Book Review Club - December 2022

I'm reviewing two books this month, this one being THE WIDOW by Kaira Rouda.  This book was offered as one of Amazon's First Read books for prime members in November.  One of the reasons I selected this as my book for the month was because it said she was also the author of a book I thought I had read (I haven't, or at least I can't find the title in any of my book histories - purchased or borrowed from the library).  Anyway . . . 

The story centers around Washington and the games people play to stay on top.  It's told, primarily, from the viewpoints of Jody and Martin Asher.  Martin is a House Representative for Ohio and Jody is his wife.

There is a reporter, Max Brown, who wants to interview Martin for an article he's writing but Martin is avoiding and ignoring him because the article is likely to make Martin look bad so he doesn't want to participate or contribute to that but Max is determined to get his story, one way or another.  Jody and Martin's daughter, Charlotte, is scheduled to get married "this weekend" and their goal is to just get through the wedding - which has cost a fortune so it's happening, no matter what! - and then they will deal with whatever else they have to, including sitting down with Max for an interview.

Jody believes Martin is a hardworking politician that has the best interests of his constituents at heart but truth told, she really doesn't care, so long as it doesn't interfere with her social standing within Washington society.  But as the wedding gets closer, the talk of scandals, investigations and subpoenas gets louder and Jody is upset that it will ruin "her" big day (really Charlotte's big day but Jody thinks of it as her own big day) and so she is angry with Martin.

A major event happens that changes the course of everything.  I would tell it here and it wouldn't really be a spoiler because it's disclosed in the amazon blurb and well, the title is a hint, but it's one of those things that I think the details are best read in the book, but things change when it happens.  And then towards the end of  the book several bombshell revelations occur that I didn't see coming.  It basically suggested that everyone in Washington has secrets and that they're stored up by others and used as leverage as needed.

I really enjoyed this book and found myself wanting to "read one more chapter" before I  . . . took the dog out, made dinner, etc.  Then I'd get to the end of the chapter and think "I can't stop now.  Just one more chapter."  In short, I read it pretty quickly because I wanted to see what happened next.  That said, I didn't find any of the characters particularly likeable.  Martin wasn't too bad but there was the cloud of potential scandal hovering over him so I wasn't fully invested in him - I was reserving judgment, so to speak.  Everyone seemed to love Charlotte but she wasn't a fully developed character and didn't really factor into things in the story - other than she was getting married "this weekend".

Between each chapter there was a "tip" on surviving in Washington, which I also found interesting.  As I read them, I wondered how legitimate they might be.  Then I read the acknowledgements at the end of the book (as I always do) and discovered that the author's husband actually did serve two terms in the House.  Interesting side note, an article on him accused him of breaking the law for trading stocks early in the pandemic.  He's also changed parties - started as a republican, became an independent before ultimately running as a democrat.  But I digress.

In any event, I feel comfortable recommending this book as I found it interesting and I enjoyed it.  :)

For more book reviews go to https://barriesummy.blogspot.com/index.html

Book Review Club - November 2022

 This month I will be reviewing Mad Money by Jodi Picoult and Jennifer Finney Boylan.  This was a Good Morning America (GMA) book club recommendation that I listened to the audio book version of.

It's a story told from the perspectives of Olivia, who is Asher's mother, and Lily, who is Asher's girlfriend.  Olivia tells her story in chronological order but Lily tells hers in reverse order, which seemed a bit odd to me.  But considering Lily is found dead in Olivia's first chapter, I guess they had to decide how to tell her story and instead of starting two months prior to her death (where they ended), they started with the "day of" and worked backwards from there.

When the police arrived at Lily's house, after her death, Asher was there holding her body and there was evidence that he had moved her so he was a suspect in her death and that's what the bulk of the story revolves around.  Did Asher kill her?  Did he really just find her body as he says?  Was it just an accident?  We don't know.
 
Without giving too much away, there is a trial but here's the thing: a verdict is reached but that isn't the end of the story - there was actually still an hour left of audio to listen to AFTER the verdict.  That is to say, there is a plot twist.  I suspected that before the verdict came in but it went a different way than I expected (I think this option crossed my mind at one point but I was convinced of something else by the time I got to this point).

GMA had done an interview with the authors before I read it and at one point someone said "not to give away a plot point but . . . " and I just have to say, it definitely was a PLOT POINT - a pretty significant one, at that!  If they had not told it, it would've been a total shock when I got to that point in the book but, as it was, I was kind of like "oh, that's what they were talking about.  so?"

Overall it was a good story and I enjoyed listening to it but there were a few things (other than Lily's story being told in reverse order of occurrence) that took away from the story a bit.  For one, the language.  I'm not a particular fan of foul language so that bothered me.  Also, there was way too much information about what bees and beekeepers do.  It was like they did a deep dive in research into beekeeping and felt they didn't want to waste what they learned and dumped it into the book.  And it wasn't in a "to distract myself I . . . " with a detailed account of what she did.  It was a "the queen bee does this" and "the worker bee does that" in painstaking detail that added absolutely nothing to the story except length.  And this was done throughout the book.  Despite that, I still think it's worth a read / listen.  :)

For more book reviews, go to https://barriesummy.blogspot.com/index.html

Book Review Club - September 2022

Disclaimer:  I wrote this review last summer when the book review club was on hiatus.  I didn't have anything for this month so I'm recycling it now.

 I borrowed brat: an 80s story by Andrew McCarthy from my library (ebook) and read it in two days time - this includes watching a couple of the movies he talks about in the book as well!  It's worth noting that I had just finished reading Julianna Margulies' book, which took me the entire two weeks the library allows for ebook checkouts because I just couldn't get into it but forced myself to finish so that I didn't have to wait months to borrow it again (since there were others waiting for it).  

 

With Julianna's book I felt like it started very slow.  The writing wasn't great and the stories she was telling weren't all that interesting - at least for the first 1/3 of the book.  And I like Julianna - a lot - but her book wasn't the best memoir I've ever read.  I didn't feel like I learned anything new about her or her work.  And that's okay.

 

But to follow it up with Andrew's book - an actor I wouldn't call myself a fan of and who I constantly confuse with George Newbern - that I didn't want to put down, says something.

I loved this book.  He gives insight into who he is, how he became who he is and where that took him.  And the behind the scenes stories about movies he has been in were great.  

Andrew's father was against him going into acting, that is until he booked Class with Jacqueline Bisset and his father wanted Andrew to invite her to dinner. Ha!  (Andrew declined.)  He spoke about his relationship with his father throughout the book and his father's response to things related to Andrew's acting and income really strained their relationship.  Andrew found some peace with his father before his death but I don't think anything was truly resolved.

I'll be honest, I'm sure I've watched Class before decades ago but I couldn't have told you Andrew was in it.  I had a vague idea of the plot but (spoiler alert!) I would've bet everything that Rob Lowe was the one who slept with his friend's mother.  Before I read the background behind the movie, I watched the movie on some platform (HBO Max maybe?).  I believed his acting and thought he did a good job.  It was his first film and he had to develop some mechanisms to deal with the process itself.  I wouldn't have guessed that by the performance.

I actually had recorded Pretty in Pink a few months back.  Several things - I had no idea Andrew was in it.  As with Class, I'm sure I watched it decades ago but couldn't have told you the plot to save my life.  I knew Jon Cryer and Molly Ringwald were in it but that's about all I could've said for certain.  I also had expected that I would delete the movie without watching it because it's not really on the list of movies I thought I would want to watch (I have a few others of those on my DVR still, but that's a whole other story / issue).  I read the chapter on Pretty in Pink (actually the book's longest chapter) before I watched the movie.

Again, I liked the movie and his performance - I definitely believed him.  Now, without intending to give away any spoilers, the ending the movie has was not the original movie ending.  They screened the movie before release and the ending was a problem so they re-did the ending.  The problem was that Andrew was already working on his next job (on an off-Broadway production) and had shaved his head for that role.  As a result, the final scenes of the movie were shot with him wearing a wig.  

I'm so glad I knew that going in because it made me pay attention to that, whereas I wouldn't have noticed.  But that's part of the point of this - if I hadn't known it was a wig I don't think I would've thought it was a wig.  Since I did know though, it stood out like a sore thumb!  hahaha

Those are the only movies I've watched so far but HBO Max has some others of his movies that I plan to check out, now that I know the backstories (and some I haven't seen).  (Some of Weekend at Bernie's were ad libbed moments.  He thinks the sequel was a mistake.  Also another movie I know I've seen but I wouldn't have said he was in.)

He's also open about his drug and alcohol abuse.  He talks about missing the signs that it would be a problem for him - in hindsight he sees it very clearly.

Bottom line, I enjoyed this book and like Andrew better for having read it and will be less likely to confuse him with George in the future.  

 

I don't feel differently about Julianna - even though I didn't find her book all that engaging (I have read books before that completely changed my mind about someone negatively - this wasn't that . . . I just don't think she's the best storyteller, at least not in word form.  just my opinion.)

So there you go.  Kind of a twofer in book reviews, one I highly recommend (Andrew's) and one I don't recommend so much (Julianna's).  

😁

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Book Review Club - June 2022

 By way of disclaimer I just want to say that I typically write my reviews immediately after I read the book so that the details are fresh in my mind.  It's been a couple of weeks since I've read this book so I don't remember all the names of the characters, but I hopefully remember the right details.  :)

With that said, this month I will be reviewing All Her Little Secrets by Wanda M Morris.  All Her Little Secrets tells the story of Ellice Littlejohn - from her point of view.  Ellice works in the legal department of a corporation, is one of the only black people working for the organization and is having an affair with her boss, who she followed to the company after the both left the law firm they'd worked for previously.

The boss she's having an affair with is white and married.  They often meet at work before any other employees arrive at the office and that is the plan for the day when Ellice goes up to the 20th floor to meet her boss, only to find that he's been shot and is dead.

As Ellice tries to process the scene before her she remembers that there are no security cameras on the 20th floor so if she leaves, no one will ever know she had found him dead.  So she does just that - leaves and pretends she knows nothing because she doesn't want to be in the middle of something like this . . . again.

Then she gets offered the dead boss's job.  She says she would like to think about it before accepting, only to find out it was announced within hours of her being offered the job - before she could accept.  But it puts her in meetings with upper management.  When a particular topic gets brought up she starts to ask questions and gets told to basically mind her own business but it piques her curiosity and she starts digging further.

As she launches her own investigation into things she starts to receive threats and warnings that let her know that someone within the company knows all her secrets and may be trying to set her up to take the fall for the death of the boss in the office.  She also learns that the death hits closer to home than she realizes and she finds herself in a race to discover exactly what is going on before it's too late.

Periodically the story goes back in time to share events related to the "again" comment and tell you what she's been through and brought her to this point.

Overall, I thought it was a good book and definitely made me want to read further to find out what happened next - I could recommend it.  :)

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@Barrie Summy

Active Shooter

Have you ever had a situation that made your heart stop?  A few seconds that seemed to drag on for hours?  I'm thinking of a situation where maybe a child falls from the jungle gym at the park and you're paralyzed with fear of what will happen.  Or maybe your dog gets loose and runs right in front of a speeding car.  Until you know the child or pet is okay you experience an overwhelming sense of fear and it seems to last a lifetime, even though it's only a few seconds before you know the results.

Years ago I was working for a company that has offices all over the world.  Our particular office had just started having active shooter drills.  In the announcement for the drill it states that it is NOT a drill.  Normally when they would have drills the managers would be notified in advance so they could plan their day accordingly.

One day the announcement went off.  We learned later that someone had accidentally set it off (although, from what I'd heard, it would've been really hard for hit to have been an accident - but that's not the point here) but at the time, since no managers had been notified of a drill, there was more concern in the office that there was an actual active shooter situation.  Making matters worse, it was during the time of year where employees were being given performance feedback so the timing even made sense.

My office was outside my boss's office so we closed and locked my office door and went into her office and locked that door as well while she texted other managers (we weren't supposed to call or talk to anyone so that an active shooter wouldn't know if the office was vacant or not) to see if anyone knew anything about the situation.

Meanwhile, we had a visitor who worked in our office a couple of days a week.  She worked at another location within our company and their location had never done an active shooter drill so she was terrified of what was happening.  She closed and locked her door, crawled under her desk and started texting family members because 1) she wanted them to know she was okay - at least in that moment - before they heard about the active shooter at the company and 2) she wanted to be sure she was able to tell her loved ones that she loved them because she thought it might be her last opportunity to do so because she didn't know if she would make it home that night.

The "drill" went on for five or ten minutes and she was terrified for all of them.  They felt like an eternity, and it turns out it was a false alarm.

Then there's Uvalde.  It wasn't a drill.  Those students could hear the gunshots ringing out from other parts of the school.  Some saw their friends and teachers shot and killed.  Some called for help, desperate for help, begging for help.  The terror they felt was real and it was justified.  Parents and neighbors begged the police to go into the school and save the children.  Some parents tried to help the children themselves when the police refused.

The terror went on for more than an hour while the police waited outside and did nothing.  These are memories those children will never forget and will shape their lives going forward and it didn't have to be that way.

I read an article where a child psychologist talked to a child about Uvalde and the child said she didn't need to worry because they had drills and they knew what to do when this type of thing happened.  When, not if.

It may have been in the same article where another child told her parents about an active shooter drill at school and told her parents where she had to go so that when (again, when - not if) it happened at their school, they'd know where she was and could come get her.

One of the kids at Uvalde said he pretended to be dead so that the shooter wouldn't kill him.

These are things kids shouldn't have to be dealing with.  And yet, nothing is being done about it.  Governor Abbot in Texas has said it's not a gun issue but rather a mental health issue.  This from the man who cut funding to mental health programs and lifted most - if not all - restrictions on gun ownership.  And several years ago he posted a tweet saying he was embarrassed because Texas was #2 in gun purchases behind California and told Texans to step up their gun buying.

If you believe that our leaders should lead by example, what does Abbot's words and actions suggest we should do?  Nothing.

Republicans constantly complain, saying they're being silenced and being denied their first amendment right of freedom of speech but what I see is them trying to silence the opposition.  Did you see what the Republicans did to Beto O'Rourke when he tried to express himself - calmly, I might add - at a news conference recently?  He was told to shut up.  He was called a sick son of a bitch and told to get out and was removed from the venue, simply because they weren't willing to hear a side that didn't align with their own.

Additionally, Ted Cruz was approached in a restaurant after he spoke at the NRA convention Friday night.  One of his constituents tried to talk to him and he wasn't interested in a dialogue.  He told the guy he didn't know what he was talking about and blamed Democrats and the media for the shootings.  And then the guy was removed from the restaurant.  

From personal experience I know that Ted Cruz does NOT want to hear from his constituents.  Until a few months ago I was one of his constituents.  I wrote him on two separate occasions on two separate topics.  With the first one he didn't respond to me personally, he just added me to his newsletter mailer (which I promptly told him to remove me from!).  The second time he literally tried to gaslight me by telling lies in his response.  Apparently he considers his constituents ignorant and uninformed and thinks that because he says something that we will believe him.

I say it's time for change.  We need to vote out the leaders that turn a blind eye to senseless - and preventable - murders that continue to happen under their watch.  We need people like Beto O'Rourke who will fight for what's right and who isn't afraid to go up against people in power.

It it my sincere hope that the events of the last few months will motivate people who might not have otherwise voted in November to get out and vote.  And support the candidates (financially - with time - or any other way you can) who work for the people and not the interest groups that fund their campaigns because no child should have to endure one second of fear that they could be shot and killed, much less endure it for more than an hour., only to have their governor say "it could've been worse".

Book Review Club - April 2022

Nora Seed was having a bad day.  She gets home from work and a friend stops by and tells her that her cat is dead in the street, presumably having been hit by a car.  She goes to work the next day to have her boss inform her that he can no longer afford to pay her and he was going to have to let her go.  She leaves work and runs into an old friend who yells at her and tells her she ruined his life when she quit the band they were in.  She gets home and decides to kill herself, after all, who would care if she died?  Her best friend had moved away.  She'd called off her wedding two days before it was supposed to happen and she wasn't on good terms with her brother.  She'd had lots of opportunities to make something of her life - she was a great swimmer; she was a gifted singer / songwriter and had even considered philosophy and glaciology but she never followed through on things.

 

She left her brother a voicemail message telling him she loved him and wrote a letter and decided to die.

 

It was midnight and she "woke up" in a library.  It was being tended by the librarian from school, which Nora found odd.  But after speaking with Mrs. Elm (the librarian), she learned that she was at the midnight library.  Mrs. Elm explained that the books on the shelves were her life.  The biggest and heaviest book was her book of regrets.  At the midnight library, Nora would have the opportunity to go back and live any of the versions of her life that she chose to in order to see which one truly suited her.  She was advised to choose wisely because there were no guarantees - she could die in any of the other versions of her life and things would end immediately.

Any life she chose would take her to the exact date and time she arrived at the midnight library but her history would have changed, based on the choice she made.  For example, in one instance she returned to a life where she hadn't stopped swimming and changing that decision had changed everything that happened after that.  The problem was, she entered these alternate lives without the knowledge of the history that came with it so that she didn't know where she was, where she lived or who the people around her were.  On the plus side, once she realized she didn't want that life, she would return to the midnight library and get to experience another life.

I think we all have times in our lives that we wish we'd done differently and in The Midnight Library, Matt Haig gives a glimpse of how certain decisions can totally alter your life - and not always for the better.  One thing I liked about the writing is that the chapters were short - well most of them anyway.  It reminded me of how James Patterson writes in that the chapters are short so you're always willing to read just one more chapter, but there's such a big hook you kind of HAVE to read the next chapter. :)  Although, it did seem to lag in the middle and I felt that things were dragging out too much.  Then it picked up again and I couldn't put it down.

Overall it was an enjoyable read that was thought provoking and entertaining.  I would recommend it!

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@Barrie Summy

Book Review Club - January 2022

This month I will be reviewing We are Not Like Them by Christine Pride and Jo Piazza.

It's a story about best friends, Riley and Jenny.  Riley and Jenny have been best friends since they were five years old.  Now, thirty years later, we're seeing how things have evolved between them.

Jenny always wanted to be married and have kids.  She is married, to Kevin, and is expecting her first child.  Getting pregnant had been difficult and she had gone through IVF unsuccessfully many times.  With their life savings depleted and their credit cards maxed out, it is Riley who gives them the money to try again, and this time it took.

Riley, on the other hand, wanted to be a journalist and went away to college for her education, followed by working ten years in another state before finally coming home to be an on-air reporter at their local news station.

Jenny is white and Riley is black.  Riley is also one of only two black people at the news station - the other one being a behind the scenes person.  So when news breaks that an unarmed black teenager has been shot by a white policeman, Riley is given the story to cover.  It's a career building story and one that is close to her heart because she is black.  She knows it will be a hard story to tell and tell it impartially. 

It's made harder when she learns that the policeman that shot the teenager is Jenny's husband, Kevin.

Each woman is going through their own personal struggle as it relates to how this one event, and the resulting events, impacts their respective lives.  Will the teenager survive?  Will Jenny and Riley's relationship survive?  Can they see and understand each other's perspectives?  The question is, how will it all play out?

Sadly, black and brown people being shot - and killed - by white police officers is not an unfamiliar one or one where we have to stretch the imagination over much but this story is told in a way that evokes emotion.  I read the question and answer session at the end of the book and the authors' goal was to make you feel empathy for both Riley and Jenny and they did that successfully.  It's told in alternating points of view of Riley and Jenny, who dig deep into their differences as well as their, hopefully, unbreakable love for one another.  It's a good book and well told.

I was immediately drawn in by the first two lines of the prologue, which are compelling, chilling and heartbreaking all at once:

When the bullets hit him, first his arm, then his stomach, it doesn't feel like he'd always imagined it would.  Because of course, as a Black boy growing in this neighborhood, he'd imagined it.

If you had asked me six years ago the status of racism in America I would've told you that it wasn't quite dead but it was in hospice care because I honestly thought there were few racists left in America.  But four years of an administration that emboldened the worst impulses of select groups and the resulting headlines of unarmed black and brown people being shot and killed by white police officers has opened my eyes.  As a white woman, I will never fully understand the challenges my black and brown friends face on a daily basis but this story touches on it in such a way that I hope it helps educate me - and others - if even just a little bit.

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Odd Dream

Last night I dreamed I was working.  The environment looked like a job I once had but the people were from a different group I had worked with.

I kept changing clothes, like a LOT.  It was weird.

Then I was standing in a doorway (half naked because I was changing clothes - again) and the plane we were on took a nosedive.  Yeah, I didn't see that turn of events coming either!  I grabbed a thing on the wall (can't think of what you call it but it's there to hold on to to brace yourself) when the plane shot straight up.  I somehow managed to get clothes on during all this before the plane did a huge turn to one side and then was upside down.  I was still holding the thing on the wall but people went flying down the hall (oddly not straight up as you'd expect) and screaming.

We were upside down for longer than expected but the plane did right itself and then basically did a u-turn in the sky.

I could tell we were descending and had this weird feeling.  I looked out the window and realized we were about to land in a parking lot!  Which I basically scream out.  There were cars and people everywhere but we somehow managed to land without hitting anyone or anything.

And then suddenly we're in a hotel lobby, checking in.  The group wanted to go have dinner like it was no big deal, that planes flip and land in parking lots on them all the time but I was shaken up.  I wanted to go to my room and my supervisor was trying to force me to stay for dinner and I snapped at her and told her I was on a plane that just freaking crash landed and I couldn't care less about dinner, I just wanted to go my room.  She backed off because I was yelling all that at her.

I go up to the front desk to get the key to my room and realized I wasn't going to get home to my dogs (in the dream I think I had more than one - I only have one at the moment though in real life).  I also realized that I didn't know anyone's number by heart and wasn't sure how I would call anyone to go to the house to tend to my dogs until I could get home (after I woke up I wondered how long the trip was that I would've left my dogs home alone).  I finally realized that I could call from my cell phone and was digging through things to find the phone when I woke up.

Weird dream!

I had another one the day and thought I would remember it but all I remember about it is that I was calling 9-1-1 when I woke up.  Didn't do that in the dream where the plane landed in a parking lot so that other dream must've been bad!  ;)