Buzzing on Books

Opinionated book reviews written with the help of wine 

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Waiting to Grow Out of It: A light review of You’ll Grow Out of It

I was thrilled to follow up The Girl With the Lower Back Tattoo by You’ll Grow Out of It. The book was written by the head writer on Amy Schumer’s TV show, Jessi Klein. This accidental line up got me excited to read another funny, feminist novel by a powerful, successful woman. Thankfully, You’ll Grow Out of It did not disappoint.

I am ashamed to say that prior to listening to Fresh Air (an NPR podcast) segment, I was blissfully unaware that Klein was in any way associated with Schumer, much less the head writer on her show. I am however thrilled to say that I now have another beloved woman comedian to add to my list of girl crushes.

I would have to say the best part about You’ll Grow Out of It has to be that Klein writes for women of all ages. Whether you’re young and dating, in your 20s and dying to get your boyfriend to propose, in your 30s trying to figure out your career or 40 and struggling to get pregnant, Klein is writing for the female masses. She tells stories about her first heartbreak, deciding to make therapy a part of her everyday life, her successful career, the challenge to get her finance to propose to her, and her struggles with fertility. I adore this relatable style of writing and when humor is added into the mix I become fully invested.

Since finishing You’ll Grow Out of It I have been scouring the internet for any other writings, television shows, or stand up clips by Klein because, unlike Schumer, her humor is more low key but still hilarious and entertaining.

The only complaint I have about the book was my inability to identify what stage of life Klein is in at the time she was writing the book. In some parts she is dating Mike, other times she is engaged to him, other times she is pregnant, others she is not able to get pregnant. I totally understand that writing a book take time (and I am positive it would take me about 20 years to write a book) but I would have been able to follow her life easier if she would have arranged the chapter differently. However, this complaint is not enough to keep me from giving the book a four out of five wine glass rating.

I would highly recommend this book to anyone trying to fill their book shelf or brain with fabulous books by fun and spirted women comedians. So head to the closest bookstore or, more realistically, Amazon and pick up You’ll Grow Out of It.

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I Laughed, I Cried, I Tweeted: Review of The Girl With the Lower Back Tattoo

First time novelist but long time comedian Amy Schumer has captured my attention yet again. I love her stand up so I knew I was going to enjoy her book, but I had no idea I would love is as much as I did. The Girl With the Lower Back Tattoo being one of many books written by comedians I have read, I fully expected it to be like all of the others, but I was so wrong. Similar to other comedian-turned-authors, Schumer opened up about the struggle to break into the industry, her sexual history, and sexism in the industry, but unlike others she touched on so much more than that.

The first in a string of important yet difficult topics Schumer takes on is rape. Although she doesn’t call what happened to her when she was a teenager “rape” and has said to several sources she doesn’t consider it rape (which is totally, 100 percent fine, because FEMINISM), she does tell about the less than ideal way she lost her virginity. After recounting the haunting story, she encourages women to take control of their sexuality and informs her readers that one in every six women is raped. This chapter lacked the humor readers are used to seeing from Schumer, but for a good reason. I am a firm believer that any time sexual assault can be discussed, it should.

Following rape, Schumer goes on to discuss how she was in a violent, abusive relationship in her 20s. By this point in the book my mind was already made up that Schumer was a goddess and this was the best memoir I had ever laid eyes on, and it just kept getting better. In this chapter she makes it a point to tell her audience that victims of domestic violence aren’t always shy, quiet women. I loved this chapter so much because although I had been told domestic abuse victims aren’t always timid, insecure girls, I still (unfortunately) believed deep down they were. I love how Schumer was able to change my perspective so quickly on this very relevant and important issue.

My favorite, and the most heart wrenching, chapter in the book by far was when Schumer breached the controversial topic of gun violence. As many know, in July of 2015 a very mentally disturbed man entered a theater in Louisiana during a showing of Schumer’s movie Trainwreck and killed two young women and wounded nine others. As Schumer discussed the heartbreak she felt upon learning this news I couldn’t help but break down and cry. Gun violence is a very serious issue in our country and to hear a comedian talk about her new found passion in gun law advocacy overwhelmed me with emotion. Not only does Schumer express her grief and horror at the gun violence that goes on far too often in our country, she also places a list of senators who have taken money from gun lobbyist and ways to get into contact with local representatives in the back of her book. This act made me fall in love with Schumer and her book yet again. I love that she has become so passionate about ending gun violence and was encouraging her readers to do the same.  

On a lighter note, Schumer’s commentary throughout the novel about her sexual escapades, her high school mistakes, trying to break into the world of comedy, and (of course) her lower back tattoo was hilarious and beyond entertaining. As a fan of Schumer’s stand up comedy I was a little nervous that the book wasn’t going to live up to its hype but thankfully, it surpassed every expectation I had. Through her jokes and stories Schumer ended the book by using her lower back tattoo to show that she is human and she makes mistakes but then grows and learns from them. I think this is a lesson girls are not told nearly enough and I was so excited Schumer took the time to remind all of the young women (and men) reading her novel this valuable lesson.

All in all I can truly say I was beyond thrilled by The Girl With the Lower Back Tattoo. Between the advocacy, the humor, and the stories, I felt I became to truly know Schumer and what she stands for while simultaneously being entertained by her witty humor. I am giving The Girl With the Lower Back Tattoo five out of five wine glasses without any hesitation, and I will also begin scouring the web for details about when (hopefully) Schumer’s next literary work of art will be available.  

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#BOTW (for the past week and a half)

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Cry/laughing over How to Party With an Infant

How to Party with An Infant by Kaui Hart Hemmings is by far the best book I have read all summer. The hilarious commentary on what life is like after accidentally getting pregnant with a man who then leaves could have been extremely dark and self-deprecating but Hemmings took the high road with a lighter form of humor. Hemmings has received a lot of praise since becoming an author. Avid book readers everywhere loved The Descendants, so I knew going into How to Party With an Infant that it had to be good.  

Aside from the humor the creative layout of the novel had me flying through the pages and the book was over before I knew it. In the book aspiring author and main character Mele enters a cookbook contest for the play group her and her daughter, Ellie, belong to. Instead of filling the book with simple, bland recipes that families would love, Mele takes funny and sad stories from the mothers in her play group and makes them into delicious and creative recipes. Hemmings does a wonderful job of introducing the other moms (and one dad) in the book without taking too much time away from explaining Mele’s current crisis. While her friends’ stories waver between depressing and humorous, none of them trump Mele’s. Ellie’s father (Mele’s cheating ex-boyfriend and baby daddy) is getting married to the women he was cheating on Mele with. Although, it does gets a little complicated at this point because Mele was the other woman but she had no idea. After Mele told him she was with child he left her heart broken and pregnant to go back and be monogamous with the other woman. So, in true male fashion, Ellie’s father makes Mele’s life more complicated when he asks Ellie to be the flower girl in the wedding and also invites Mele. 

Watching Mele navigate this difficult situation while also trying to raise a child as a single mom, get her daughter into a good preschool in the competitive San Francisco preschool market, keep her social life intact, and write a cookbook is enjoyable, funny, and heartwarming. I loved the book so much I am giving it five wine glasses without any hesitation. If I had to say one bad thing about the book it would be that it ended too soon! It left me craving more of Mele, Ellie, and their ragtag group of friends. I would highly recommend this book to just about anyone and I cannot wait to read the next book Hemmings writes. 

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How to Party with an Infant is the book of the week! I got so excited about reading it I forgot to announce it! So far the book by well known author Kaui Hart Hemmings is hilarious, light and all around perfect. It is well on its way to becoming my favorite boo of the summer!

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Beach essentials

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Not so pretty review of Rich and Pretty

While my mid-book review of Rich and Pretty was hopeful, the book turned out to be a dud. The novel paints a picture of two New York City women who have been friends since they were 11 years old, went to college together, lived together in the city post-grad and then began their adult lives together but separate, as most BFFs do. However, instead of having main characters, Lauren and Sarah go on a big adventure that has a clear beginning, middle and end, the author Rumaan Alam just continues to paint the picture of the two women’s lives. He uses beautifully descriptive language to tell about their lunch dates, their work lives (or lack thereof for Sarah) and their love lives while also sprinkling in uneventful details of their pasts. It’s not that I didn’t enjoy the details and the side stories; it’s just that literally nothing happened. Sarah, the rich of the Rich and Pretty duo, does get married, have a baby and then have another baby, but literally who doesn’t these days? If I wanted to hear a story about someone with more money than me getting married and having kids I would have just logged onto Facebook, not paid $25 for a book from Amazon. Although I was not overly excited about Rich and Pretty, I did like the setting of the novel. I am obsessed with anything based in New York City, so the book did fulfill my craving to read about the lives of wealthy and beautiful New Yorkers. Aside from the lack of plot line, Alam is a very talented writer and I enjoyed the simplistic yet telling way he described the characters and their actions throughout the book. The more I read, the more I was waiting for something to happen, but when nothing did I still kept reading because Alam’s writing had me interested enough and hopeful that something would happen. Unfortunately, I do not have much to tell about Rich and Pretty, so I am bestowing it with a two wine glass rating. I do plan to read any future books Alam writes because of his knack for language and the hope that they will contain more action, or at least a page I can pinpoint as the climax.

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A non mid-book review of Rich and Pretty

Rich and Pretty by Rumaan Alam is off to a wonderful start. Alam does a great job painting a picture of who Lauren and Sarah are, how they grew up, and how their childhood friendship has begun to get rocky as the two enter adult life. However, thus far there is not much to report about what exactly happens in the book. Rich and Pretty is getting off to a slow start, but I am not complaining. Lauren and Sarah remind me a lot of Blair and Serena from Gossip Girl, if you were to trade the cocaine for weed and the million dollar penthouses for hundred thousand dollar townhouses. The two are much more down to earth than the infamous Gossip Girl duo, but they still have a sense of entitlement and lead privileged enough lives to capture my attention. I am going to assume that Rich and Pretty will pull in a pretty good score on my wine glass rating scale, but only time will tell. 

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Happy National Book Lovers Day to all my book worms! I hope your day is filled with happiness, wine and (of course) books! 📚🍷

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The book of the week is Rich and Pretty by Rumaan Alam! Cheers to another good week of reading 🍷

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Losing It lost me...

Losing It by Emma Rathbone was far from a favorite of mine. While I loved the idea of telling the story of a 26 year old virgin who is insecure about her lack of sexual experience the story fell flat from everything I was expecting. Main character Julia decides to move in with an aunt she barely knows after quitting her job at a marketing company. She was persuaded to move to Durham, North Carolina for the summer after her parents decide to move to Costa Rica to try and save their marriage and she had no where else to go. About five minutes after moving in with her aunt, Julia discovers that they have nothing in common except for (drumroll please) they are both virgins! So, perfect time to connect and talk about how the “struggle is so real,” right? Well apparently not. Julia can’t bring herself to tell her aunt how she too is a virgin the entire summer. I was anticipating a funny story about a girl who takes a summer to find herself, discover her true passions and lose her virginity along the way, but what I got was a less than funny tale about a girl who can do nothing but obsess over her v-card while being a total ass to her aunt. I will give it to Rathbone, and Julia, that after Julia’s aunt totally loses it (no pun intended) on her, Julia is a little nicer and tries to make up for ditching her aunt’s art show, but it really was just too little too late. I’m not sure if I just couldn’t connect with Julia because I have never been in her shoes, but I felt her story wasn’t relatable because she let being a virgin control her every move, which I thought was a little extreme. Not to ruin the book for anyone, but in the end she does in fact loses her virginity. So that is one perk! I will also say, the way Rathbone set up Julia’s sexual encounter was creative and I did enjoy that portion of the book. I also enjoyed how she came close to shredding the v-card two other times, but she did indeed wait for the perfect opportunity. Although the book doesn’t end with a big white wedding and a love to last a lifetime, Rathbone made sure Julia got to finally have sex and even leave Durham with a little dignity. All in all I am giving Losing It two wine glasses. However, Rathbone has written several other books that I am considering reading. While I did not like Losing It, I liked her concise style of writing that was telling but not overly descriptive.

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BOTW. Review up later today!

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Water, Coffee, Margarita: A review of Dancing with the Tiger

Dancing with the Tiger by Lili Wright is by far one of the most energetic and exotic books I have read in a very long time. As soon as the book began with main character Anna using her tongue to sensually slipping her cheating fiancé her engagement ring during one of the most vital art shows of his career, I knew I was going to like Anna. Wright did such a wonderful job giving Anna’s character a lot of guts and grit while still ensuring that the average woman would be able to connect with her.

After having her heart broken, Anna sets off to Mexico with three goals: avenge her and her father’s careers by finding Montezuma’s death mask, lay her mother to rest nearly 20 years after her death, and get over her scum of an ex-fiancé. While on this journey, Anna runs into trouble, jeopardizes her life, and drinks a lot of margaritas. Half of the time I felt like doing anything just to have a fun Mexican adventure like Anna and the other half of the time I was feeling #blessed to be safe at home with a bottle of wine. This back and forth feeling was one of the reasons I had the hardest time putting Dancing with the Tiger down without saying, “okay, but just one more chapter.”

Wright’s ability to draw up fascinating characters didn’t end with Anna and is almost didn’t end throughout the entire book. I truly do not think I have ever read a book with so many characters that are all somehow unknowingly related to one another. While at first I was preparing for a confusing 435 pages of trying to keep track of all of these characters, I was pleasantly surprised at how easy it was. Wright makes all of the characters in Dancing with the Tiger so authentically Mexican that is compliments the Aztec history and mythology that is woven throughout the story.

Not only does this novel have a fabulously detailed character web, it also has an amazing plot line of ups and downs that could enable readers to finish the incredibly lengthy book in (nearly) a week. As soon main character Anna has gotten exactly what she came to Mexico to get, she loses it, almost gets killed and then is somehow able to find it all over again in between trips to the bar. As soon as the reader thinks it is the end, something happens to make it very clear that it is not. Even in the last 15 pages when the reader is 115 percent positive that it is the end and everything is okay, it is not.

Throughout the novel, reoccurring themes of death, infidelity, attempted rape, the color yellow, masks, religion, and sex were scattered in the separate side stories that all found their way to each other. These themes really encapsulate the culture of Mexico, the culture of Americans in Mexico and the selfishness of mankind in general. Theses realistic themes made Dancing with the Tiger so real yet so devastating, but without them the book would not have been the same.

All in all Dancing with the Tiger was amazing. I loved the detailed character web, I loved the reoccurring themes, I loved the Mexican culture that leapt off the page, but most of all I loved the ballsy and beautiful main character. It can be really hard to find young adult novels with a female main character who is able to accomplish a dangerous and complicated task, but Wright does it in Dancing with the Tiger.

Wright is a brilliant writer and I will certainly be reading any other novel she writes. If I had to have one complaint about Dancing with the Tiger it would be that the book is very long, too long to try to read in one week unless you, like Anna, are (kind of) on a tropical vacation. Despite the length, Dancing with the Tiger earned five out of five wine glasses but if I could have, I would have given it an entire wine bottle.  

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Expression I have while reading Dancing with the Tiger.

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Halfway Through the Journey: mid review of Dancing With the Tiger

So far, Dancing With The Tiger by Lili Wright is amazing. Main character Anna is so captivating and the more the reader learns about her, the more they’ll wish they were traveling to Mexico with her. Her trip, half encourage by heart break and half encouraged by the love for her late mother, gets more interesting with each chapter. Wright is a brilliant writer but in a different way than other authors I’ve read. The character arc in Dancing With The Tiger gets more complex with each turn of the page, but in a good way, not in an unreadable way. The cultural accuracy of the setting will have readers praising Wright. The colorful way she writes about Oaxaca, Mexico is so intriguing but she doesn’t ignore the problems the country is known for. Thus far, I would highly recommend this book to any avid reader and cannot wait to finish it. Check back for the full book review on Sunday!

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The Girls was Killer... Literally.

New author, Emma Cline really knocked it out of the park with The Girls. The novel loosely based on the Manson cult of the late 1960s in California was so intriguing, dark and had me wishing I could hear the main character Evie’s account of her time in the cult first hand. When 14-year-old Evie first sees the girls belonging to this cult in the park the reader can sense something off, but at the same time can understand why she is fascinated with the group. Between being betrayed by her childhood best friend and dealing with her parent’s divorce, Evie is silently distraught and looking for a new “home” to fit into. This desire for a loving and interesting group drives Evie straight into the arms of those at the ranch. As the hot California summer of 1969 wears on Evie becomes more and more integrated with the group and starts to take part in the psychedelic drugs, breaking into homes and stealing from those around her to appease secondary character, Suzanne. The reader discovers through flashbacks that Suzanne is one of the main actors in the string of infamous murders that begin at the house of a semi-famous musician. Suzanne takes on the role of Evie’s mentor and there is a glimmer of a budding sexual relationship between the two. This relationship causes Evie to not want to leave Suzanne when they get caught breaking into Evie’s neighbor’s house and she is sent off to live with her father in Palo Alto. Even after being reunited with Suzanne by running away from home, heading off on a secret mission that cult leader Russell sent them on, and being kicked out of the car by Suzanne, Evie still cannot stop missing the girl that she feels connected to. The morning the news of a gruesome murder breaks Evie is back at her father’s house feeling lost yet still drawn into the murder, Suzanne. The rest of the book tracks Evie’s journey consisting of trying to put her life back together and move on from the summer that changed her life forever. I cannot sing enough praises of The Girls or Cline. The vivid, detailed and beautiful language Cline uses to paint a picture of this iconic time in history truly added to the value of the story. Every detail was so well researched, but the story also takes on a life of its own because of Cline’s artistic decision to change some aspects of the story. The Girls earned five out of five wine glasses from me and I will be anxiously awaiting for Cline’s next novel.

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As part one of The Girls by Emma Cline wraps up so does the ample amount of background information the reader receives about main character Evie’s life. Up until this point the reader has seen the difficulties that come with being a female adolescent with divorced parents and a best friend who has shunned her for making a mistake that almost every 14-year-old girl has made. The teenage struggles Evie experiences are very relatable yet so minor compared to what she is about to get into. While trying to run from these troubles, Evie becomes obsessed with a group of carefree and unusual girls that frequent the park near her home. Between Evie’s fascination with “the girls” and a fight with her mother, she finds herself on a mysterious compound that is unlike anything she has ever seen. Not only is this place different than anything Evie has ever experienced, but it is also unlike anything most readers could even imagine. Throughout the first part of the book the reader is given small glimpses of what Evei’s life will become during that summer when she joins the infamous cult based in California in the early 1970s. Those gory and fascinating glimpses are what kept me turning the pages long into the night. Cline is such a brilliant writer and her knack for language is something that captured me from the beginning. Cline also includes so many historical facts in her fictional book that it is hard to believe she wasn’t a part of the Manson “family.” It is equally as hard to believe The Girls is Cline’s first published book and although I am not at the end of it yet, I am already looking forward to her sophomore novel. My weekend will consist of couch surfing with this book because every time I pick it up it becomes super glued to my hands and I know the only cure will be finishing the brilliantly written tale. The Girls is well on its way to earning a five wineglass rating, but I’ll save that for another day…