Lamott's Notes on Hope, Amazon's Wage Hike, New Kopp Sisters Novel, I Think I Love You by Allison Pearson, An Easy Death by Charlaine Harris and Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore by Matthew Sullivan

This post is late because I have had a crazy couple of weeks, with my 21st wedding anniversary, my mothers 81st birthday, doctors appointments, Crohn's flares and crazy neighbors moving in across the street, as well as a family of raccoons feasting on the last of the pears in our trees (there's ma, pa, and four fuzzy little trash pandas). Of course the new season of Doctor Who, with a female Doctor at the helm of the TARDIS has also just begun, (and it's WONDERFUL) and several of my favorite shows have started going downhill with changes in cast and crew. But I've managed to read a few books anyway, and I've got some interesting tidbits to share as well.

I am one of the few writers I know who doesn't like Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird, but I have read several of her other books, and I really enjoyed them. I also loved this review from Shelf Awareness enough that I will be looking for a copy of her latest book ASAP.

Review: Almost Everything: Notes on Hope

"Some days there seems to be little reason for hope, in our families,

cities, and world," admits essayist Anne Lamott. "Well, except for

almost everything." That exception is the impetus for Lamott's essay

collection Almost Everything: Notes on Hope. Lamott, who has made a

career out of facing the darkness honestly and then looking for the

pinpricks of light, brings her pithy, self-deprecating humor to bear on

such topics as a friend's alcoholism, the power of stories to redeem and

transform and the ways grace sneaks in: without warning and against all

expectations.

Lamott (Hallelujah Anyway) begins by confessing, "I am stockpiling

antibiotics for the apocalypse, even as I await the blossoming of

paperwhites on the windowsill in the kitchen." In brief, wry chapters on

topics such as "Puzzles" (not the 500-piece kind), "Humans 101" and

"Famblies," she explores the complicated truth of "the mess and the

tenderness"--the ordinary human condition, shot through with despair and

joy. This takes the form, at times, of sticking with friends and family

members through illness and death, learning to treat ourselves and our

bodies with kindness and struggling not to give in to hate in a

fear-filled political climate. It also can mean glancing out the window

at a bird, laughing (kindly) at ourselves and simply being willing to be

amazed.

Through rambling anecdotes from her life and the writing classes she

teaches, Lamott comes back to a few key truths: every human being is

valuable; stories teach us to hope and hold us together; and this life

is full of joy and beauty, which often appear right after we've almost

given up. The chapter on writing harkens back to her classic Bird by

Bird, with its emphasis on plain hard work, sticking to the truth of a

story (even a fictional one) and keeping an eye out for the telling or

magical detail. "We have to cultivate the habits of curiosity and paying

attention," Lamott says, because they are "essential to living rich

lives and writing."

On the days when "it doesn't feel like the light is making a lot of

progress," Lamott also recognizes that "love has bridged the high-rises

of despair we were about to fall between." Fortunately for Lamott's

readers, this book, like her others, is both a celebration of that

bridge and a gentle but insistent call to keep building. --Katie Noah

Gibson blogger at Cakes, Tea and Dreams

http://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz38376297

It's about time that Billionaire Jeff Bezos actually ponied up a decent wage for his employees. Now if he'd only work on making the working conditions in the warehouses decent, so employees don't have to pass out from the heat, and so they're allowed to go to the bathroom, that would be great.

Amazon: Wage Bump

via http://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz38467171

Amazon will increase its minimum wage to $15 for all full-time,

part-time, temporary (including those hired by agencies) and seasonal

employees across the U.S., effective November 1. According to the

company, the move benefits more than 250,000 employees, as well as some

100,000 seasonal employees who will be hired at Amazon sites across the

country for the upcoming holidays.

"We listened to our critics, thought hard about what we wanted to do,

and decided we want to lead," said Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos. "We're excited

about this change and encourage our competitors and other large

employers to join us."

Amazon's public policy team will also begin advocating for an increase

in the federal minimum wage. "We will be working to gain Congressional

support for an increase in the federal minimum wage," said Jay Carney,

senior v-p of Amazon Global Corporate Affairs. "The current rate of

$7.25 was set nearly a decade ago. We intend to advocate for a minimum

wage increase that will have a profound impact on the lives of tens of

millions of people and families across this country."

I have read all of the Kopp sisters novels, and I am delighted that a new one is coming out now, though I am sure I will still have my complaints about the frivolous sister and the farming sister being such a drag on their elder sister Constance.

Miss Kopp Just Won't Quit: A Kopp Sisters Novel

http://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz38559271 by

Amy Stewart (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $26, 9781328736512). "I have

enjoyed Amy Stewart's Miss Kopp adventures since the beginning, and this

fourth novel is just as good as the first. With a feminist edge and true

historical details, Amy Stewart has brought Constance Kopp to life in

such a well-developed and interesting manner; not only are the

characters exemplary, but the story is grabbing and exciting as well. I

hope this is not the end of Constance and her sisters, because World War

I is on the brink and I think they would be the perfect small-town

heroines for the fight." --Lauren Nopenz Fairley, Curious Iguana,

Frederick, Md.

I think I Love You by Allison Pearson is a book tailor-made for women of my generation, ie the tail end of the Baby Boomers (1960-64). The teenage protagonists are all the same age as I was in 1974 (13) and all are obsessed with David Cassidy and the Partridge Family (and some are obsessed with Donny Osmond and Bobby Sherman, too, as I was, briefly) TV show that aired for several seasons in the 1970s. The only difference is that these girls, mainly Petra and Sharon, live in poor circumstances in Wales, a small country near Scotland in the UK. They get all their information (and posters) about David from professionally created fan magazines that they read cover to cover, always answering the quizzes and trying to find ways to make themselves more attractive to their dreamy pop star idol. I used to read Tiger Beat Magazine when I was 13, and Seventeen Magazine, which seemed very sophisticated to a 13 year old, and I obsessed over the quizzes and soforth as well. I also had a couple of friends in the neighborhood who formed a fan club with me, and we all had to take "code" names that identified us as super fans of the Partridge Family and David Cassidy. I was "Susan Dey" (not very original, I admit) and I was in charge of cutting out pictures and posters of David from the magazines I bought whenever we went into town to the drug store. I also had a hideous poncho and I wore my hair "feathered" back as often as possible, though my straight as a string hair refused to feather or hold a big curl like the famous Farrah Faucett, whose poster graced every teenage boy's wall at the time. So reading this book and following Petra and Sharon and the magazine writer's stories was like reading a biography of my early teen years in Saylorville, Iowa, which was often just as remote as Wales was for the protagonists of this tale. Oh, and like Petra, I know what it is like to have a beautiful German mother to try to live up to. Here's the blurb: Publisher's Weekly: Pearson (I Don't Know How She Does It) dips into Nick Hornby country in her slick latest. In 1974 Wales, 13-year-old Petra is in love with David Cassidy, an obsession she shares with her best friend, Sharon. When they hear that Cassidy is playing a concert in London, the girls sneak away to see him, bringing Petra into brief contact with Bill, who writes for The Essential David Cassidy Magazine. Nearly 25 years later, Petra is separated and seeing how she had sacrificed her ambitions for her husband's when, after her mother's funeral, she discovers a letter her mother had intercepted years before. The letter was informing Petra she had won the Ultimate David Cassidy Quiz, and her prize was a trip to meet the star in California. A magazine picks up the story of Petra's missed opportunity, and suddenly Petra and Sharon, along with Bill, who now works for this magazine, are headed to Las Vegas for a belated meeting. Petra has a piercing wit and a boundless charm, but it's Pearson's insights into friendship, celebrity worship from the inside out, and the knocks you take in life that create a winning novel of hope, lost and found.

I remembered all the Cassidy song lyrics quoted in the novel, and I amazed myself with how much space in my brain is engraved with such silly things as lyrics to 45 year old pop songs. The prose is strong and clean, and the plot, though slightly predictable, still moves along at a nice clip and is well structured for this nostalgic story. I only wish that Pearson wouldn't have included her interview with an aging and depressed Cassidy at the end of the book, because he comes off as unhappy and "ruined" by his experience with the weight of instant fame and fortune. The interview took place in 2004, but I doubt anyone knew at that time that he'd die of liver failure in 2017, a year ago, so the stupid questions that Pearson asks seem a huge waste of time, but one can hardly blame her for asking things she would have asked as one of millions of teenagers crushing/obsessing on Cassidy back in the 70s.  I'd give this novel an A-, and recommend it to any women who were teenagers back in the 70s and who remember what it was like to be infatuated with a pretty young man who could sing his heart out while showing off his dazzling smile and sparkling eyes. 

An Easy Death by Charlaine Harris is the start of a new science fiction/western/fantasy series by the author of the Sookie Stackhouse series, made into that dreadful TV series TrueBlood. Having read all of the Sookie books, and three of the Midnight Texas series, (though I like the TV show version of Midnight Texas better than the books, which is strange/unusual for me) I figured that I had a pretty good idea of how Harris structures her stories and how she creates worlds and characters. But this new series threw me a bit, as the female protagonist, Lizbeth "Gunnie" Rose, is not at all like Sookie or any of her other female characters, she's a lot more of a loner, tougher and much more sure of herself and her abilities as a gunslinger/protector. Here's the blurb: Set in a fractured United States, in the southwestern country now known as Texoma. A world where magic is acknowledged but mistrusted, especially by a young gunslinger named Lizbeth Rose. Battered by a run across the border to Mexico Lizbeth Rose takes a job offer from a pair of Russian wizards to be their local guide and gunnie. For the wizards, Gunnie Rose has already acquired a fearsome reputation and they’re at a desperate crossroad, even if they won’t admit it. They’re searching through the small border towns near Mexico, trying to locate a low-level magic practitioner, Oleg Karkarov. The wizards believe Oleg is a direct descendant of Grigori Rasputin, and that Oleg’s blood can save the young tsar’s life.Publisher's Weekly:
In a bleak alternate history of what’s left of a broken-up United States after Franklin Roosevelt is assassinated—where poverty is rampant and magic is real but not widely accepted—Harris (the Midnight, Texas series) tells the harrowing story of a young bodyguard, Lizbeth “Gunnie” Rose, whose job is to keep others alive. After her team and closest friends are killed in a mission gone wrong, Rose is forced to move on for the sake of survival, even if it means taking a gig protecting those she’s spent her life hating: two Russian wizards, or grigoris, who have come to town looking for another wizard. She tells them he’s dead, but doesn’t mention that she killed him—or why. It’s not until she’s too deep into the search for his brother that she finds out her own life is in danger: these wizards are more hunted than they realized, but she may be the one the hunters really want. In this fast-paced thriller fueled by magic and gunslinging, no one can be trusted. Harris’s vividly detailed story will leave readers enthralled with the fascinating setting and a heroine who’s sure to be a new fan favorite.As the trio journey through an altered America, shattered into several countries by the assassination of Franklin Roosevelt and the Great Depression, they’re set on by enemies. It’s clear that a powerful force does not want them to succeed in their mission. Lizbeth Rose is a gunnie who has never failed a client, but her oath will test all of her skills and resolve to get them all out alive.

SPOILER, the wizard that she kills is her father, who raped her mother and left Gunnie Rose with a deep hatred of the grigoris and of having some of their DNA in her makeup. This doesn't stop her from having sex with one of the wizards, however, which seems, at first, a bit gratuitous. Still, the prose is gritty and the thriller-style plot is faster than a speeding bullet. I look forward to the sequel. I'd give this book an A, and recommend it to anyone who likes reimagined histories and strong female protagonists.

Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore by Matthew Sullivan was a book that I was hoping would be uplifting, since it was supposedly about a bookstore, and bookstores have always been havens of calm and joy for me. Unfortunately, this book was less about books and bookstores than it was about severely damaged people and a bookseller, Lydia, who insists on treating her store like a homeless shelter for mentally unstable and depressed people, mostly men/boys. Here's the blurb:

When a bookshop patron commits suicide, his favorite store clerk must unravel the puzzle he left behind in this “intriguingly dark, twisty” (Kirkus Reviews) debut novel from an award-winning short story writer.
Lydia Smith lives her life hiding in plain sight. A clerk at the Bright Ideas bookstore, she keeps a meticulously crafted existence among her beloved books, eccentric colleagues, and the BookFrogs—the lost and lonely regulars who spend every day marauding the store’s overwhelmed shelves.
But when Joey Molina, a young, beguiling BookFrog, kills himself in the bookstore’s upper room, Lydia’s life comes unglued. Always Joey’s favorite bookseller, Lydia has been bequeathed his meager worldly possessions. Trinkets and books; the detritus of a lonely, uncared for man. But when Lydia flips through his books she finds them defaced in ways both disturbing and inexplicable. They reveal the psyche of a young man on the verge of an emotional reckoning. And they seem to contain a hidden message. What did Joey know? And what does it have to do with Lydia?
As Lydia untangles the mystery of Joey’s suicide, she unearths a long buried memory from her own violent childhood. Details from that one bloody night begin to circle back. Her distant father returns to the fold, along with an obsessive local cop, and the Hammerman, a murderer who came into Lydia’s life long ago and, as she soon discovers, never completely left.

This is much more of a horror thriller than it is a regular fiction novel, and if I would have known that, I never would have purchased a copy. The story opens with a young man hanging himself, and then readers are 'treated' to details of Lydia's horrific childhood trauma of seeing/hearing her friend's entire family being slaughtered with a hammer by someone known only as the "Hammerman," who, for reasons no one can fathom, leaves Lydia (a child at the time) alive. SPOILERS, what sticks in my craw about this book is that Lydia never puts it together than her friend Raj's insanely violent, jealous and abusive father is the Hammerman, when it would have been obvious to me that because I was his son's friend, I managed to evade his murder spree. Also, Raj's mother is a nutter, to give up her illegitimate child and continue to knuckle under to Raj's father's cruelty. Why do women live with murderers and violent abusers? It makes no sense to me, especially when lives are at stake. Fortunately, there's a reckoning, but why Lydia would even talk to Raj, let alone start a relationship with him, knowing that his father was the man who murdered her childhood and slaughtered an entire family in cold blood, is beyond me. I would run far and fast, from the whole town and all the creepy people in it. I think that Sullivan casts Lydia as a kind of Mother Theresa/Madonna figure here, who saves and soothes all the men and iswilling to forgive and forget her horrific past because she's a tender-hearted woman. Blech. What a sexist cliche. This lends more credence to my theory that most male authors can't write convincing female protagonists without resorting to stereotypes/tropes and cliches. There is also always more violence and violence against women and children in male-authored novels, at least that I've read. This saddens and disgusts me in equal measure. I'd therefore give this book a C, and only recommend it to people who like reading about death, serial killers and depression/trauma.