Tag Archives: Books

Alice Bliss by Laura Harrington
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Alice Bliss broke my heart.

(I've been trying, but I can't separate my review of the book from my personal response to it, which necessitates a spoiler. Be forewarned.)

I could write at length about the floodgates of emotions that the book brought to the surface, but it would be rather more than I am comfortable sharing in a public review. Suffice to say, the book hit very close to home for me.

Matt Bliss, an Army reservist, gets called up and deployed to Iraq, leaving his wife Angie and daughters Alice and Ellie behind. The family struggles to deal with Matt's deployment and their feelings of loss in his absence. Matt is obviously the glue that holds the family together, as Angie retreats into herself, leaving Alice, at age fifteen, to take over many of the responsibilities of the household, caring for her sister, and navigating adolescence on her own. Alice, who is particularly close to her father, struggles to keep him as close to her as she can, wearing his clothes, planting the garden they'd planned together, and trying to fix up his workshop before his return.

There wouldn't be a book here without bad news. Matt's letters and phone calls grow more infrequent, and then the Bliss family gets the bad news that he is missing in action.

Alice grows increasingly worried about her beloved father's well-being, and starts imagining the worst even as she hopes against hope and tries to keep up a brave facade for her younger sister's benefit. But the hope is in vain, as one day a soldier and an army chaplain show up at the Bliss house bringing the worst news imaginable.

I lost my own father when I was fifteen. The circumstances were very different -- my father died after a long illness -- but regardless, the book took my breath away. Change a few little details, and it was like looking into a window at my own family and what we went through, right down to my uncle teaching me how to drive because my dad couldn't.

Harrington's portrayal of Alice's emotions is absolutely, to my experience, spot-on. Being a teenager is enough of an emotional rollercoaster even without the absence, nevermind the total loss, of a parent. I remember all too well the conflict I felt during the time surrounding my father's death, wanting desperately to hold on to my childhood, wishing that nothing needed to change, while at the same time looking anxiously forward to the future and all the promise it held.

I was especially touched, in the book, by Alice's relationship with her childhood best friend, Henry, as they tentatively explore their new feelings for each other, Henry acting as Alice's rock as her world shatters around her. The conflicting emotions, the euphoria of first love contrasting with -- and providing a welcome respite from -- the seemingly soul-crushing grief: it rang very true to me. Other reviews I have read question Alice's reactions and behavior; I think that these reviewers are looking at the situation from adult eyes. It's confusing, being old enough to understand completely what's going on, but having neither the experience nor the emotional maturity to really be able to deal with it. Everyone's experiences are different, of course, but Harrington's portrayal of Alice was very real and very raw to me. It's clear, too, that despite it all, Alice will be okay. She is a strong, determined young woman, and part of me wants to revisit her in ten years, in fifteen years, to check in on her. She will be remarkable.

Laura Harrington is a playwright and librettist, and this is her first novel. I'm glad she made the jump -- her writing is lovely and lyrical and there were passages I read over and over again just to savor the language.

All in all, this was a wonderful, if painful, book: your reaction to it may not be as strong as mine was, but still, I recommend tissues.

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Textual Healing by Eric Smith
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is a book that desperately wants to be a movie. From the very first page, I could see the movie in my head -- the first words of the novel read as a voiceover, with a scene-setting panorama of New York City, before cutting into Ace's apartment. It reads as a kind of mashup, Scott Pilgrim meets High Fidelity meets Empire Records meets the bookstore of Notting Hill. The movie image was so clear in my mind, I even have the film all mentally cast.

Ace, a writer whose one best-selling, made-into-a-movie book is now gracing the clearance shelves at Barnes & Noble, has writers block, his girlfriend has left him, his used book store does hardly any business...and then the real upheaval starts, as a blind date turns into a life-changing experience for him as well as for those around him.

The novel can't be taken all that seriously -- really, all of the action takes place in a single week? -- but that adds to its charm, and you're not reading a book like this for a dose of reality, anyway. The characters (and boy, are they all characters!) are likable and a lot of fun -- and really, who wouldn't want to cross paths frequently with a haiku-speaking ninja? Life would be a lot more interesting if we all had wacky people like these populating our lives.

I had to knock off a star for the amount of typos, confusing punctuation, and flat-out errors in the text -- I found it really distracting to read. I also was a little turned off by all of the pop-culture references, many of which seemed gratuitous, forced, or both.

Despite my negative comments, though, I did enjoy the book and would recommend it to anyone who enjoys quirky, romantic-but-not-sappy stories. With a bit of editing, the novel would really shine.

Copy received from the author for review

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Maphead: Charting the Wide, Weird World of Geography Wonks by Ken Jennings
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

True story: my husband and I met because of a geography bee. I was the seventh grade Geography Bee champion at our middle school; he was the eighth grade champion. We went head to head for several rounds, but ultimately he bested me -- he knew that quinine was used to treat malaria, and I did not. I got my revenge, though, in a way -- he did not qualify for the state geography bee, but the following year, when I became the school champion, I DID. (And believe me -- some twenty years later, I still remind him of this quite frequently!) I went on to the Connecticut bee, with ninety-nine of the other top scorers, but I was eliminated before reaching the finals. It's true what they say -- you always remember the question that you didn't know the answer to. (In case it ever comes up for you: the South American desert known for being the driest in the world is the Atacama. You're welcome.)

You don't get to the state geography bee without being a map nerd -- so I don't need to tell you that I practically jumped up and down with excitement when I first heard about this book. A book about my people! Jennings, known for his 74-game winning streak on Jeopardy!, hooked me right in the very first chapter, with his tales of his childhood atlas (for me, it was a huge collection, courtesy of my grandfather, of National Geographic maps, plus a box set of "Close-Up USA" maps), wooden map puzzles, and realization that, for those of us who were in our peak geography-nerd phases before the end of the Cold War, our knowledge of world capitals and European country names is stuck in 1987.

Jennings goes on to trace the weird world of the "maphead" in chapters dealing the history of maps, map collecting, maps of fictional places, geocaching, and more. He shares my feeling that a book which includes maps must be good (bonus points if there's also an appendix!) and discusses the role that maps play in adult geek culture, noting that "Hogwarts and the starship Enterprise have been mapped in more detail than much of Africa." And, of course, there is a chapter on the National Geographic Bee which, as a former participant myself, I took special interest in. (And having read more about it, both here and elsewhere, I can look back and say, unequivocally, that despite my performance on the written test that qualified me for the state finals there is NO way I was prepared for that, nevermind the national finals. These kids are HARDCORE.)

As you would expect from a book written by a trivia champion and, dare I say, professional geek, the book is full of interesting facts and, yes, trivial sidenotes. Jennings has clearly done his homework; I'm nerdy enough to be totally jealous of the research he got to do for the book, especially visiting the map room at the Library of Congress. Jennings is a gifted, humorous writer, and the book is fast-paced and lighthearted -- if one were hoping for a serious academic treatment of maps and mapheads, this isn't the right book. (The book also boasts the rarest of all literary beasts, a funny appendix. The entries for "Jennings, Ken" and his wife made me giggle.)

All in all, Maphead is a fun read, and perfect for those who like a solid dose of chuckles with their facts. (And if descriptions of maps are going to make you go dig out your favorites so you can relive them all over again, then this is DEFINITELY for you.)

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