Review: The Road to Little Dribbling by Bill Bryson

Overview:

The hilarious and loving sequel to a hilarious and loving classic of travel writing: Notes from a Small Island, Bill Bryson's valentine to his adopted country of England

In 1995 Bill Bryson got into his car and took a weeks-long farewell motoring trip about England before moving his family back to the United States. The book about that trip, Notes from a Small Island, is uproarious and endlessly endearing, one of the most acute and affectionate portrayals of England in all its glorious eccentricity ever written. Two decades later, he set out again to rediscover that country, and the result is The Road to Little Dribbling. Nothing is funnier than Bill Bryson on the road—prepare for the total joy and multiple episodes of unseemly laughter.

Review:

Once again Bill Bryson proves himself as one of my favorite writers. His descriptions of quaint and not-so-quaint towns throughout Britain paints such vivid pictures. Plus, who wouldn't love Bryson's sense of humor? From concerns about society's march toward total stupidity to his personal struggles at McDonald's, the jokes are clever and relatable. But perhaps where Bryson shines most is in describing the history of each location, his experience, and how time has treated the place. His thoughts on the British rail system are just one example of Bryson's intelligence.

The Road to Little Dribbling is engaging and charming, much like I imagine Bryson to be. Part history lesson, part personal adventure, this book is definitely a love letter to Bryson's adopted land.

Review: How to Write a Novel by Melanie Sumner

Overview:

In the spirit of Maria Semple's Where'd You Go, Bernadette and Graeme Simsion's The Rosie Project comes a hilarious and heartfelt story of an aspiring author trying to rescue her single-mother family by writing the next Great American Novel.

 

Aristotle "Aris" Thibodeau is 12.5 years old and destined for glory. Unfortunately, after her father's death, she finds herself plopped down in Kanuga, Georgia, where she has to manage her mother Diane's floundering love life and dubious commitment to her job as an English professor. Not to mention, co-parenting a little brother who hogs all the therapy money.

Luckily, Aris has a plan. Following the advice laid out Write a Novel in Thirty Days! she sets out to pen a bestseller using her charmingly dysfunctional family as material. If the Mom-character, Diane, would ditch online dating and accept that the perfect man is clearly the handyman/nanny-character, Penn MacGuffin, Aris would have the essential romance for her plot (and a father in her real life). But when a random accident uncovers a dark part of Thibodeau family history, Aris is forced to confront the fact that sometimes in life—as in great literature—things might not work out exactly as planned.

 

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Review:

 

How to Write a Novel chronicles family life as experience (and told) by 12.5 year Aristotle (Aris). Aris, her younger brother Max, and mom Diane, are still working through life after the loss of family patriarch, Joe.  Aris is precocious, funny, and smart.  When she's not co-parenting her little brother, she's hard at work trying to find a suitable match for Diane.

I found this coming of age story at turns heart breaking, hopeful, and funny. This is the perfect book for fans of Marie Semple's Where'd You Go, Bernadette. I highly recommend How to Write a Novel and can't wait for Melanie Sumner's next work.

Review: A Beginner's Guide to Paradise by Alex Sheshunoff

Overview:

So You Too Can:

- Move to a South Pacific Island
- Wear a Loincloth
- Read a Hundred Books
- Diaper a Baby Monkey
- Build a Bungalow

And Maybe, Just Maybe, Fall in Love! *

* Individual results may vary.

The true story of how a quarter-life crisis led to adventure, freedom, and love on a tiny island in the Pacific.From the author of a lot of emails and several Facebook posts comes A Beginner's Guide to Paradise, a laugh-out-loud, true story that will answer your most pressing escape-from-it-all questions, including:

1. How much, per pound, should you expect to pay a priest to fly you to the outer islands of Yap?
2. Classic slumber party stumper: If you could have just one movie on a remote Pacific island, what would it definitely not be?
3. How do you blend fruity drinks without a blender?
4. Is a free, one-hour class from Home Depot on “Flowerbox Construction” sufficient training to build a house?

From Robinson Crusoe to Survivor, Gilligan's Island to The Beach, people have fantasized about living on a remote tropical island. But when facing a quarter-life crisis, plucky desk slave Alex Sheshunoff actually did it.

While out in Paradise, he learned a lot. About how to make big choices and big changes. About the less-than-idyllic parts of paradise. About tying a loincloth without exposing the tender bits. Now, Alex shares his incredible story and pretty-hard-won wisdom in a book that will surprise you, make you laugh, take you to such unforgettable islands as Yap and Pig, and perhaps inspire your own move to an island with only two letters in its name.

Answers: 1) $1.14 2) Gas Attack Training Made Simple 3) Crimp a fork in half and insert middle into power drill 4) No.

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Review:

Having orchestrated my own move to a foreign country, I really enjoy reading about others' experiences. A Beginner's Guide to Paradise follows Alex Sheshunoff's adventure after he leaves his life in New York City for life on a remote Pacific island. I found the story sincere and real, There were plenty of opportunities to over-sell hilarious mishaps or wax poetic about life in paradise. But Sheshunoff doesn't do that. He presents his experience: the funny, the serious, the daring, and the... cheesy?? There were moments when I felt the story dragged a bit. There were quite a number of experiences I wish were explored more fully.

 

All that being said, I thought it was a charming and delightful read, and definitely recommend this book.

 

* I received an advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Recommended: The Reluctant Tuscan by Phil Doran

Overview:

 

After years of working on a string of sitcoms, Phil Doran found himself on the outside looking in. Just as he and his peers had replaced the older guys when he was coming up the ranks, it was now happening to him. And it was freaking him out. He came home every night angry, burned- out, and exhausted. After twenty-five years of losing her husband to Hollywood, Doran’s wife decided it was finally time for a change—so on one of her many solo trips to Italy she surprised her husband by purchasing a broken-down 300-year-old farmhouse for them to restore. The Reluctant Tuscan is about the author’s transition from being a successful but overworked writer-producer in Hollywood to rediscovering himself and his wife while in Italy, and finding happiness in the last place he expected. In the witty tone that made him a success as a writer in Hollywood, The Reluctant Tuscan captivates those who simply love a good travel narrative as well as anyone who loves the quirky humor of Bill Bryson, Dave Barry, and Jerry Seinfeld.

Review: My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry by Fredrik Backman

Overview:

 

From the author of the internationally bestselling A Man Called Ove, a charming, warmhearted novel about a young girl whose grandmother dies and leaves behind a series of letters, sending her on a journey that brings to life the world of her grandmother’s fairy tales.

Elsa is seven years old and different. Her grandmother is seventy-seven years old and crazy, standing-on-the-balcony-firing-paintball-guns-at-men-who-want-to-talk-about-Jesus-crazy. She is also Elsa’s best, and only, friend. At night Elsa takes refuge in her grandmother’s stories, in the Land of Almost-Awake and the Kingdom of Miamas where everybody is different and nobody needs to be normal.

When Elsa’s grandmother dies and leaves behind a series of letters apologizing to people she has wronged, Elsa’s greatest adventure begins. Her grandmother’s letters lead her to an apartment building full of drunks, monsters, attack dogs, and totally ordinary old crones, but also to the truth about fairytales and kingdoms and a grandmother like no other.

My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry is told with the same comic accuracy and beating heart as Fredrik Backman’s internationally bestselling debut novel, A Man Called Ove. It is a story about life and death and an ode to one of the most important human rights: the right to be different.

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Review:

 

I absolutely loved this book, and cannot wait to read Backman's debut novel. Backman is a master story teller, weaving fairy tales and real life to create the story of one building's family.  Elsa's grandmother is crazy, and brilliant. Granny's actions are at times as outlandish as the stories she tells young Elsa. When Granny dies, Elsa's sent on a treasure hunt that has her discovering who her neighbors are, and who Granny was before she was a grandmother. A story about how families are made. I highly recommend My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry.

 

Recommended: A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole

Overview:  

 

A Confederacy of Dunces is an American comic masterpiece. John Kennedy Toole's hero is one Ignatius J. Reilly, "huge, obese, fractious, fastidious, a latter-day Gargantua, a Don Quixote of the French Quarter. His story bursts with wholly original characters, denizens of New Orleans' lower depths, incredibly true-to-life dialogue, and the zaniest series of high and low comic adventures" (Henry Kisor, Chicago Sun-Times)
(Grove Press)

 

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Side Note:  One of my favorite books. A true masterpiece. A brilliant writer, with so much promise; Toole left us too soon.

Review: The Room by Jonas Karlsson

Overview: 

Bjorn is a compulsive, exacting bureaucrat who discovers a secret room at the government office where he works--a secret room that no one else in his office will acknowledge. When Bjorn is in his room, what his coworkers see is him standing by the wall and staring off into space looking dazed, relaxed, and decidedly creepy. Bjorn's bizarre behavior eventually leads his coworkers to try to have him fired, but Bjorn will turn the tables on them with help from his secret room. Author Jonas Karlsson doesn't leave a word out of place in this brilliant, bizarre, delightful take on how far we will go--in a world ruled by conformity--to live an individual and examined life.

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Review:

At first Bjorn comes across as a co-working nightmare: an arrogant, rude corporate climber with zero self awareness. He operates without knowledge of social cues or norms, and sees the world in black and white, with little use for others. His clueless naiveté in direct contrast to someone of his "intelligence".

By chapter seventeen two realities seem to emerge: Bjorn's and everyone else's. While Bjorn has enjoyed several visits to the room between the elevator and bathrooms, his colleagues simply see him standing against a blank wall.  His behavior sets off even the shyest of his colleagues. But the more his co-workers try to convince Bjorn there is no such room, the more adamantly he claims there is. Surely an entire office can't be crazy?! Yet it's hard not to believe Bjorn's version of reality.

A clever commentary on conformity, office politics, and how difficult it can be to swim against the tide.

* I received an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Review: Then We Came to The End by Joshua Ferris

Overview:

For anyone who has ever worked in an office, hating everything and everyone in it, yet fell apart when it was time to leave -- this book is for you. Heartbreaking, yet hysterically funny, Then We Came to the End is the definitive novel about the contemporary American workplace.

With an irresistibly casual writing style, Ferris makes readers a part of his fictional advertising agency from the moment we open the book. Through numerous impromptu conversations, colleagues come alive. We learn that Larry and Amber have had an affair, and that Amber is pregnant. We know that Chris Yop is panicking because he exchanged his office chair without permission, and that Joe Pope is universally despised because he got promoted and now everyone has to listen to him. No one likes Karen Woo because she's always trying to seem smarter than everyone else. And the head boss, Lynn, has cancer, but she doesn't want anyone to know. We understand that the agency is in trouble, and that the unstable Tom Mota is being laid off. We realize that anyone could be next. And we're dying to know what's going to happen.

By the time readers finish the book, they'll swear that Ferris has spent time in their own offices. And they'll thank him for capturing so knowingly what makes it so horrible, and what makes it our own.

 

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Review:

Joshua Ferris' debut is a hilarious and relatable look at life working in an office. Ferris captures the highs, lows, and everything in between; from water cooler gossip and office shenanigans to office politics and the real threat of lay-offs.

While humor plays a prominent role, Then We Came to the End has a lot of depth. With snapshots of the absurd and the serious:  Chris obsesses over his 'illegally' acquired chair,  while Lynn faces the battle of her life. And the whole office is worried about their future with the company. Ferris' first person- plural narrative gives readers the knowledge of each character's internal struggles while reserving a chair for us at the staff meeting.

A great introduction to a talented and promising writer. I highly recommend his follow-up novel, The Unnamed, as well.

Recommended: This is Where I Leave You by Jonathan Tropper

Overview:

 

The death of Judd Foxman’s father marks the first time that the entire Foxman family—including Judd’s mother, brothers, and sister—have been together in years. Conspicuously absent: Judd’s wife, Jen, whose fourteen-month affair with Judd’s radio-shock-jock boss has recently become painfully public.

Simultaneously mourning the death of his father and the demise of his marriage, Judd joins the rest of the Foxmans as they reluctantly submit to their patriarch’s dying request: to spend the seven days following the funeral together. In the same house. Like a family.

As the week quickly spins out of control, longstanding grudges resurface, secrets are revealed, and old passions reawakened. For Judd, it’s a weeklong attempt to make sense of the mess his life has become while trying in vain not to get sucked into the regressive battles of his madly dysfunctional family. All of which would be hard enough without the bomb Jen dropped the day Judd’s father died: She’s pregnant.

This Is Where I Leave You is Jonathan Tropper's most accomplished work to date, a riotously funny, emotionally raw novel about love, marriage, divorce, family, and the ties that bind—whether we like it or not.

Recommended: Wanda Hickey's Night of Golden Memories: And Other Disasters by Jean Shepherd

Overview:

 

A bestselling classic of humorous and nostalgic Americana, reissued in a strikingly designed trade paperback edition.

Before Garrison Keillor and Spalding Gray there was Jean Shepherd: a master monologist and writer who spun the materials of his all-American childhood into immensely resonant--and utterly hilarious--works of comic art.

Wanda Hickey's Night of Golden Memories is a universal (and achingly funny) orchestration of Midwestern puberty rites, from the gut-wrenching playground antics of one Delbert Bumpus, to the supernal glow surrounding unapproachable high school beauty Daphne Bigelow, to the memorable disaster that was Shepherd's (and everyone else's) junior prom.

A comic genius who bridges the gap between James Thurber and David Sedaris, Shepherd may have accomplished for Holden, Indiana, what Mark Twain did for Hannibal, Missouri.

Review: The Harm in Asking: My Clumsy Encounters with the Human Race by Sara Barron

Overview:

Welcome to the perverse and hilarious mind of Sara Barron. In The Harm in Asking, she boldly addresses the bizarre indignities of everyday life: from invisible pets to mobster roommates, from a hatred of mayonnaise to an unrequited love of k.d. lang, from the ruinous side effect of broccoli to the sheer delight of a male catalogue model. In a voice that is incisive and entirely her own, Barron proves herself the master of the awkward, and she achieves something wonderful and rare: a book that makes you laugh out loud. Simply put: if you read it, you will never be the same.*

*That's not true. You'll probably stay the same. But you'll have laughed a lot. And you'll have learned a fun fact about Jessica Simpson's home spray. See? You didn't even know she had a home spray! The learning has already begun.

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Review:

Slow start, but definitely picked up momentum once Barron started recounting her adult experiences.  Her stories from childhood seemed a bit exaggerated, and read a little too 'I find myself so interesting, everyone else must too.' I am interested to read more of her writing though.

Review: This is a Book by Demetri Martin

Overview:

From the renowned comedian, creator, star and executive producer/multiple title-holder of Comedy Central's Important Things with Demetri Martin comes a bold, original, and rectangular kind of humor book.

Demetri's first literary foray features longer-form essays and conceptual pieces (such as Protagonists' Hospital, a melodrama about the clinic doctors who treat only the flesh wounds and minor head scratches of Hollywood action heroes), as well as his trademark charts, doodles, drawings, one-liners, and lists (i.e., the world views of optimists, pessimists and contortionists), Martin's material is varied, but his unique voice and brilliant mind will keep readers in stitches from beginning to end.  

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Review:

There were a couple standout funny moments in the book, but honestly I found Martin's writing and drawings more interesting than funny. I enjoyed his short fiction stories, as well as his random listings. Very clever indeed. If you were to purchase this book- without knowing Demetri Martin (which I didn't)- based solely on the star studded reviews on the back cover, I think you'd believe the book was more laugh-out-loud funny than it is. That being said...I could picture Martin and Jason Schwart There were a couple standout funny moments in the book, but honestly I found Martin's writing and drawings more interesting than funny. I enjoyed his short fiction stories, as well as his random listings. Very clever indeed. If you were to purchase this book- without knowing Demetri Martin (which I didn't)- based solely on the star studded reviews on the back cover, I think you'd believe the book was more laugh-out-loud funny than it is. That being said...I could picture Martin and Jason Schwartzman collaborating really well together.

Review: Paddle Your Own Canoe by Nick Offerman

Overview:

Growing a perfect moustache, grilling red meat, wooing a woman—who better to deliver this tutelage than the always charming, always manly Nick Offerman, best known as Parks and Recreation’s Ron Swanson?  Combining his trademark comic voice and very real expertise in woodworking—he runs his own woodshop—Paddle Your Own Canoe features tales from Offerman’s childhood in small-town Minooka, Illinois—“I grew up literally in the middle of a cornfield”—to his theater days in Chicago, beginnings as a carpenter/actor and the hilarious and magnificent seduction of his now-wife Megan Mullally.   It also offers hard-bitten battle strategies in the arenas of manliness, love, style, religion, woodworking, and outdoor recreation, among many other savory entrees.

A mix of amusing anecdotes, opinionated lessons and rants, sprinkled with offbeat gaiety, Paddle Your Own Canoe will not only tickle readers pink but may also rouse them to put down their smart phones, study a few sycamore leaves, and maybe even hand craft (and paddle) their own canoes.

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Review:

 

This book had a lot of ups and downs for me. I greatly enjoyed Offerman's insight into family life- both growing up in a big Midwestern farming family and his married life in California. He makes some excellent points about what fuels happiness and fulfillment. That being said, overall the book seems a little disjointed- particularly in the first half. Time, place, and situations were disorganized. Later chapters found a rhythm.

Quite a bit of time was spent rallying against religion. It felt like any given topic somehow came back to religion. Once Offerman let this go, the book flowed much more smoothly. I don't consider myself an overly religious person; however I found it quite bothersome to continue to read all the religious negativity. It seems counterproductive to Offerman's ultimate message, and certainly contradicted his "personal" take on religion and religious practices. In fact, at one point I had considering abandoning the book, in an effort to preserve my enjoyment of Offerman's acting work. Thankfully the remainder of the book remained focused on Offerman's life and pursuits of happiness.