Summertime and the Readin' is Easy

The lazy, hazy days of summer are upon us (evidence, the lack of posts).  I'm heading to Greece with the family for three glorious weeks of beach time.  With three kids (the youngest is almost 18 months), I'm not sure how much time I'll get for reading.

For those of you who do have reading time over these dog days of summer, here are my top three picks:

Going Up Up Up!

There are two things that are making the Yummy Mummy Book Club totally rock these days.  First, publishers are getting connected to Wanda, our leader and we are getting free books ( (check her out at Bookalicious or over at Yummy Mummy Club) .  Second, authors are hanging out with us on Twitter during #YMBC online meetings and participating in our conversations.  How awesome is that!

This time around, we had Julie Booker online to participate in our chat about her new collection of short stores: Up Up Up.  The publisher, House of Anansi, sent us YMBC members a copy of the book about a week before it was released.  I found it very cool that by the time the book hit the shelves, I was already finished and talking about it to my friends.

Sing You Home

Where did this week go?  I had this blog post half written in my head in preparation to post right after our Wednesday night Yummy Mummy Book Club Twitter meeting.  Then....poof.  The week was over.

In my March Break post, I mentioned that I had read best selling author Jodi Picoult's latest, Sing You Home.  It was an exciting YMBC meeting.  Our fearless leader, Wanda, really out did herself for this one.  She struck a deal with Simon & Schuster Canada to get us complimentary copies of the book.  Then, when Picoult was touring in Canada, she coordinated passes for YMBC members to go to the readings.

Stand By Your Man

I recently read Jennifer Weiner's Fly Away Home for my Yummy Mummy Bookclub.  I've talked about the YMBC in another post here.  I had never read Jennifer Weiner before but I had seen the movie "In Her Shoes" based on her book.

Fly Away Home chronicles the voyage of Sylvie, after it is revealed that her politician husband had an affair with a much younger woman who he then helped get a job at a prestigious law firm.  He comes clean with Sylvie and his two daughters: Diana the hyper Type-A control freak, over achieving, ER doctor (who is by the way also having an affair) and Lizzie a recovering addict.

Sometimes, You Need a Good Zombie Story

I've made no bones about it (no pun intended).  I am a vampire girl.  Love my vampire stories: classic, gothic Dracula by Bram Stoker; sexy, smart Louis and Lestat of  Vampire Chronicles (or just the first three books) by Anne Rice or the campy, sensitive, hunky, Edward of Twilight. 

However, last year, I came across a little book about zombies.  Well, I guess if it's on the New York Times bestseller list and being made into a movie, it's not exactly a little book.  I'm talking about Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. I know what you're thinking:  Pride and Prejudice, classic Jane Austen, one of my all time favourite books, and....ZOMBIES???

The Book Club

So, I joined a book club. An online book club called the Yummy Mummy Book Club. It's done on Twitter which I love. Online appealed to me because I don't have to plan it beyond putting it in the calendar, getting into my jammies and firing up the laptop. A book club in general appealed to me as I felt it would get me reading things I wouldn't normally pick for myself.

That came true immediately in my first month in the book club. The November pick was Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. Yes it's been out for a couple of years, has been a huge publishing phenomenon, and no I hadn't read it. Why? Absolutely no desire. I saw her on Oprah with her devotees and it kind of left a bad taste in my mouth. I watched my sister-in-law on our vacation in Greece pacing about reading it (for a book club) cursing. So, thought I would let this one pass.

More Chick Lit

It's too bad summer is over (maybe not technically but the temperature says it all) because Remember Me from Sophie Kinsella (of the Shopaholic series), is a perfect girly beach book. I loved the first Shopaholic, thought the second was okay and was tired of it by the third book. My friend Michelle lent me this at a great time because I just wanted something light and fun. Remember Me fit the bill completely.

Party girl with crap job gets into an accident on the night her boyfriend stood her up and cracks her head. She wakes up in the hospital thinking it's the next day but it's really 3 years later! What she doesn't realize is that she is in hospital after suffering a head injury in a car accident. Now she is posh, driven, fitness maniac and married to a gorgeous and wealthy real estate developer and doesn't remember anything about her life or how she got there. This is probably a good thing considering she is also known as an icy bitch and alienated all of her friends in her climb to the top.

This is the Kinsella I like. Remember Me is fresh, funny, silly, narcissistic, catty with good looking boys, loyal friends, designer clothes and a crazy mother. This gave me a good giggle.

Remember Me

Sophie Kinsella

Dell Publishing

Wine & Romance

Man, am I a bad blogger or what. Time flies. It's not that I haven't been reading or traveling. I have been doing both. I just didn't realize how much time had passed!

I've read a few things lately so I will get a few more posts going especially as we head into summer holiday and cottaging season.

My brother-in-law Jim is a great source for books and this one, Miranda's Vines, is a recommendation from him. This is an easy, breezy book that incorporates many of my favorite things: wine, food, romance.

In addition to being a single mother, Miranda is a top chef in San Francisco, and struggling with the demands of the misogynistic restaurant world, her ambitions and her maternal instincts. When her father dies, she heads back to Oregon to take care of business including the winery that she has inherited. The rustic winery is the coveted prize of big business commercial winemakers and Miranda finds herself torn between protecting her father's legacy (including the people who have been part of her life from childhood) and pursuing what she thinks is her ambition in the restaurant business. Throw in some subtle romantic twists and great descriptions of wine and food and you have something, on the surface, that is light, entertaining and gratifying.

However, dig a little deeper, read between the lines a little bit more, and you see the complexity of the father/daughter relationship (I could write an epic on this topic myself), the richness of female friendships and women's battles to balance career and motherhood (guilt almost wholly self-inflicted, again I could write pages on this topic).

Sometimes the light, frothy stuff pleasantly surprises with deeper undertones. Much like a good wine.

Miranda's Vines
Kimberly Kafka
E. F. Dutton

Babies & Broads

Not exactly weekly but nonetheless, trying to maintain some consistency in posting.

On a recent trip to Barcelona, I decided to give a book my brother-in-law recommended as “light & a quick read”. It was both of those things – I read it all on the leg from Munich to Toronto. an Innocent, a Broad is a memoire written by Ann Leary. Ann Leary is married to Denis Leary…who I absolutely love. I thought, if you can be married to him, you must have an interesting take on life.

an Innocent, a Broad is a memoire about a specific moment in time: the birth of their first child Jack. Jack’s birth (like so many) is not the fairy tale that you see in movies or hear from mothers’ groups (“Oh…I was in labour for 2 hours and didn’t need an epidural….and it was a beautiful moving experience….yeah right, whatever), or read in magazines. Written about a time prior to her husband “becoming” Denis Leary, Ann Leary takes you through every pregnant woman/mother’s worst nightmare: she goes into labour prematurely in a foreign country. Mind you the foreign country is England, where they speak English, which is a plus, but has a different view on childbirth and medical care.

So there you are: what started as a 2 week vacation turns into a stint in a hospital, thousands of miles from home, in labour, when you’re not supposed to be in labour and you are told you are going to be in hospital until you give birth.

With an endearing though sometimes annoying recounting of a stereotypical American ignorance of anything non American, Leary’s style is easy to read, like hearing a girlfriend recount a story over numerous cups of coffees. She goes through things and asks questions that you wouldn’t read about in What to Expect When You’re Expecting. She articulates exactly what every pregnant woman goes through about how they look and feel about themselves. She eloquently captures every single fear that any of us who have gone through a pregnancy, has about giving birth and then lives through the fears to come out on the other side. She does it almost exclusively by herself and emerges and unintentional “woman/mother power story.”

Although I enjoyed this book (Jack as it happens is now a perfectly healthy teenager and quite proud of his birth story), it didn’t quite break my streak of mediocrity. That being said, I am reading something right now, about half-way through that is knocking my socks off. But I thought that about Wicked too…so I’m going to reserve judgment for a bit.

an Innocent, a Broad
Ann Leary
Harper Collins

Secret Keeping

On my last trip I finished a book called The Memory Keeper's Daughter. I had heard very good things about it but when I read the overview of it, I had a bit of trepidation. I also had read very mixed reviews. Some people loved, some hated it. I still don't know how I feel about it.

One of the things this book makes me think about is the impact of choices. A father (also a doctor who is delivering his own children in a snow storm) makes a choice: give away his newborn daughter, a twin, because she has Down's Syndrome and fears the pain of raising her and having her die as a child. He tells his wife the most horrific of lies: the baby died. As a mother, I was absolutely mortified at this choice. The author is very good at bringing out his wife's feeling of loss and being lost. She is clearly suffering from postpartum depression and had difficulty grasping the death - she didn't get to see her or hold her. Her husband doesn't understand why she can't just "let it go". There is great writing in this part of the book, representing that sensibility of the 1950's and 1960's to ignore the problem and hope a casserole, cup of tea or a good stiff drink can make it go away.

The nurse who takes the baby and raises her as her own, makes a choice to keep the secret. She is just as culpable in this scenario. She makes a choice to not go immediately and expose the secret. But she has loved the doctor from a far for a long time and goes along with it always questioning whether she made the right choice.

This basically sets the stage for a domino effect of decision, arguably right or wrong that dominate the lives of these two people and those around them.

One of the criticisms that I have heard of this book and, I have to agree, is that there comes a time when it's hard to have any more empathy for the characters. There are moments when the author has a very good ability to represent the deep wounds in these people's lives. More often then not however, she seems to deal with them more at arm's length. Maybe that was her intent. If so, it left me a bit cold. I heard someone compare this book to Sue Monk Kidd's The Secret Life of Bees. I guess there are some superficial similarities in writing style but Kidd's story is so rich and her descriptive narrative so poignant, The Memory Keeper's Daughter just pales by comparison.

All in all the verdict is: just okay.

I am on a run now of some mediocre books. I haven't read anything lately that I really loved. I also haven't read anything that is really new so I may change my approach. While I am slowly but surely getting through my night stand list, maybe I need to go to the New Releases section of my friendly neighbourhood Indigo and take a chance there. Stay tuned, I'm bound to get a good one.

The Memory Keeper's Daughter
By Kim Edwards
Viking Press

Cooking with Fire...or not

My friend Michelle dropped off a book for me a few weeks ago that proves that a book can be read in the span of two 1.5 hour flights. I read Girl Cook a couple of weeks ago travelling to and from Washington D.C. Michelle let me know that it was light and fluffy but because we both share a love of cooking, thought I would enjoy it.

Girl Cook is what it is: a very superficial, chick lit piece of fluff. There is little to no character development, a smattering of chef language to give it some authenticity, and the requisite girl meets boy who she initially doesn't like and then starts to get interested in (see my post on chick lit).

This time though, it wasn't for me. I was pretty annoyed with it actually. Mostly because I thought that this had so much potential. It was sort of positioned as a "Bridget Jones" but with cooking. I didn't think that at all. The first Bridget Jones novel was fresh and funny and had good character development and paid more than a fleeting tribute to Jane Austen. Girl Cook missed a huge opportunity. The restaurant world is incredibly mysoginistic. Girl Cook glosses over it with the heroine becoming more of a whiner than a champion. The disastrous, love life, the mother who doesn't understand her....whatever.

That being said, it passed the time for me as I was sitting on a plane that was delayed on the tarmac at Reagan International Airport in Washington D.C. I think that was the best thing about this book in my opinion: it was a quick read.

Girl Cook: A Novel
Hannah McCouch

When is the Movie Ever Better?

I find the whole book versus the movie debate a little tiresome sometimes. When is the movie ever better than the book. I would say never. I do think though there are times when a movie is at least AS good as the book. Of course, the cases of movie so much worse than the book are infinite in my opinion.

Why this topic now. Last night, we watched Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire in celebration of Sam finishing the book and I am now reading Wicked, the novel the stage musical is based on. Even though I make every effort to not see movies based on books unless I get a chance to read them, I actually saw the stage musical Wicked last year (another notable exception to my rule is the Godfather trilogy). That being said, I still haven't seen the Lord of the Rings because I had to read the books (which I did last summer and much to my surprise I absolutely LOVED them). However, knowing who played the characters made it much easier to get through some of the more complex parts of the trilogy because I had a visual. Nor have I seen Mystic River because I haven't read the book and although I would like to see the movie, I know the book will completely depress me. Similarly I read Cider House Rules after John Irving won the Oscar for the screenplay. It peaked my curiosity and reignited my interest in his books. So this book versus movie thing can be a bit challenging.

Another example is Bridges of Madison County. I loved this short novel. It pushed all of my romantic buttons. I wasn't thrilled to hear of the project to make it into a movie although I had thought about who should play the leads. In my mind it was Robert Redford and Mary Steenburgen. Don't ask me why - those are just the faces I associated with the characters. I came around to Clint Eastwood but Meryl Streep didn't do it for me. I though the film was just okay.

I was actually looking forward to Interview with a Vampire as a movie - that is until they cast Tom Cruise as Lestat. I was livid as was every other Anne Rice fan and the author was none too pleased herself. For me, Rutger Hauer was a living breathing Lestat. The challenge was by the time Hollywood got around to making the movie, Hauer was too old. The casting in that movie missed a number of marks. Again it was just okay but man did they nail Claudia with the casting of a young Kirsten Dunst.

I could go on and on. One thing is for sure, you just cannot capture the depth of the narrative and all of the small things in a novel that contribute to the plot, when you take it to movie. The pure fact of time available on screen limits the creative ability. The Harry Potter movies are quite good but we have spent most of the time trying to quell Sam's indignation at the exclusion of certain parts of the book.

I expect I'll finish Wicked this week and I'll give you my thoughts on it then. Suffice it to say that the stage play was fun and entertaining and even though I am only half way through the novel, I can say with confidence that the stage version doesn't even come close to doing it justice.

Any pics and/or pans of screen adaptations of favourite novels?

Something for the ladies...

I’m a little later than usual posting this week because I have been in Turin, Italy for some internal meetings. This is the last trip of the summer! Whoo hoo!

I bought A Thousand Splendid Suns to read this trip. But you know what? I’m just not up for it right now. I read the first couple of chapters and just can’t read it. I loved Kite Runner. It was beautifully written (if not a little indulgent in sometimes painting the characters in an almost cartoonish representation of good and evil). I cried through most of it. It's lovely and devastating and heart crushing and I couldn’t put it down. I really do want to read the new book and I will get around to it this summer, but for this trip I think I needed something a little less intense. Unfortunately, I read my People and US Weekly in the first hour of the flight over and my only options in Italy were…well…in Italian.

I don’t think there is anything wrong with reading some light fluffy romantic comedy chick lit every once in awhile (for the boys I would draw the equivalent as science fiction or Tom Clancy). Some variation of a girl, who is a bit zany or wacky and can’t find a man, has some fatal flaw like uncontrollable spending or shopping habits, meets a guy and eventually, after some missteps they fall in love and meet happily ever after. Sound familiar? The English lit major in me can’t help but recall Shakespeare and Austen. Taming of the Shrew, Much Ado About Nothing, As You Like It, Pride and Prejudice basically invented the formula: woman appears strong and independent (with requisite clutzy or goofy quirk), meets man they are drawn to but pretends to despise and then by some great twist of fate or design they end up together and live happily ever after.

So in celebration of my last business trip of the summer here are my some of favourite light, mindless, chick lit books (in no particular order):

Bridget Jones Diary (no interest in the second one)
Confessions of a Shopaholic (the first one is very cute, but the rest of the series got boring quickly)
I Don’t Know How She Does It (for the working super mom – especially the opening description of the tarts – hysterical)
The Nanny Diaries (read on maternity leave so was appropriate timing as well as good for my mush brain)
The Devil Wears Prada (thought the movie sucked though Meryl Streep & Stanley Tucci nailed it)
Pride & Prejudice ( The grandmammy of them all. As a companion piece, the A&E mini-series starring Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy should be absolutely mandatory.)

Thanks for posting your comments, I appreciate all of your suggestions and I'll start to respond to them now that I have figured it out :-).

Time Travelling

By now you’ve figured out that most of the stuff I read I often just pick up at the airport book shop. I’ve mentioned the great book store in Terminal One at Toronto’s Pearson Airport called Watermark. They reorganized the International, US and domestic flight gates so I don’t get to go to the big one anymore and the other stores just don’t have the same feel. One of the reasons airport bookstores are good for travelers is that most of the stuff they sell is in paperback (I prefer premium paperback) which is easier to carry around. I should tell my friend Mike, who’s the CTO of Indigo to try and do something about that. They must have a way of getting into the airport and exposing travelers to Heather’s Picks. They always have excellent selections of premium paperbacks. I digress.

I had seen The Time Traveller’s Wife a couple of times on the shelves and walked by it. For some reason I picked it up during one of my European trips last year (can’t remember which one).

What a great story. The one thing I think I love most about this book is it is just so different. The story of a man who has a “genetic disorder” that causes him to go back and forth in time where he meets his future wife at various stages of her life (childhood, the teenage years); the jumping around takes a little getting used to.
Even though it is a love story through and through it’s not a chick book. I know a number of men who read it and really enjoyed it. Don’t let the seeming sci-fi time travel aspect of it put you off. It is a very human story that deals with the basic emotions that everyone goes through as they fall in love and commit to serious relationships. You become immediately hooked in and then immersed in this story and the people in it. I have to admit that I did find the ending kind of rushed but the fact that it wasn’t a nice neat ending was surprisingly gratifying. It’s hard to explain. Just go ahead and read it. I don’t’ think you will regret it.

Though I read The Time Traveler’s Wife last year, I thought I would post on it because I think it’s also a perfect summer book and I am getting into summer mode. I have one more trip scheduled (2 days in Torino next week) and then I am planning to spend the summer in good ol' Toronto. So after I finish Harry Potter I’ll need something to get me through the rest of the summer. I’ll probably pick up A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khalid Hosseini (remember The Kite Runner?). Let me know what you’re going to read this summer.

The Time Traveler's Wife, Audrey Niffenegger
Published by MacAdam/Cage