2 book recommendations: Raw by Mark Haskell Smith and Splitting the Difference by Tré Miller Rodríguez

2 book recommendations, one a very ridiculous, fun reality TV-themed novel, one a moving memoir about death and its aftermath. No relation, save that I just read them both. Found Raw: A Love Story in Portland, Maine at Longfellow Books, found Splitting the Difference: A Heart-Shaped Memoir, a She Writes Press book, via the author's column at Modern Loss. I'm linking to Amazon, because I make a few cents from each purchase through those links, and these days, every penny counts bigtime, but purchase at your favorite bookstore, online or off. Trust me, if Red Bank had a bookstore, I'd be there multiple times a week. If I move, that is something I will look for in my new town!


Raw by Mark Haskell Smith
Buy in print or Kindle
My review:

I stumbled across Raw when I was looking for a light, fun read. I got that and more, including plenty of ridiculousness in this novel about reality TV, publishing, books snobs and adventure. Sepp Gregory a reality star with women lining up for a piece of him--ideally, his impeccable abs that he shows off at almost every opportunity. Sepp is on a book tour for a book his ghostwriter, a struggling Brooklyn author named Curtis, wrote, but that Sepp hasn't read. What happens from there is utterly over the top, including a momentous and game-changing visit to the Playboy Mansion, where Harriet, who up til now has been the epitome of a book snob and easy to hate, takes on a life of her own. It's to Smith's credit that while this book is utterly absurd and about as far from reality as you could get, it's in the most inane and unlikely of the story's adventures that it becomes the most fun. If you're part of the publishing or book blogging world, there's plenty of insider humor, right alongside the most cynical and careerist publicists. But you don't have to be a fan of reality shows, or even books, to enjoy this romp of a novel. In fact, I'd venture that Sepp Gregory, who treats books as pure marketing tools and practically foreign objects, just might enjoy Raw. It's a perfect beach read, whether you're on an actual beach or not, with a bit of snark, and plenty of sex, death and fame.

Splitting the Difference by Tré Miller Rodríguez
Buy in print or Kindle
My review:

I discovered Rodriguez via her column for Modernloss.com, and was intrigued enough to want to check out her memoir. Her husband's death comes at the start of the book; then, tracing backwards, she shares the story of how they got together, her decision to give up her daughter for adoption when she became pregnant at 18, and her brother's death. The core of the book, though, is about the practical matters surrounding the death of her husband of four years, Alberto. The shock of discovering him dead in their bed only hours after she'd seen him alive is vivid and present throughout the story. There's an immediacy to the writing style here that takes readers right into the heart of both grief and coping with the seemingly endless minutiae of death, the ongoing reminders everpresent in their home and beyond. Rodriguez tackles dating, dealing with family (her own and her husband's), the scattering of his ashes in various locations and her eventual reunion with her daughter in a way that made me want to keep reading. The writing and emotion are raw, yet never without care and thoughtfulness. The portrait painted of their relationship, through flashbacks and mementos and memories, is one of a couple who were different in many ways, but had seared their lives together in pretty much every way, which makes the decisions Rodriguez has to make all the more challenging. Is there sex and drugs? Yes, a little, and it's to her credit that she is unapologetic about what she gets out of them. There's no moralizing here about anything, and certainly no sugarcoating, which is what makes this a brave and haunting memoir.

Want to read: Anne of Hollywood by Carol Wolper

A new Carol Wolper novel is a reason to celebrate! I'm looking forward to reading Anne of Hollywood soon. A little birdie is getting me a signed copy. Stay tuned for my review!



Description:

Skirts may be shorter now, and messages sent by iPhone, but passion, intrigue, and a lust for power don’t change. National bestselling author Carol Wolper spins a mesmerizing tale of a twenty-first-century Anne Boleyn.

Wily, intelligent, and seductive, with a dark beauty that stands out among the curvy California beach blondes, Anne attracts the attention of Henry Tudor, the handsome corporate mogul who reigns in Hollywood. Every starlet, socialite, and shark wants a piece of Henry, but he only wants Anne. The question is: can she keep him?

Welcome to a privileged world where hidden motives abound, everyone has something to sell, and safe havens don’t exist. With her older sister Mary, a pathetic example of a royal has-been, Anne schemes to win her beloved Henry in the only way that gives a promise of forever—marriage. Success will mean contending with backstabbing “friends,” Henry’s furious ex-wife, and the machinations of her own ambitious family, and staying married to a man who has more options than most and less guilt than is good for either of them will take all her skill. Anne will do anything to hold on to the man—and the lifestyle—she adores, however, even if sticking your neck out in Hollywood means risking far worse than a broken heart. With Henry’s closest confidante scheming against her, and another beautiful contender waiting in the wings, Anne is fighting for her life. Can she muster the charm and wit to pull off her very own Hollywood ending?

How How to Save a Life by Sara Zarr sucked me in

I have what I guess could be called a bad habit of skipping from one book to another. It's not necessarily because I don't like the one(s) I'm reading, but more that my curiosity about whatever's new compels me to start reading whatever catches my eye, to see if I must read it right away. And in the case of the new YA novel How to Save a Life by Sara Zarr (who's on a book tour), the answer is yes, I need to devour it ASAP. I got it for free from Amazon Vine in the mail today and am already totally engrossed. The story is told from alternating viewpoints, that of Jill, whose father has died ten months previously and her mother decides she wants to adopt a baby, and Mandy, who is pregnant and looking to give her child up for adoption. One of my favorite novels tackling pregnancy and motherhood (and, in that case, OCD) is Little Beauties by Kim Addonizio, which I'd like to reread. The way the three narrators in that story, including a fetus-turned-baby, collide and contradict and interact, is marvelous, but that's another post (been thinking about it, and mentally ill, possibly unreliable narrators and how fascinating they are after finishing excellent OCD young adult novel A Scary Scene in a Scary Movie by Matt Blackstone).



Someday maybe someone can teach me how to properly use Blogger and indent and make things look pretty like I can on Tumblr. Until then, my ham-handed clumsyblogging, alas. Speaking of this blog, I'm looking into revamping it (I know, it's forever overdue, but rent paying takes priority). Stay tuned! From How to Save a Life by Sara Zarr, from Mandy's POV, as she's riding on a train to meet Jill and her mom for the first time:

"Um, hey." He shifts his body so that he's sitting on his side, facing me and leaning close. "It's Peña, by the way. My last name. And I'm..." He laughs. Lines appear around the corners of his eyes, and there's tea on his breath and stubble on his chin. "This is stupid. I'm not really married. I just said that because I thought you were trying to hit on me or something, and it seemed kind of weird, because...well, then I thought obviously picking up some stranger is the last thing on your mind right now. And you're probably half my age, and most likely you have someone, anyway, given..." He gestures to my belly. "That."

This. This rolls inside me, stretches a limb. I touch where it moved and wonder if it can feel my hand there.

"I'm nineteen." Almost.

"There you go. That's exactly half. I'm thirty-eight." He sips form his cup. "So, how long before you're a mother?"

I smile. I'll never be a mother. "About a month, I think."

Alex scratches his stubble. "Most women I know can tell you to the minute."

"I'm different." Being so specific with dates is silly. No one measures a life in weeks and days. You measure it in years and by the things that happen to you, and when this life is a whole year, I won't be in it."

That passages was so bold to me; I'm fascinated by Mandy and what she's going through to deal with her pregnancy, how tough she sounds, even though I'm sure as the novel progresses (I'm on page 22), that toughness will have to crack a little. And the "This rolls inside me" line also was so powerful, and taught me more than that umpteen writing books strewn around my bags and my floor about what I want to learn how to do with my fiction.

Read this: Fathermucker by Greg Olear

I love that this trailer for a book full of snark and sex and suburbia has children's drawings in it. So fitting for a fun read for parents, suburbia dwellers past, future and present, and those who like humor, and dads, and wackiness. I reviewed Fathermucker in Penthouse and definitely encourage you to check it out. Oh, and especially if you're not like me and don't drool over small children and parenting blogs, you'll still like it.






From the official site:

You will like this book if you a) have young children, b) enjoy laughter, and c) can’t get the theme songs to various Nick Jr. television programs out of your head. If you are a subscriber to US Weekly, a resident of New Paltz, N.Y, or a stay-at-home dad, that’s icing on the cake.

Greg, who's also an editor at The Nervous Breakdown, has a great site, fathermucker.com, where you can read all sorts of posts by him and others on parenting. Here's Some Girls and Pretty author Jillian Lauren on "The Art of Bad Parenting":

But the thing about my relationship with my son is that I’m not fake with him. I let him know when I’m frustrated or when I’m ecstatic or when I’m having a hard time paying attention. I tell him when I had a lousy writing day and how that makes me feel sad or angry. I let him know me — his mom. Bad parent. Selfish artist. Who loves him like mad.

Do I think that honesty is better than being patient and empathetic and present at every moment? No, I don’t. But it’s the best I can do while I work on the other stuff.

Flattery will totally get me to buy your book

I was all "Elizabeth Miles knows who I am?" Let me read her YA novel Fury! On my Nook, alongside other YA like the OCD novel A Scary Scene in a Scary Movie by Matt Blackstone (reading September 21st with other YA authors at NYC indie bookstore Bluestockings, which is how I heard of the book) and Burnout by Adrienne Maria Vrettos. Plus a few I'm reviewing and others I want to pitch. Yeah, I constantly battle my love of reading with my love/hate relationship with writing, so when I get to write about books I'm very happy!



Plot description from Amazon:

It’s winter break in Ascension, Maine. The snow is falling and everything looks pristine and peaceful. But all is not as it seems...

Em is thrilled that the guy she’s been into for months is finally noticing her. But if she starts things with him, there’s no turning back. Because his girlfriend is Em’s best friend. And on the other side of town, Chase’s social life is unraveling and the stress of his home life is starting to take its toll. But that’s nothing compared to what’s really haunting him. Chase has done something cruel....And it’s only a matter of time before he’s exposed.

In Ascension, mistakes can be deadly. There are three girls—three beautiful, mysterious girls—to choose who will pay. Em and Chase have been chosen.

Want to read: The Adults by Alison Espach

I have so many books I'm currently reading, in various stages and various ways, and so many waiting to be read, but I am forever hearing about another one that calls out to me. I'm trying to be patient and wade through some I own and get rid of them (yes, me, get rid of books). The Adults by Alison Espach (side note: I don't get Amazon's pricing, but currently the paperback, out on Tuesday, is $9.73 and the Kindle edition is $11.99).



Here's the Publishers Weekly review:

In Espach's charming coming-of-age debut, 14-year-old Emily Vidal's life begins to veer off course at her father's 50th birthday party when he announces that he and her mother are divorcing. The birthday night ends with dad kissing the neighbor, Mrs. Resnick, in the woods, where Emily and Mrs. Resnick's son, Mark, discover them. The disorienting discoveries continue: Mark's ailing father commits suicide, and Mrs. Resnick is pregnant with Emily's dad's baby. With dad off to Prague and her mother undone by the affair and hitting the bottle, Emily loses faith in all the adults around her, even as she is becoming one of them. Emily starts an affair with an English teacher 10 years her senior, mostly to see how far she can go, which turns out to be pretty far. She and the teacher, Jonathan, who leaves teaching to become a lawyer, return to each other again and again as Emily graduates from college and moves to Prague to be with her father. Espach perfects the snarky, postironic deadpan of the 1990s and teenagers everywhere, and her ear for modern speech and eye for fresh detail transform a familiar story into an education in what it means to be a grown-up. (Apr.)

Read ths: Pretty by Jillian Lauren

Some Girls author Jillian Lauren, who I interviewed last year, is back with her first novel, Pretty. It's part of The Nervous Breakdown Book Club and I'm going to finish reading it this weekend. So far it's gripping and the language and story are fierce.



Here's the official description, more on this soon, and check out Jillian's site for her book tour dates!

It’s been one year since the car accident that killed her boyfriend left her scarred and shaken. Flanked by an eccentric posse of friends, she is serving out a self-imposed sentence at a halfway house, while trying to finish cosmetology school. Amid the rampant diagnoses, over-medication, compulsive eating, and acrylic nails of Los Angeles, Bebe looks for something to believe in before something–her past, the dangerously magnetic men in her life, her own bad choices–knocks her off course again.

The Lost is out today, our party is August 25th!

I just ordered big posters from PosterBrain for our big Obsessed and The Lost book party on August 25th! I hope to see you there, where you can eat lots of free cupcakes, hear steamy readings and win prizes, like a signed poster, plus goodies from The Pleasure Chest will be given away.

But what I wanted to tell you is that you can now purchase, in paperback or ebook (out August 1), new paranormal romance The Lost by Caridad Piñeiro! I'll be reviewing it here soon, but definitely check it out and join us to get your book signed!

Hell House comes alive in YA novel Small Town Sinners by Melissa Walker

This book is so so good. I think the trick to writing a YA novel like this is you can't come across like you have all the answers (okay, any novel, really). You can't make fun of your characters. You can condescend to them. You have to live them, you have to make the reader empathize with them even if they don't know what they're talking about. I didn't grow up in a tiny town with nothing to do and had no idea what Hell House was until a few years ago when Julie Klausner acted in the play (make of that what you will, you don't learn a lot about these things in Teaneck or Berkeley). But Lacey wanting to play "Abortion Girl?" I'm so with her. I like Lacey Anne Byer as a character a lot. The first paragraph I quote below, if we take it away from the context of Hell House, well, what teenager hasn't wanted the spotlight? What adult for that matter, whether on a small scale or a big one?

Melissa Walker nails a lot of things, and one of them is teen alienation, even for good girls. It's gripping and I'm only sad I don't have more time to devour this ASAP. Here's the review in the New York Times, which they wisely gave to Carlene Bauer, author of Not That Kind of Girl, who could bring her evangelical upbringing into it.

See also: USA Today, "Young adult novels explore religion:"

The novel was inspired by an article Walker did for ELLEgirl magazine on Hell Houses, haunted houses often run by fundamentalist Christian churches. Their emphasis: people who don't accept Jesus as their savior are condemned to hell.

Also, the heart in the apple on the cover? Genius. Read it!

From Small Town Sinners by Melissa Walker:

Last year I watched Julia Millhouse play a pregnant teenager. When the lights went up in the nursery, where they staged her scene, she said her lines with so much emotion that people in the audience started to cry. I'd see them come through the lobby after the show and hear them talking about her performance. I want that spotlight. I want to be able to affect people that way too.

I've grown up with Hell House all my life, but Dean's cousins in the next county over think it's something weird that religious nuts do. It's not. It's a way to show people the right path. My dad always plays the devil--he thinks it's funny to be the children's pastor and the Antichrist. And Pastor Frist's Jesus bathes Hell in white light at the very end, leading the audience into Heaven (also known as the church library, all done up in white sheets and cotton clouds), where they get decision cars. Most people fill out the cards and agree to at least explore a Christian life. It's a magical weekend and an incredible outreach, especially for young people who don't have a path to Christ like I've grown up with. Mom always reminds me how lucky I am to have that.

I'm sitting with Starla Joy and her sister, Tessa, who's finger-coming her wavy brown hair as we wait to hear about this year's production. Tessa played and EMT last year in the drunk driving scene, and she got to say, "I'm sorry, Mrs. Kerner, your daughter is dead." Everyone thinks she'll get a big part this year since she's pretty much the senior girl with the most rank here. Even in church--especially in church--there's a social hierarchy.

Bob Smith's gay time travel novel Remembrance of Things I Forgot

Bob Smith has read at In The Flesh and is wonderful and hilarious. I highly recommend his novel Selfish and Perverse and the few pages I've read of his new one, Remembrance of Things I Forgot, are wonderful. Here's the first sentence:

It's safe to say your relationship is finished if the only way you can imagine solving your problems is by borrowing a time machine.

I also liked this sentence:

Powrerful forearms always get me; there's something irresistible attractive about a man who looks as if he could break my heart with his bare hands.

I will warn you that if you're a Republican, especially a Log Cabin Republican...you might not love your portrayal in this book. And hopefully that is actually an endorsement for most people reading this blog!



And you can hear Bob read tomorrow night free at Drunken! Careening! Writers! For so long I couldn't attend because my night and DCW were the same, but now I can attend. And I'm reading in November!

Drunken! Careening! Writers!

Isa Coffey

Joel Derfner

Jenifer Levin

Bob Smith

"Glitter and Be Gay"

Thursday, June 23, 7pm

KGB Bar

85 E. 4th St., NYC

FREE

Want to read: Uncommon Criminals by Ally Carter

Uncommon Criminals is the second in a new Ally Carter series and it's wonderful! I both want to read it and am already reading it, almost done. It's a fast-paced read about teenage thieves; in the last book, they were stealing back stolen Holocaust art. This one involves a 97-carat emerald and all sorts of security measures, plus family and romance, but mainly heists. Click here for Ally Carter's book tour dates and visit Heist Society on Facebook to read an excerpt from Uncommon Criminals (it opens with Kat in Moscow stealing from the KGB!).

I read it while getting a pedicure:



I recommend all of Ally Carter's YA novels, both her Gallagher Girls series and this series!

Official description:

Katarina Bishop has worn a lot of labels in her short life: Friend. Niece. Daughter. Thief. But for the last two months she’s simply been known as the girl who ran the crew that robbed the greatest museum in the world. That’s why Kat isn’t surprised when she’s asked to steal the infamous Cleopatra Emerald so it can be returned to its rightful owners. There are only three problems. First, the gem hasn’t been seen in public in thirty years. Second, since the fall of the Egyptian empire and the suicide of Cleopatra, no one who holds the emerald keeps it for long — and in Kat’s world, history almost always repeats itself. But it’s the third problem that makes Kat’s crew the most nervous, and that is . . . the emerald is cursed. Kat might be in way over her head, but she’s not going down without a fight. After all, she has her best friend — the gorgeous Hale — and the rest of her crew with her as they chase the Cleopatra around the globe, dodging curses and realizing that the same tricks and cons her family has used for centuries are useless this time. Which means, this time, Katarina Bishop is making up her own rules.

Want to read: Break the Skin by Lee Martin

I have this book and plan to read it soon. I was very impressed by Lee Martin's interview at Amazon and other postings I've read on his blog about writing, aside from regarding this specific book, like this post on whether writing can be taught:

Can we teach someone how to write? That question comes up quite often within the community of folks who do exactly that for their livelihood, and I’m always a little puzzled when the answer is sometimes no.

Of course, we can teach someone how to write. We do it each year in our workshops, our literature seminars, our thesis directing, our informal conversations in this place or that, and in writing of our own. We teach technique, we teach the habits of the process and the work ethic that they require. I happen to believe that we can also teach students how to adjust their vision so that they more readily note the contradictions and complexities of the world around them. I believe we can encourage them to think in terms of opposites so they see the plurality of any one character or situation. We do it by talking about published work that does exactly that and by pointing out what a writer has done to make the vision of that story, poem, essay, novel more deeply felt and more multi-layered with different levels of emotion and intellect, often contradictory in nature.

So yes, this tattooed lady, who is just about done with the excellent tattoo mystery I don't want to end, Ink Flamingos, is looking forward to reading Break The Skin.

From the interview with Lee Martin at Amazon by Dani Shapiro that so intrigued me:

Shapiro: Miss Baby works as a tattoo artist, a profession which I imagine you didn’t know much about at the outset. Did you know you were going to write about a tattoo artist when you were first beginning the book? How did you go about your research? (Any tattoos?) Why did it seem important that Miss Baby be in this line of work?

Martin: Well now, what makes you think that I didn’t at some point work as a tattoo artist? In between the years when I cooked crystal meth, robbed banks, and worked as a hit man, maybe I was pounding ink. (Nah, that sentence was just a feeble attempt to establish my street cred.) After all, as one review of the novel says, I’m “crackling with dark deeds and bad intentions...” I love that line! I want it to be part of my introduction at future readings and events: “Here he is, crackling with dark deeds and bad intentions, Lee Martin.” Ha! I told my students that and they laughed so hard you could see how far from the truth of me such a description actually is...or is it? Hmmm...I’ll never tell, nor will I reveal my tattoos, not even the ones that glow in the dark.

My research involved a conversation here, a visit there, some things read, some things watched--just the usual methods of immersing oneself in an unfamiliar world. I’m always fascinated with the details and the lingo of someone else’s job, and as soon as Miss Baby stepped onto the corner of Fry and Oak Street in Denton, Texas, I knew she had to be coming from a tattoo parlor. Don’t ask me how I knew that. I just did. I like to think that my subconscious mind had already started to sense the rich possibilities with metaphor in this practice of drilling into the skin and leaving something to live in scar tissue.



Here's the book's official description, via Lee Martin's website:

Laney—a skinny, awkward teenager alone in the world--thinks she's found a kindred spirit in thirty-five-year old Delilah. "When I was with her," Laney says, "I felt closest to being the person I was meant to be...We could have been sisters, big and little, which some people thought we were." Then the police come to ask Laney questions and she finds herself reconstructing a story of suspense, deceit, and revenge, but also "a story of love, no matter how roughed up and ugly and stained." A story that will haunt her forever.

Seven hundred miles away, in Texas, Miss Baby has the hardened heart of a woman who has been used by men in every possible way, yet she is desperate for true love. When she meets a stranger, a man who claims he can't remember his real name or his past but who seems gentle and trusting, Miss Baby thinks she may have finally found someone to love, someone who will protect her from the abusive men who fill her past.

But Miss Baby and Laney are connected by a terrible crime and bit by bit, the complex web of deceptions and seemingly small misjudgments they've each helped to create starts to unravel. Action, speculation, and contradiction play off one another as the story is told through their first-person voices, which keep you nervously guessing all the way to the shocking, tragic climax. BREAK THE SKIN is a novel about "wanting to matter to someone, wanting it so badly that you did things you never could have imagined, and you swore they were right, all for the sake of love."

Want to read: What Would My Cell Phone Do?

I've actually started this YA novel, What Would My Cell Phone Do?, by Micol Ostow and it's a fun sendup of Dr. Phil and a cute romance. I recommend it! The back cover is also pretty chihuahua-tastic.

From YA Book Central:

When Aggie Eckhart's family moves from Miami, Florida, to Denville, Alaska, because of her father's job, Aggie feels like a fish out of water.

Not only is frozen Denville a far cry from sunny Miami, but she's got no friends, her mother is driving her crazy, and she loses her cell phone within the first month - cutting off her lifeline to civilization.

But when an online search for her phone (using the schmancy built-in GPS tracker) reveals that the cell is enjoying life up north much more than Aggie is, she adopts a whole new outlook. No more woe-is-me, now it's all WWMCPD (What Would My Cell Phone Do)? And before Aggie knows it, things are looking a whole lot brighter in this charming, fun, and lighthearted YA romance.

Want to read: A Pug's Tale by Alison Pace

I've been a fan of Alison Pace's dog-themed novels since the beginning, and interviewed her for Gothamistback in the day. She has a new book out called A Pug's Tale. Below is the official description; click here to read an excerpt.



There are pugs in the Metropolitan Museum of Art!

Hope McNeill has worked at the Metropolitan Museum of Art for years, but this is the first time she's been able to bring along her pug, Max. (Officially at least. Previously she's had to smuggle him in inside her tote bag.)

The occasion: a special "Pug Night" party in honor of a deep-pocketed donor. Max and his friends are having a ball stalking the hors d'oeuvres and getting rambunctious, and making Hope wonder if this is also the last time she gets to bring Max to the museum.

But when a prized painting goes missing, the Met needs Hope's--and Max's--help. In her quest for the culprit, Hope searches for answers with an enigmatic detective, a larger-than-life society heiress, a lady with a shih tzu in a stroller, and her arguably intuitive canine. With luck, she'll find some inspiration on her trips to Pug Hill before the investigation starts going downhill...

And the book trailer about the book and why Alison Pace loves pugs:

"Writer's porn"

I've ordered this book because I'm at this point with my YA novel where...well, frankly, I'm not actively writing it, but I'm ready to. I'm excited about the story and wishing i hadn't gone to California in January so I could take a week and go to some magical place and write. That I might do next year, but this year, I am stuck with the constraints of real life, which means fitting writing in to a full-time job, part-time blogging, freelancing, dating, family, social life, etc. Not easy when you're a natural procrastinator. But I could and do come up with zillions of excuses not to work and none of them are good ones. Ultimately, if you want to do something, you will do it. I know that very, very well.

I read novelist Justine Musk's blog Tribal Writer for inspiration to work, and she writes of Alan Watts' The 90-Day Novel:

I like to think of writing fiction as a difficult and intricate kind of magic.
Magic = skills + art.

You need to learn a rather stunning array of skills, whether it’s the rules of decent grammar or the principles of storytelling, and then you need to transform them into something your own. The dancer becomes the dance. You don’t see the plot points, you only experience story.

So I love to read books and articles about how to write fiction. I think of it as writer’s porn.

So I guess we'll see. My goal is to be done with my novel by Labor Day. I hope this book can guide me in the right direction of how to pull off these characters who are less than half my age and live in an age of technology I couldn't have imaged as a teenager, and barely can now (it's a contemporary, but technology plays a huge role).

You can also check out the90daynovel.com

New Banana Yoshimoto novel The Lake

I just found out about this book today and am bursting with excitement! I discovered Banana Yoshimoto during college at Cody's Books (RIP) and was drawn to her name, colorful covers and colorful characters. I haven't read her in years, though I should go back and reread her work. I'm thrilled that Thought Catalog has a new books column which some great recommendations (Jezebel blogger Anna North's America Pacifica was already on my to-read list) and that it told me about The Lake. Here's what reviewer Kevin Nguyen says about Yoshimoto's latest:

The book’s narrator and her love interest, Nakajima, (which may stretch the definitions of “love” for some) engage in long discussions about their feelings, explaining exactly how they feel. The result is a series of awkward exchanges that are sterile and devoid of emotion. Initially, I chalked it up to sloppy translating, but it becomes apparent that Yoshimoto’s simplicity — both in prose and narrative — speaks to a mastery of form. She is methodical in her pacing, delicate with her dialogue. The horrors from Nakajima’s past, which reveal themselves late in the book, feel inevitable but unpredictable.

Though it may come across as shallow at first, the depth of Yoshimoto’s minimalism reveals itself days after you finish reading. When I got to the last page of The Lake, I felt largely unsatisfied, but a month later, I find myself returning to the book with some regularity. Even at fewer than 150 pages, The Lake will haunt you.

Also, hi beautiful book cover:

3 novels I'm reading: Abandon, family, Skinny

No time to go into more about these books that are all different from each other. Probably, even though it's paranormal and based on Dante's Inferno, Meg Cabot's Abandon is the lightest. family not only has chilling subject matter, but it's told in a chilling way that's also disconcerting (lowercase "i"s). You can read an excerpt of Skinny at Jezebel (I'm not anywhere near that part yet) and an interview at Crushable. If you're wondering, I got all these in the last two days. I'm also reading a few books I'm reviewing, and want to blog soon about the extremely fascinating Bobby Fischer biography Endgame by Frank Brady which was utterly engrossing. And I bought the first two, a copy of Skinny was sent to me by the publisher, Harper Perennial.

Author sites and Twitter feeds:

Meg Cabot (@megcabot)

Micol Ostow (@micolz)

Diana Spechler (@dianaspechler)

Cover image links go to Amazon, where I got the plot descriptions from:


Abandon by Meg Cabot

Though she tries returning to the life she knew before the accident, Pierce can't help but feel at once a part of this world, and apart from it. Yet she's never alone . . . because someone is always watching her. Escape from the realm of the dead is impossible when someone there wants you back.

But now she's moved to a new town. Maybe at her new school, she can start fresh. Maybe she can stop feeling so afraid.

Only she can't. Because even here, he finds her. That's how desperately he wants her back. She knows he's no guardian angel, and his dark world isn't exactly heaven, yet she can't stay away . . . especially since he always appears when she least expects it, but exactly when she needs him most.

But if she lets herself fall any further, she may just find herself back in the one place she most fears: the Underworld.


family by Micol Ostow

It is a day like any other when seventeen-year-old Melinda Jensen hits the road for San Francisco, leaving behind her fractured home life and a constant assault on her self-esteem. Henry is the handsome, charismatic man who comes upon her, collapsed on a park bench, and offers love, a bright new consciousness, and—best of all—a family. One that will embrace her and give her love. Because family is what Mel has never really had. And this new family, Henry’s family, shares everything. They share the chores, their bodies, and their beliefs. And if Mel truly wants to belong, she will share in everything they do. No matter what the family does, or how far they go.

Told in episodic verse, family is a fictionalized exploration of cult dynamics, loosely based on the Manson Family murders of 1969. It is an unflinching look at people who are born broken, and the lengths they’ll go to to make themselves “whole” again.


Skinny by Diana Spechler

After her father’s death, twenty-six-year-old Gray Lachmann finds herself compulsively eating. Desperate to stop bingeing, she abandons her life in New York City for a job at a southern weight-loss camp. There, caught among the warring egos of her devious co-counselor, Sheena; the self-aggrandizing camp director, Lewis; his attractive assistant, Bennett; and a throng of combative teenage campers, she is confronted by a captivating mystery: her teenage half-sister, Eden, whom Gray never knew existed. Now, while unraveling her father’s lies, Gray must tackle her own self-deceptions and take control of her body and her life.

Cupcakes Take the Cake's April meetup: Book party for novel Semi-Sweet

Reposted from Cupcakes Take the Cake.



For our April Meetup, Cupcakes Take The Cake has partnered with Hachette Book Group to celebrate the release of Roisin Meaney's new book, Semi-Sweet: A Novel of Love and Cupcakes. We will be having a book party on Thursday April 28 at Solas in the East Village and eating cupcakes from Baked By Melissa. RSVP on our Meetup page.







Author Roisin Meaney will be at the book party.

Novels and short stories in mental health and running terms according to John McCaffrey

From Bang the Keys author Jill Dearman's interview with John McCaffrey at the Barnes & Noble site - found via Jill's site bangthekeys.com:

JD: How is writing a novel different from writing a short story?

JM: I also work in the mental health field, and I often think that writing a novel is like being in long-term therapy, where you lay on the couch twice a week and sob about the time your mother made you wear a bib to school (not that that happened to me). Short story writing, on the other hand, is like being in crisis counseling – you just need a few sessions to get through a tough period. I’ll spin another analogy - I feel you must approach the writing of a novel with the determination of a marathon runner, prepare for it with diligence, and then once the gun sounds fight to the finish line. A short story is more a sprint, and a good sprinter runs on nerve just as much as legs. I also think that unlike a short story you can meander in a novel, take more sidetracks, since the reader has made a commitment to a longer work, and thus will conceivable go with you in your fictional travels – as long as you invite them nicely.

Free Kindle download today only of Blue Boy by Rakesh Satyal

Today only, download the novel Blue Boy FREE on Kindle by Rakesh Satyal.


Meet Kiran Sharma: lover of music, dance, and all things sensual; son of immigrants, social outcast, spiritual seeker. A boy who doesn't quite understand his lot — until he realizes he's a god...

As an only son, Kiran has obligations — to excel in his studies, to honor the deities, to find a nice Indian girl, and, above all, to make his mother and father proud — standard stuff for a boy of his background. If only Kiran had anything in common with the other Indian kids besides the color of his skin. They reject him at every turn, and his cretinous public schoolmates are no better. Cincinnati in the early 1990's isn't exactly a hotbed of cultural diversity, and Kiran's not-so-well-kept secrets don't endear him to any group. Playing with dolls; choosing ballet over basketball; taking the annual talent show way too seriously...the very things that make Kiran who he is also make him the star of his own personal freak show...

Surrounded with examples of upstanding Indian Americans — in his own home, in his temple, at the weekly parties given by his parents' friends — Kiran nevertheless finds it impossible to get the knack of "normalcy." And then one fateful day, a revelation: perhaps his desires aren't too earthly, but too divine. Perhaps the solution to the mystery of his existence has been before him since birth. For Kiran Sharma, a long, strange trip is about to begin — a journey so sublime, so ridiculous, so painfully beautiful, that it can only lead to the truth...





And a bonus...Rakesh performing at In The Flesh Reading Series earlier this year. He will perform at the finale on December 16th too! Clearly, you don't want to miss it (for many reasons, there will also be 500 free cupcakes and lots of awesome writers, and I'm making a special song request of Rakesh).