Nixon. All the President's Men is the classic text. We recommend the fictionalized take on Nixon's downfall, Watergate by Thomas Mallon. Nixon is both sympathetic and delusional, and Mallon's book is a psychological exploration of a great man, a well-crafted epic, and a chilling account of hubris.

President #20: James A. Garfield. True story--at the Republican National Convention in 1880, Garfield was there to nominate another guy. Toward the end of his  passionate speech, though, he rhetorically asked "Who do we want?" and someone in the crowd yelled "We want Garfield!" A few months later, Garfield was officially elected President. During the height of Gilded Age corruption, Garfield promised to be one of the great Presidents of all time. And then he was assassinated (spoiler?). Once again we are recommending a Candice Millard book, this one called The Destiny of the Republic.

President #43: Al Gore. Just kidding. George W. Bush. Maybe this pick is a bit of a cheat, but American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld is loosely based on Laura Bush. It's probably more fun to read about the fictionalized party goer and favored son Bush than any of the books coming out about the W years these days.

President #36: Lyndon B. Johnson. Robert Caro's masterful biographical series, the most recent of which is The Passage of Power, are the definitive books written about LBJ. I also want to give a shout out to Billy Lee Brammer's The Gay Place, though. Brammer was an LBJ staffer and wrote a classic novel about Texas politics centered around a LBJ-esque governor.

President #33: Harry S. Truman. I admit it; I love Truman. He was given an impossible task--serving as President after more than a decade of FDR and at the end of major war, tasked with negotiating surrenders, war trials, and the emergent Soviet Union. Truman was the guy who decided to drop atomic bombs. For better or worse, the guy had balls of steel. David McCullough knows how to write a Presidential biography, and Truman is my favorite of his books.

President #3: Thomas Jefferson. We love Jon Meacham. We aren't the only ones. Meacham's latest, Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power takes on Jefferson's life and also looks at his political philosophy. Even though Meacham's book was a big hit during the holiday season, I'm sure that a few people out there haven't yet picked up copies. An aside, Meacham is charming and funny in person (on top of being wickedly smart).

President #44: Barack Obama. Before he was President, Obama was a writer. His memoir, Dreams from My Father, is the story of the American dream. It's the story of a man who's lived his entire life in between worlds, the mixed race son of an African father and American mother, who knows his father more from stories than as an actual person. Obama traces his family's past, from his mother's journey from Kansas to Hawaii, her relationship with the Kenyan man who left the family when Barack was two, and Obama's rise to the top of his Harvard class and work as a community organizer in Chicago. He goes back to Kenya after his father's death, finding his place in the world and as his own man.

New Year, New 30 Day Book Challenge, Day 9

Day 9: What book did we surprise ourselves by loving?

Gianna:

I am sure that there were many books that I liked more than I thought I would. In my former job I was often assigned books to read and sometimes lacked enthusiasm for books I thought “weren’t my thing.”  Three or four books come to mind right away: Welcome to Utopia by Karen Valby (I thought small town America, who cares?), Imperial Life in the Emerald City by Rajib Chandrasekaran. I thought it was going to be dry and difficult to get through. Very, very wrong.

Ah, I had no intention (and actually very little desire) to read American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld. I was in fact told by my manager at RH that I had to read it due to the fact it was loosely based on Laura Bush and unless I planned on moving my ass out of Texas, the book was a priority for me. Ok, so that is embellished, she just told me to read it.  So I did...in fact, I read it in one sitting. It had just enough literary chops and gossip to pique my interest. 

The book that took me by the most surprise though, was Patti Smith’s absolutely amazing memoir, Just Kids.  I know, ridiculous, but the thing is, I really don’t care for her music and I didn’t think the book would be of any interest to me.  I picked it up on the way home from my dear friend’s funeral, read the first few pages and had to put it down.  It took me about two weeks to finish because of the timing, but it became an instant favorite, and I cannot wait for her next book. 

Liz:

I'm struggling a bit with this topic.  I do have to read a bunch of books that assigned for work, and sometimes these books surprise me because I love them more than I expected. Netherland by Joseph O'Neill, for example, was much better than I'd anticipated for a post-9/11 novel about cricket, written by a guy I'd never heard of before. I hope that I'm pretty neutral about books before opening them (except for Twilight).

One book that definitely surprised me was Look at Me by Jennifer Egan. I'd never heard of Jennifer Egan before this book was nominated for the National Book Award. If I recall, it was a year with several nominees I didn't know, and I confess that for some reason I was confusing Egan with Susan Isaacs (the woman who wrote Shining Through). Don't ask me; my brain does odd things sometimes. I just looked it up, and the 2001 NBA nominees introduced me to Dan Chaon and Susan Straight too; the other finalist was Louise Erdrich, and the winner was Jonathan Franzen for The Corrections. Anyway, I couldn't imagine how the author of a book that was turned into a movie starring Melanie Griffith could be an NBA finalist (because, as I said, I thought she was Susan Isaacs).  I really went in thinking that Look at Me would be the biggest travesty in awards nominating history.

I'm an idiot sometimes. Look at Me remains one of my favorite books, and Jennifer Egan is one of my favorite authors (and now a Pulitzer Prize winner). I love this book so much that I'm willing to guarantee that you'll like it too. If you hate it, tell us, and Gianna will bake you cookies as an apology for my confidence. [Gianna will not bake you cookies.]

Days of Love...and Lack Thereof, Day 6

Gianna:

American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld

I think I speak for everyone when I say, “You ain’t been in love until you’ve been in love with a Republican!” Especially if you’re a Democrat, am I right ladies? There’s got to be an ex-Gingrich or three that knows what I’m talking about! [Don't look at me.]

Curtis Sittenfeld

Alice’s life changes at the age of seventeen when she is involved in a fatal car accident. She becomes a serious, bookish (a librarian actually), quiet woman. When she meets Ivy Leaguer Charlie Blackwell from a prominent wealthy Texas--geesh--Wisconsin family she isn’t impressed. He’s self-centered, juvenile, not as smart as she is, and he likes the ladies and to party. Also, she’s a Democrat and he is a Republican on the political fast track. But alas, she becomes smitten with Charlie; he is, after all, charming, and handsome, and they have some major chemistry (yeah, you’ll picture George and Laura, but try to get over it). When his career catapults him to the Presidency and some of his policies become unpopular (two wars and reproductive rights), Alice must make a choice. Does she continue to stay in the background and let people assume she too agrees with her husband’s policies, or does she speak out? And can the marriage survive if she publicly disagrees with her husband while he is vulnerable? 

I found this an incredibly interesting idea given the political differences between George and Laura Bush. Laura came out in favor of gay marriage and pro choice after Bush left office, but you know…those two kids are doing all right. 

Liz:

Get cozy and flip on the Celine Dion soundtrack, this book is going to put you in the mood for...something.  Once again I am going to discuss a book that is now, sadly, out of print.  It's just wrong.  If you read this crappy little blog at all, you know that A. I love books, and B. I love Canada, and C. I love a violent animal.  Zorro is a cat, of course.  Let's talk bears.

Stick with me here.  Bear by Marian Engel won Canada's Governor-General's Award and Margaret Atwood called it "a strange and wonderful book."  It's legitimately good literary fiction.  Here's the premise: a librarian, a lonely, timid woman, takes a job cataloging the library of the deceased Colonel Cary.  He lived on a remote island in the northern woods of Canada, and soon the librarian discovers that among his secrets is a pet bear.  The bear, she decides, will make good company.  She talks to the bear the way that she's never been able to talk to other people.  The bear becomes a pet...and then more of a companion as she becomes more isolated.  And then, well, yeah, it goes there.  Things I learned from Bear: 1. Don't have sex with bears. 2. Bears have bones in their boners. 3. You are NEVER so lonely that bestiality is a good idea. 4. A bookstore will go a full year without selling a copy, and as soon as you put up a staff selection saying that a woman sleeps with a bear, you'll sell out in a week.

Did I mention that Bear is an award-winning work of literary fiction?  I just thought I should state that again.  Also, who would have bet that I brought up the animal fornication before Gianna?  Anyone?