My Foot is too Big for the Glass Slipper

Author: Gabrielle Reece
Genre: Memoir
Publisher: Scribner, 2013
Pages: 224
Rating: Do Not Recommend

Synopsis: So you got the guy on the big white horse, and the beautiful little mermaids, and the picket fence, and your life isn’t . . . perfect in every imaginable way?

You’re not alone. In 1997, Gabrielle Reece married the man of her dreams—professional surfer Laird Hamilton—in a flawless Hawaiian ceremony. Naturally, the couple filed for divorce four years later.

In the end they worked it out, but not without the ups and downs, minor hiccups, and major setbacks that beset every modern family.

With hilarious stories, wise insights, and concrete takeaways on topics ranging from navigating relationship issues to aging gracefully to getting smart about food, My Foot Is Too Big for the Glass Slipper is the brutally honest, wickedly funny, and deeply helpful portrait of the humor, grace, and humility it takes to survive the happily ever after.

Review: I was expecting something more along the lines of Ali Wentworth's "Ali in Wonderland" when I chose this book. It was not nearly as amusing, but that wasn't its purpose either so maybe that's an unfair statement.

A few snippets were so good I read them to my fiance. A few times I laughed out loud. But, more than a few times I felt as if I was being preached at and I cringed. The book's saving grace was that I completely agree with Reece on her philosophy of raising children and mostly agree with her take on the role of a wife.

I am giving this a "Do Not Recommend" simply because the wisdom and information imparted isn't new or compelling. It's one woman's take on things you already know.

Cloudland

Author: Joseph Olsham
Genre: Mystery
Publisher: St. Martin's Press, 2013
Pages: 304
Rating: Recommend

Synopsis: A stunning literary thriller set in rural Vermont from the much praised author of Nightswimmer and Clara's Heart.

Once a major reporter for a national newspaper, Catherine Winslow has retreated to the Upper Valley of Vermont to write a household hints column. While out walking during an early spring thaw, Catherine discovers the body of a woman leaning against an apple tree near her house. From the corpse’s pink parka, Winslow recognizes her as the latest victim of a serial killer, a woman reported missing weeks before during a blizzard.

When her neighbor, a forensic psychiatrist, is pulled into the investigation, Catherine begins to discover some unexpected connections to the serial murders. One is that the murders might be based on a rare unfinished Wilkie Collins novel that is missing from her personal library. The other is her much younger lover from her failed affair has unexpectedly resurfaced and is trying to maneuver his way back into her affections.

Elegant, haunting and profoundly gripping, Cloudland is an ingenious psychological trap baited with murder, deception and the intricacies of desire.

Review: Even though I'm having a really hard time concentrating on anything but my wedding which is at the end of next month, this book did draw me in.

Probably longer than it needed to be with maybe one red herring too many, this book is still enjoyable.

If you pay any attention to the dates on this blog, you can surmise that this book took me quite some time to read. Lately I had been reading books at lightening speed, almost making it a second job to have material with which to update my blog. I needed to take a little break. I went back to reading a chapter or two before bed rather than reading every free moment I could find, including during lunch at work.

It Happened in Boston

Author: Julia Boulton Clinger
Genre: Non-Fiction
Publisher: TwoDot, 2007
Pages: 160
Rating: Recommend

Synopsis: From a witch hanging on Boston Common to the first time two brides legally walked down the aisle together, It Happened in Boston offers a unique look at intriguing people and episodes from the history of Beantown.
Learn about the incredible, 300-mile journey that led to the British evacuation of Boston in 1776. Meet the heroic soldiers of the Massachusetts Fifty-fourth, the first African-American regiment to take up arms in the Civil War. And read the rap sheets of Boston’s most notorious criminals, including the slippery thieves who stripped $300 million in art from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.
 
In an easy-to-read style that’s entertaining and informative, author Julia Boulton Clinger recounts some of the most captivating moments from Boston’s past.

Review: One of my favorite cities to visit (Boston) and tidbits of history? Yes, please.

Because my fiance has family in the Boston area, I have the luxury of always knowing I'll be back each time I visit. We have explored most of the "must-do" items on the Boston Bucket List, and I read this book to see if there were any other places of interest we might want to visit on our next trip next summer.

And just an FYI, another great book about Boston is Dark Tide.

Driving the Saudis

Author: Jayne Amelia Larson
Genre: Memoir
Publisher: Free Press, 2012
Pages: 208
Rating: Do Not Recommend

Synopsis: After more than a decade of working in Hollywood, actress Jayne Amelia Larson found herself out of luck, out of work, and out of prospects. Without telling her friends or family, she took a job as a limousine driver, thinking that the work might be a good way to dig out of debt while meeting A-list celebrities and important movie moguls.

When she got hired to drive for the Saudi royal family vacationing in Beverly Hills, Larson thought she’d been handed the golden ticket. She’d heard stories of the Saudis giving $20,000 tips and Rolex watches to their drivers. But when the family arrived at LAX with millions of dollars in cash—money that they planned to spend over the next couple of weeks—Larson realized that she might be in for the ride of her life. With awestruck humor and deep compassion, she describes her eye-opening adventures as the only female in a detail of over forty assigned to drive a beautiful Saudi princess, her family, and their extensive entourage.

To be a good chauffeur means to be a “fly on the wall,” to never speak unless spoken to, to never ask questions, to allow people to forget that you are there. The nature of the employment—Larson was on call 24 hours a day and 7 days a week—and the fact that she was the only female driver gave her an up close and personal view of one of the most closely guarded monarchies in the world, a culture of great intrigue and contradiction, and of unimaginable wealth.

The Saudis traveled large: they brought furniture, Persian rugs, Limoges china, lustrous silver serving trays, and extraordinary coffees and teas from around the world. The family and their entourage stayed at several luxury hotels, occupying whole floors of each (the women housed separately from the Saudi men, whom Larson barely saw). Each day the royal women spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on plastic surgery and mega-shopping sprees on Rodeo Drive. Even the tea setup had its very own hotel room, while the servants were crammed together on rollaway beds in just a few small rooms down the hall.

Larson witnessed plenty of drama: hundreds of hours of cosmetic surgery recovery, the purchasing of Hermès Birkin bags of every color, roiling battles among the upper-echelon entourage members all jockeying for a better position in the palace hierarchy, and the total disregard that most of the royal entourage had for their exhausted staff. But Driving the Saudis also reveals how Larson grew to understand the complicated nuances of a society whose strict customs remain intact even across continents. She saw the intimate bond that connected the royals with their servants and nannies; she befriended the young North African servant girls, who supported whole families back home by working night and day for the royals but were not permitted to hold their own passports lest they try to flee.

While experiencing a life-changing “behind the veil” glimpse into Saudi culture, Larson ultimately discovers that we’re all very much the same everywhere—the forces that corrupt us, make us desperate, and make us human are surprisingly universal.

Review: Driving the Saudis was mildly amusing, not a difficult read although not particularly compelling, and relatively short. However, the last chapter made reading the entire book worthwhile (and if you skip ahead to the last chapter it won't mean anything). From the author's tip to a Saudi's view of the electric car - that's where the surprise and entertainment value is in this book.

That said, it's not a book I recommend for the simple reason that it's just not as good as it could be. There were chapters that were just flat out boring. If this were longer than 208 pages, I probably would have thrown in the towel. I also don't think the average American wants to know what really happens to the $3.40 per gallon that he or she just spent at the gas pump.

Family Tree

Author: Barbara Delinsky
Genre: Fiction
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2007
Pages: 368
Rating: Recommend

Synopsis: For as long as she can remember, Dana Clarke has longed for the stability of home and family. Now she has married a man she adores, whose heritage can be traced back to the Mayflower, and she is about to give birth to their first child. But what should be the happiest day of her life becomes the day her world falls apart. Her daughter is born beautiful and healthy, and in addition, unmistakably African-American in appearance. Dana’s determination to discover the truth about her baby’s heritage becomes a shocking, poignant journey. A superbly crafted novel, Family Tree asks penetrating questions about family and the choices people make in times of crisis.

Review: I've read several Barbara Delinsky novels and they never disappoint. I chose this one because the main character's name is Dana. That never happens.

The story line is not entirely unpredictable or as poignant as the synopsis suggests, but it's still an interesting read. I'm ready to delve back into non-fiction, but this was good.

Vanishing Giants

Author: Robert Silverberg
Genre: Non-Fiction
Publisher: Simon & Schuster, 1969
Pages: 160
Rating: Recommend

Synopsis: Two members of a family of trees that girded the earth twenty-five million years ago are making their last stand in California. These cousin evergreens, the elegant redwood of the Pacific Coast and the giant sequoia of the Sierra Nevada, are the world's largest living things and nearly the oldest. Their family traces its ancestry to the time of dinosaurs, when no flowering plants or leafy trees yet existed. And trees that are alive today were seedlings as much as 3,000 years ago.

Galileo thought no tree could rise to even three hundred feet, but some redwoods approach four hundred. How a tree can support this height and why it probably cannot grow much taller are just two of the fascinating questions Robert Silverberg answers. His lively narrative tells the story of the discovery of the trees, discusses the individual characteristics of the two species, and explains their place in the world of living things. The conflict between lumbermen and conservationists begun nearly one hundred years ago is described right up to the creation of a new national redwood park in the fall of 1968. Information of interest to both tourists and conservationists is included, along with a stunning collection of photographs.

Review: I had never thought about it before the redwoods are leftovers from the time of dinosaurs when everything on Earth was larger than life. It's a glimpse of what we consider ancient, and should be a reminder that life as we know it now may not always be this way.

This book as it was pretty academic in nature, but it is only 160 pages so there isn't a huge time commitment involved.

This book was published in 1969, and that made for interesting reading as well. Conservation has come a long way in the last forty plus years, in ways the author could not have imagined.

Vanishing Giants was a nice complement to American Canopy which I read earlier in the month. I feel ready to explore the redwood forests on my honeymoon next June.

Daughter of Empire

Author: Lady Pamela Hicks
Genre: Memoir
Publisher: Simon & Schuster, 2013
Pages: 256
Rating: Do Not Recommend

Synopsis: A magical memoir about a singular childhood in England and India by the daughter of Lord Louis and Edwina Mountbatten

Few families can boast of not one but two saints among their ancestors, a great-aunt who was the last tsarina of Russia, a father who was Grace Kelly’s pinup, and a grandmother who was not only a princess but could also argue the finer points of naval law. Pamela Mountbatten entered a remarkable family when she was born at the very end of the Roaring Twenties.

As the younger daughter of the glamorous heiress Edwina Ashley and Lord Louis Mountbatten, Pamela spent much of her early life with her sister, nannies, and servants—and a menagerie that included, at different times, a bear, two wallabies, a mongoose, and a lion. Her parents each had lovers who lived openly with the family. The house was always full of guests like Sir Winston Churchill, Noël Coward, Douglas Fairbanks, and the Duchess of Windsor (who brought a cold cooked chicken as a hostess gift).

When World War II broke out, Lord Mountbatten was in command of HMS Kelly before being appointed chief of Combined Operations, and Pamela and her sister were sent to live on Fifth Avenue in New York City with Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt. In 1947, her parents were appointed to be the last viceroy and vicereine of India and oversee the transfer of power to an independent Indian government. Amid the turmoil of political change, Pamela worked with student leaders, developed warm friendships with Gandhi and Nehru, and witnessed both the joy of Independence Day and its terrible aftermath. Soon afterwards, she was a bridesmaid in Princess Elizabeth’s wedding to Prince Philip, and was a lady-in-waiting at the young princess’s side when she learned her father had died and she was queen.

Vivid and engaging, well-paced and superbly detailed, this witty, intimate memoir is an enchanting lens through which to view the early part of the twentieth century.

Review: Few people are born into wealth and fame, let alone royalty. Most of us we can only try to imagine such lifestyles, and the experiences that come with having the world at your fingertips. These glimpses into their world are few and far between. 

Maybe if this was the first memoir I'd read, I would leave it with a different opinion, but I thought it was pedestrian in nature, and at times, downright snooze-worthy. Where was the adventure and the excitement? What are Lady Hicks' takeaways from all of her experiences? This was written more from someone who had researched her life after the fact than as the person who actually lived it.

As a writing professional, I wanted to mark up this book with a red pen, asking her to develop certain thoughts and events.

Daughter of Empire was certainly not a bad read, but with the amount of memoirs published each year, this one can be skipped. I was relieved it was only 240 pages.

Necessary Lies

Author: Diane Chamberlain
Genre: Fiction
Publisher: St. Martin's Press, 2013
Pages: 352
Rating: Highly Recommend

Synopsis: Bestselling author Diane Chamberlain delivers a breakout book about a small southern town fifty years ago, and the darkest—and most hopeful—places in the human heart

After losing her parents, fifteen-year-old Ivy Hart is left to care for her grandmother, older sister and nephew as tenants on a small tobacco farm. As she struggles with her grandmother’s aging, her sister’s mental illness and her own epilepsy, she realizes they might need more than she can give.

When Jane Forrester takes a position as Grace County’s newest social worker, she doesn't realize just how much her help is needed. She quickly becomes emotionally invested in her clients' lives, causing tension with her boss and her new husband. But as Jane is drawn in by the Hart women, she begins to discover the secrets of the small farm—secrets much darker than she would have guessed. Soon, she must decide whether to take drastic action to help them, or risk losing the battle against everything she believes is wrong.

Set in rural Grace County, North Carolina in a time of state-mandated sterilizations and racial tension, Necessary Lies tells the story of these two young women, seemingly worlds apart, but both haunted by tragedy. Jane and Ivy are thrown together and must ask themselves: how can you know what you believe is right, when everyone is telling you it’s wrong?

Review: Since I have come to prefer reading non-fiction, I'm always surprised when I truly enjoy a work of fiction. I could not put this book down. I got sucked into Ivy and Jane's world immediately, and held on until the last page. I expected twists, turns, and surprises in the story, but there were more than I imagined.

A few reviews online criticized the ending, but I loved it. Some of the details were not surprising, but the book ends as a neatly wrapped package.

I'm looking forward to reading more Diane Chamberlain novels in the future. It's smart fiction.

Other Diane Chamberlain novels:
The Stolen Marriage
Reflection
Summer's Child

American Canopy

Author: Eric Rutkow
Genre: Non-Fiction
Publisher: Scribner, 2012
Pages: 406
Rating: Recommend

Synopsis: Eric Rutkow’s “deeply fascinating” (The Boston Globe) work shows how trees were essential to the early years of the republic and indivisible from the country’s rise as both an empire and a civilization. Among American Canopy’s many captivating stories: the Liberty Trees, where colonists gathered to plot rebellion against the British; Henry David Thoreau’s famous retreat into the woods; the creation of New York City’s Central Park; the great fire of 1871 that killed a thousand people in the lumber town of Peshtigo, Wisconsin; the fevered attempts to save the American chestnut and the American elm from extinction; and the controversy over spotted owls and the old-growth forests they inhabited. Rutkow also explains how trees were of deep interest to such figures as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Teddy Roosevelt, and Franklin Roosevelt, who oversaw the planting of some three billion trees nationally in his time as president.

Never before has anyone treated our country’s trees and forests as the subject of a broad historical study, and the result is an accessible, informative, and thoroughly entertaining read. Audacious in its four-hundred-year scope, authoritative in its detail, and elegant in its execution, American Canopy is perfect for history buffs and nature lovers alike and announces Eric Rutkow as a major new author of popular history.

Review: I have an irrational fear of trees. Some trees don't both me at all like the blue spruce sentinels strategically placed in my front yard. Merely the sight of others makes my pulse race and fill me with a fear that I don't even find while walking in dark alleys at night (not that I do this often, or at all).

I don't understand this fear, and I've certainly had many people laugh at me over this fear. Nonetheless, I have an incredible desire to see the tallest trees in the world. Partly because I don't think a photograph can do them justice, and partly because I want to see how I react to them. Can we say moth to flame?

I am trying to understand this irrational fear. Why some trees send me into a near panic attack, and others are mundane and I barely notice their presence.

I don't know if this book gave me a new appreciation for the trees that raise my blood pressure. But, this book is history told from the standpoint of how trees affected the growth and development of the United States. It's a brand new way of studying American History, and adds another layer as to how different historical events are all tied together.

It took a long time (nearly 2 weeks) to read this book, and my fiance asked me if it's because it was dry. It was not dry. It was actually very interesting, and gave me new perspective. Perhaps this book is to be savored like the first fresh fruit of the season, grown on one of America's trees. The author sums it up perfectly, "No one has ever treated American trees in all their dimensions as a subject for historical study." 

Margot

Author: Jillian Cantor
Genre: Historical Fiction
Publisher: Penguin Group, 2013
Pages: 352
Rating: Highly Recommend


Synopsis: Anne Frank has long been a symbol of bravery and hope, but there were two sisters hidden in the annex, two young Jewish girls, one a cultural icon made famous by her published diary and the other, nearly forgotten.

In the spring of 1959, The Diary of Anne Frank has just come to the silver screen to great acclaim, and a young woman named Margie Franklin is working in Philadelphia as a secretary at a Jewish law firm. On the surface she lives a quiet life, but Margie has a secret: a life she once lived, a past and a religion she has denied, and a family and a country she left behind.

Margie Franklin is really Margot Frank, older sister of Anne, who did not die in Bergen-Belsen as reported, but who instead escaped the Nazis for America. But now, as her sister becomes a global icon, Margie’s carefully constructed American life begins to fall apart. A new relationship threatens to overtake the young love that sustained her during the war, and her past and present begin to collide. Margie is forced to come to terms with Margot, with the people she loved, and with a life swept up into the course of history.

 

Review: It's been a long time since I had the luxury of reading a book cover-to-cover in one sitting, but that's exactly what I did. In 3 hours I began and finished this novel.

It will never be called a great piece of American Literature, but the author wove a believable, touching tribute to Margot Frank. As Cantor says, she gave Margot her happy ending.

As I do anytime I read books pertaining to the Holocaust, I shed many tears for victims whose lives and legacies were cut short.