Book Review- Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet

  More than just a metaphor, Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet takes us on a paper faded journey filled with the subtle sights and sounds of a time long gone.

    It's a love story, a coming of age story, and a historical narrative all wrapped into one. It's also a curious look backward in time, where we meet a young Henry Lee and watch how both small and major events help shape him into the man we come to love by the end of the book.

    The book begins shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor with a young Henry as the only Chinese student at a local school in Seattle. His strict immigrant parents have chosen to send him there, as opposed to the traditional Chinese school, in hopes that Henry might be viewed and accepted as more American. Like many children born to immigrant families, he is still expected to obey the laws and influence of his Chinese heritage. Henry carefully manages to keep a foot in both worlds until he meets Keiko Okabe, a Japanese girl who like him, works in the kitchen as part of her "scholarshipping" agreement.

     As the relationship between Henry and Keiko deepens, so does the anti-Japanese sentiment in Seattle. Homes are ransacked and shops destroyed. Eventually all Japanese , including Keiko, are rounded up and shipped off to interment camps.

     The drama that unfolds for both Henry and Keiko is captivating. Author Jamie Ford manages to insert beauty and humanity into his characters, which are believable and flawed. The plot is woven with care and devoid of the dreaded holes that plague many books.  Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet ended the way it began; full of promise and a tinge of sadness that the story eventually had to come to an end.

Ikea

    There's something about an Ikea catalogue that makes me want to throw thousands of dollars away on a tiny Swedish apartment, toboggan hats, massive amounts of Gevalia, and very cool bicycles.

    The Ikea book is the girl version of Popular Mechanics. Whereas most men really get excited about articles like "How to Fix those Pesky Wobbly Chairs" and pondering such thought provoking scenarios such as " What if a Cruise Ship Wrecked in Alaska?", most of us girls are truly inspired by home organization remedies. There's something very stimulating about seeing a 3,000 square foot home squashed into exactly 750 feet of cool, refreshing, Swedish undertones all for the low,low price of $129.00.

    It's environmentally friendly,too!

    So we lure you utterly capable men to the Swedish Wal-Mart, sticky-noted catalogue in our grubby little hands, with the promise of inexpensive, yet authentic! meatballs and razor sharp cooking knives.Did we mention that woks are also on sale for $6.99? We know how You love to secretly pretend to be the Iron Chef. We somewhat regretfully gloss over the it's going to take your entire weekend "some assembly required" part. You get suspicious when you see that both of our painstakingly selected floor to ceiling bookshelves and two matching couches all come in extremely flat boxes. We appeal to your masculine nature (the part of you that refuses to ask for directions) and assure you that this is not a Big Deal. You endure this ritual once a year or so, even after you discover our treachery regarding that pesky assembly business.

    We keep this yearly Ikea indulgence close to our hearts because You don't do the whole flowers for the Anniversary thing. Watching Your forearm flex as you wrestle with the Ikea Assembly Project is terribly romantic,too. We have thankfully moved past the relationship phase where anything that requires two people putting something together makes them want to kill each other. Most of the time, anyway. Drywall is still on our Never Attempt Again if we want to stay together list,though. I think it's good that we have a list and know our limits, even if it means that our basement will never be finished.

    Really, it's okay.

    Our local Ikea is over two hours away. Thank goodness, because if it were any closer, our entire home would be filled with shiny, metallic magnetic strips and those cute little containers. Knives, spices, and those unruly paperclips would never be an organizational issue again. We could have bookshelves anywhere! On the ceiling,even. I'm absolutely positive I could make our saltbox colonial go from this:

(no, that's not my house but it's close)..to this swanky, upscale Swedish home in no time!

    I know I'm idealizing the Swedish Experience. I can't even ski. I don't like cold weather and am planning a move to California before I die on this gray frozen tundra that is usually an Ohio spring,fall, winter. I have no resemblance to the beautiful Swedish women who inhabit that territory but I clearly have that Elin Nordegren  reaction to cheating. Sadly, a penchant for golf club weaponry and shiny bicycles are not enough to warrant a move to Sweden.

   They say that imitation in the best form of flattery. If I can't have Sweden, I'd best keep up with my Ikea habit.

Book Review- This Beautiful Life

     This Beautiful Life by Helen Schulman tackles the controversial subject of teenage sexuality and the unintended consequences of life with the Internet. A true Molotov cocktail, this book is sure to get the conversation started at your local book club.

    The book begins with an uncomfortable scene involving thirteen year old Daisy Cavanaugh filming a sexually explicit video for sixteen year old Jake Bergamot. It involves nudity, a bat, and a whole lot of chutzpah that I certainly didn't possess at such a tender age. Daisy hits "send" and Jake pushes "forward", each of them making the same mistake in thinking the video will go no further than the one person they each sent it to. While not a tale as old as time, it's certainly one that's become more common in the face of advancing technology.  No more are salacious details contained to some graffiti sprayed walls of a public bathroom. It's immediate and it's everywhere. 

    This Beautiful Life doesn't make you choose between Jake or Daisy's perceptions in the story. It's a narrative that explores the feelings and decisions that the Bergamot family makes when confronted by the school and Daisy's parents over the video. Jake's parents, Liz and Richard Bergamot, have just moved from idyllic Ithaca to the privileged and affluent Upper West Side of Manhattan. We see Liz struggle to keep up with the demands of motherhood and the expectations that go along with posh parenting. Richard is a typical workaholic, delighting in his ability to provide this newer, more lavish lifestyle. We watch as Jake assimilates into an opulent culture of unbridled freedom, alcohol, drugs, and a private school that has Paris Hilton like connotations.

    Readers are left with a sense of deep sadness for both of these kids, who are judged by society and friends. What Shulman portrays so well is the short sightedness that young people all have and their inability to comprehend a world where privacy meant something else, altogether. 

Books Made Into Movies

Over the course of time, many books have made it to the Big Screen. Some have been amazing and others have been dismal failures.

It's difficult to squash all the intricacies of a 300+ page book into a two hour movie. I'm never envious of the poor soul who has to capture all of that in a script. You can't please everyone and rarely is the movie ever as good as the book.

 Let's take a look at two of my favorite and recent successes:

1. Lord Of The Rings Trilogy- Peter Jackson did the impossible. He took a bazillion page Science Fiction Masterpiece and made it into a brilliant work of art. The characters were memorable, the story line was kept very true to the books, and Jackson fought the battle of traditional movie length...and won. This was the first movie I ever went to a midnight showing for and didn't regret staying up. I was mesmerized by the cinematography. I think Jackson broke through a lot of new territory in making this movie (the same can be said of James Cameron's Titanic) This is a guy who didn't sell out and thank goodness he didn't. If you mess up LOTR, the multitude of Tolkien fans will never forget or forgive you.

2. Harry Potter- If you've never taken the time to read a Harry Potter book, please climb out from under whatever rock you've been under and give it a go. J.K.Rowling is probably the most prolific and creative writer of current time. Her contribution to literature will live forever and that's something most writers never get to say. She's the female equivalent to Tolkien and, like him, her writing is universally appealing to all genders and ages. The Harry Potter movies were visually spectacular. It's unbelievably difficult to capture the essence of a House Elf or Hippogriff, but somehow they managed to do it in these movies. This entire, original, and magical world was played out and perfectly paced through 8 movies.

Here are two of  my more disappointing movie experiences:

1. The Time Traveler's Wife was a major reading experience for me. I was surprised by how emotional I was after reading this book. For a week, I wandered aimlessly around. I looked for fanfic, I dreamed about it. I didn't want the story to end. I was captivated by the complex relationship between Clare and Henry.

When the movie came out, I was excited. There were definitely bonus points for staring Eric Bana, who was shirtless many times in The Other Boleyn Girl. Rachel McAdams was fine with  me,too. When the big day came, I hopped over to the movie theater with some friends and ordered a Big Blue Alcoholic Drink, got out my tissue stash, and prepared to be swept off my feet and for poor Henry to tragically lose his own.

At first I thought,"What's in this drink?" because nothing was making sense. Major plot lines were missing and so were characters. Most importantly, they f'ed up the end! I took out my tissues and grieved over the butchering of a great book.

This movie was almost as bad as Niffeneger's follow up book, Her Fearful Symmetry.

 This might be offensive to some of you.

I wasn't a super fan of Breaking Dawn. I felt like Stephenie Meyer jumped the shark, fell into a Mormon Baptismal Pool, and tried to give everyone a happy ending while the rest of us just wanted someone to die. We wanted a big fang fight, a stake through Aro's heart, and Rose should have sacrificed herself for the kid leaving readers fighting the irresistible urge to bombard a brooding, grieving Emmett with cookies and casserole dishes.

Despite my misgivings, I was determined to see this thing through. All the previous Twilight movies had a great soundtrack so the first thing that struck me was the utter campy-ness of the music. It gave the whole thing a B-movie feel, right from the beginning.

I felt sorry for Kristen Stewart, who's character already lacked depth, and was reduced even more in the wailing, writhing CGI Zombie Birth Scene. Edward's character just seemed inept. I kept expecting him to scurry off to a corner somewhere and numbly nibble at his steel fingernails with his diamond vampire teeth.

The one shining moment in this fiasco was the character of Charlie, Bella's father. He always adds those moments of comic relief. The relationship between Jacob and Rose was fun to watch and the wedding night scene wasn't terrible. You know, because having your partner break the headboard and leaving you black and blue whilst claiming your virginity is such an amazing experience. "Don't worry, Edward. I'm totally into the whole S&M thing! Let's do it again!" 


Sadly, I have one more movie to sit through before I can officially put a fork in my Twilight movie experience.

What's Your District?

On March 23, 2012, we will be catapulted into the world of Katniss Everdeen in The Hunger Games, written by Suzanne Collins. When I originally read this book, I immediately wanted to see a visual representation of it in movie form. The pacing is fabulous and really represents a shift in literature that we've been seeing since the tremendous success of Stephenie Meyer's Twilight. A tremendous amount of detail has been paid to the setting in these books and Collins really allows you to mentally visualize what's happening to Everdeen and the other characters in this book.

The Hunger Games leaves you a little breathless, waiting to see if Everdeen survives her ordeal as one of the 24  teenagers selected in a yearly life or death battle against the odds, environment, and other contestants. It's cruel, unusual, and leaves you with the uncomfortable feeling that our own society could easily spiral into the same divided and conquered country as Collins post-apocalyptic version, which she names "Panem".

The Hunger Games Trilogy is exciting and probably the best Young Adult novel I've read in years. I'll admit, I have high expectations for the movie. I can't wait to see Lenny Kravitz as Cinna. I think they really nailed that one. And while I was hoping for Hugh Laurie to play the crotchety Haymitch, I read an interview on Woody Harrelson's approach to playing the character and was impressed.  The special effects are going to be a very necessary component to the movie's success but the portrayal of human relationships in the face of such harsh and unforgiving circumstances will be the determining factor in whether or not we want to see more.

May the odds be ever in your favor.

50 Book Challenge

If I can manage to keep my Pinterest Addiction in check, one of my 2012 goals is to read fifty books. Here's a starter list:

1. The Watery Part Of The World, by Michael Parker
2. The Buddha In The Attic, by Julie Otsuka
3. Rules Of Civility, by Amor Towles
4.This Beautiful Life, by Helen Schulman
5.My Korean Deli: Risking It All For A Convenience Store, by Ben Ryder Howe
6. The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks, by Rebecca Skloot
7. The House At Riverton, by Kate Morton
8.Notes from Nethers: Growing Up In A Sixties Commune, by Sandra Lee Eugster
9.The Wise Woman, by Philippa Gregory
10. The Biography of Steve Jobs, by Walter Isaacson
11. Hotel On The Corner of Bitter and Sweet, by Jamie Ford
12.The Book Thief, by Marcus Zusak
13. The Marriage Plot, by Jeffrey Eugenides
14.State of Wonder, by Ann Patchett
15. Catherine The Great, by Robert K. Massie
16.The Leftovers, by Tom Perrotta
17. There But For The, by Ali Smith
18. Blue Nights, by Joan Didion
19. The Sense Of An Ending, by Julian Barnes
20. We The Animals, by Justin Torres
21. Blind Sight, by Meg Howrey
22. The Paris Wife, by Paula McLain
23.Before I go To Sleep, by S.J. Watson


I'll save the remainder of my list for new books coming out, book club selections, suggestions,    and casual library browsing.


What's on your reading list for 2012?