When I was about twelve years old, my parents invited me to watch my first scary movie. For two or three nights, I joined them after small-children bedtime and we watched the miniseries version of The Shining. I was old enough, mature enough, and it wasn’t the R-rated Stanley Kubrick version… but it still scared the crap out of me, and to this day, I am still heavily freaked out by “Haunted House” type books and movies.

This is probably why I couldn’t read Frost at my apartment, alone, after 9 p.m.

Leena is looking forward to her final year at boarding school – she’s a student leader, an overachiever, and she and her three best friends are going to live together in this cute little cottage by themselves called “Frost House.” But on the first day of school, Leena finds out that Celeste Lazar – weird, art-freak, loose-cannon girl on campus – is going to be her roommate – Leena and her roommates are miffed that their perfect bubble has been broken. What makes things worse is that Celeste hates Frost House – the windows freak her out, she thinks the closet smells, the creaky old house noises keep her awake at night. For Leena, though, everything in her life starts to go downhill EXCEPT for when she’s at Frost House. Leena can’t keep peace between her roommates and Celeste, she loses the trust of a valued teacher-mentor, and she finds more and more excuses to self-medicate from her stolen pill stash. Celeste’s complaints about the house become more and more bizarre, but Leena sees Frost House as a sanctuary; so maybe the house knows something that Leena doesn’t? Maybe Celeste just doesn’t belong and needs to leave?

This book is a mysterious-haunting book/psychological-who-is-crazy, who-is-not? book, which again, see: The Shining. Baer also does some freaky things here to just create a sense of Uncanny: Things Are Just Not Right about the book. Celeste’s brother David for example, is prominent throughout the book as Leena’s love interest and Celeste’s ultimate protector. But Celeste and David’s relationship is full of family secrets and their closeness becomes kind of… creepy.

On a lighter note, Baer’s writing feels very contemporary YA – she gets the language, the issues, the friendships between teens. But for me, that just made the creepiness even creepier, like whatever is going on in that house could possibly show up at any time in my favorite Sarah Dessen book or something. Urghhhh.

You might want to keep this book in the freezer when you aren’t reading it. Just sayin’.

I love YA romance, but I am extremely picky.

• I don’t like a lot of gratuitous descriptions of the characters’ hotness.
• I don’t like a lot of completely obvious foreshadowing – it’s a romance, we know you are gonna hook up no matter how star-crossed your love may be.
• I don’t like love that comes on too quickly, or can be easily confused with that of an obsessive stalker (sorry, Twilight)

I like romance, but I’m a smart girl. I don’t fall for silly romantic ploys, in real life or in fiction.

Pete Hautman’s The Big Crunch is probably the smartest romance I’ve read in quite some time. Apparently I am not alone in this thinking, as it was given a Los Angeles Time Book Award nod a few weeks ago, standing up against former Printz winning author Libba Bray, critical darling Life: An Exploded Diagram, Printz Honor The Scorpio Races, and the immensely popular Patrick Ness. The Big Crunch doesn’t feel out of place in this bunch – he did win a freaking National Book Award – but it is of  certainly quieter than the LA time nominees. Contemporary realism that doesn’t scream LITERARY. Lots of pink on the cover. Romance.

It’s quiet, but yes: it’s smart. Very smart.

The Big Crunch is the story of two teens and their completely typical love affair. June and Wes remind me that teen romance is rarely of the Romeo & Juliet, the Edward & Bella, or even the Sarah Dessen variety. Teen romance is not often foreshadowed, not always quick to bloom, not always logical. Teen relationships are weird.

June is new at school, but she’s used to it. Her dad’s job has her at multiple schools every school year. She knows how to fit in enough to get what she needs – a group to sit with in the cafeteria and maybe someone to kiss, if she feels like it. Wes broke up with his long-term girlfriend over the summer and he’s not sure why he did it, especially now that she’s moved on and it’s stressing him out. It’s not love at first sight for Wes & June – their social circles occasionally collide, they meet by chance walking home, and eventually, these tiny moments add up to a love.

But even then, things are not easy. Some factors that challenge their relationship are beyond their control – parents, friends, timing – but Hautman also doesn’t hold back from exposing, through close third-person narration for both Wes and June, the many tiny ways that people in love can betray one another. The pettiness. The exhaustion of being together and the tendency to blame the other party.

People are not always nice. All endings are not happy. Love is awful sometimes, and this is the kind of love that can shapes our future relationships sometimes, shape who we become.

I find that much more compelling than anything perfect.

 

I can never quite decide if I like travel memoirs. I am not a world explorer. I have no grand designs to traipse across the world with nothing but a backpack and a passport. I’m not opposed to world traveling, but it just doesn’t call to me like I think it calls to others. Those Others tend to be the ones writing travel memoirs, so I think I am intrigued by the premise of many travelogues but then feel put-off because I don’t quite understand the kind of of unspoken zest that runs under the text.

However, a specific narrative voice sometimes sucks me in. Mock me if you will, but I adore Eat, Pray, Love. Maybe I’m more interested in the memoir than the travel?

I couldn’t quite decide if I liked To Timbuktu: Nine Countries, Two People, One Story, but ultimately, Scieska’s story and voice endeared me. Scieskza has the zest for travel – just out of college, she wants to teach in China, revisit her study abroad locale of Morocco, and has landed a Fulbright to spend a few months researching education systems in Mali. But she also has a zest for Steven, who she met while in Morocco. Since then, they’ve been maintaining a long-distance, nascent-romance, and what better way to start a Real Relationship than by traveling, working, and living together around the world?

What I ended up liking about this book was Scieska’s earnestness, her honesty. This is not about the romance of travel, but the excited optimism of being young and running around the world, taking it all in. This is not about the romance of two lovers shacking up overseas, but about the romance of getting to know each other when you share a dusty apartment with no appliances and the air conditioning stopped working and it’s 100+ degrees outside and you have some kind of traveling sickness.

Scieska writes the text here, so it’s mostly her story, but her partner, Steven, contributes charcoal-y illustrations.

I wonder where they are traveling to now?

In one of my first grad classes, we read every book written by a few different authors. We read them in order. This is actually a really fun way to read, especially authors that have a lot of books and are still writing. It gives you a unique perspective on each successive book.

I had never read Jacqueline Woodson before, but in 5 weeks or so I became a veritable Woodson expert. One thing I really enjoyed about Woodson’s works is that they could be considered “issue books” or “problem novels.” Interracial relationships. Child sexual abuse. Teen pregnancy. Being in the Witness Protection Program. Foster care. Being orphaned. But the thing is, Woodson’s books never *feel* like they are books about these issues. They feel like you’re reading damn good writing.

In Beneath a Meth Moon, the issue is drug abuse. Crystal meth. Laurel is new in town, still recovering from the loss of her mother and grandmother in Hurricane Katrina. She wants to make a new friend, so she joins the cheerleading squad. She wants someone to kiss after basketball games, so she starts dating the team co-captain. She wants to feel good, feel happy, so when her new boyfriend offers her a taste of what they call Moon, she takes it, and she likes it. Not long after, she’s under its spell.

Books about teen drug use easily slip into that *PROBLEM NOVEL!!* trope. As much as I love Go Ask Alice for being ridiculous and campy and awesome, other books about teen drug abuse tend toward the Afterschool Special, or focus not on the descent but on rehab. Woodson, instead, captures Laurel’s unintentional slips, her small decisions and desires that led her down a bad path, and how her grief weaves through her every move.

As usual, Woodson’s prose is lyrical and the story slim, just under 200 pages. She flies under the popular radar sometimes, but Woodson is a proven talent. I don’t think you have to read all of her books to appreciate Beneath a Meth Moon as much as I did but once you’re done you might want to.

Once upon a time, I used to love dystopian fiction. But ever since The Hunger Games rolled into town, I haven’t been able to stomach many of them. THERE’S JUST TOO MANY! And, like the first bandwagon ever to be jumped upon, the longer the dystopian trend rolls on, the more really bad dystopias are allowed into existence. I have no desire to sift through the detritus when I’ve already read plenty that I’ve loved.

That is a bad reading attitude, but there it is. However, my syllabus occasionally beckons me back to dystopia-land. This semester, I read Divergent by Veronica Roth, which I’ve surmised is quite popular. I expected to run screaming from yet another plucky, anti-establishment teenaged protagonist, yet another set of fascist adults running the gov’ment, yet another allegory about global warming and overconsumption.

However, Divergent wasn’t all that bad. Things I liked:

• The dystopian premise was straightforward and unique

The future in Divergent is based on a restructuring of society based on personality traits and deep belief in the benefits of certain behaviors. Inhabitants of this post-disaster-y future Chicago live in five factions. Those who live in Candor value honesty and clear motives. Members of the Erudite faction believe that knowledge is the most important asset and focus their lives on acquiring more. Amity is for the peaceful and kind, Dauntless for the brave, Abnegation for the eternally selfless. The factions keep separate living quarters but join together to go to school, run the government, and other daily-living type situations.

• There wasn’t too much explaining

With all these strange societal divisions, the reader is left asking “Uh…. why?” And instead of over-explaining the entire history between our present and this future, Roth does a good job of letting the narrative unroll the details little by little. But more importantly, I liked how the theory behind these societal divisions naturally led the reader to reflect on how and why the changes occurred. Were the factions formed to promote each value within society – to enforce the importance of honesty, knowledge, courage, etc? Were the factions formed to ensure a balanced society, where at the very least five different worldviews are incorporated in decision-making? Or were the factions formed in opposition to each other – is one seeking to win out over the others? All of these questions are hinted at but never answered, which I think is a hallmark of a Good Dsytopia.

• Action, romance, tension, etc

It wasn’t boring. Roth understands all that plot nonsense that keeps you flipping pages.

Things I Didn’t Like:

• The Classic, “I just don’t fit in!” Dystopian narrator

This is probably Lois Lowry’s fault. That moment in The Giver when Jonas realizes he’s not going to move on into life like the rest of his friends? I’ve seen that moment in so many dystopian books, and it’s here in Divergent, too. I realize it’s a powerful narrative tool, but even powerful narrative tools get tired.

• The Ending

I don’t want to spoil anything, but the ending is a bit “AND THEN ALL HELL BROKE LOOSE!” Things get suddenly out of control, violent, and mayhem-y. I didn’t feel prepared for this turn of events, and it seemed a little like a ploy to get you intrigued because….

• It’s part of a trilogy

I. Hate. Trilogies.

I almost don’t want to read the sequels out of spite.

~

This has got me all riled up on the topic of dystopias. I used  to have so much love, I really did. But in my YA lit library class, we are constantly talking about Trends That Teens Like, and by golly those teens like dystopias. I have even been working on a little Pinterest board that features Dystopias with Male Protagonists (any suggestions?). I think I will have to write again on this topic again soon, but for now, I will return to Not Reading Them.

(Unless they are written by Megan McCafferty)

 

 

 

There are books that you know are right up your alley, and they don’t disappoint. There are books that you love like you love your friends or your family and that you read once a year to make you happy. There are books that you are in awe of, but you will probably never pick up again because you got everything there is to be had in one read. There are books that you finish and immediately want to pick up and read again.

I am not talking about any of those. I want to talk about the kind of book that, inexplicably, sticks with you. The book you pick up for no particular reason – maybe a good review or a recommendation, but not much more – and you read without expectations, but you are so very subtly blown away by what you find inside that even if you never read the book again, you will just always remember that book.

Summer of 2006. Summer vacation at my Grandpa’s house in Myrtle Beach. Randomly selected assortment of beach leisure reading.

Patricia McCormick’s Sold.

Sold is a book about a horrifying, systemic, human rights issue: young girls sold into sexual slavery in Nepal and India. The book attempts to bring awareness to this issue occurring, silently, across the globe. It explores the complex economic and social issues that allow such atrocities to occur. And it gives you an emotional punch in the face by telling the story, in verse, from the perspective of a 13-year-old girl who has been sold to a brothel.

Kim Purcell’s new novel, Trafficked, takes on the same challenge: to expose, explore, and personalize the experience of teens from Moldova – a particularly impoverished former Soviet nation – who are trafficked illegally into the United States. Purcell alludes to the fact that many of these girls are, indeed, being sold into prostitution. This fact alone, is brutal: right now, in your country, there are girls living in situations similar to those in McCormick’s Sold. However, the protagonist in Trafficked – Hannah – is not a  teen prostitute.  Hannah is a Moldovian girl – orphaned after a terrorist attack kills both her parents – who is trafficked into America so she can work as a live-in nanny for a wealthy Russian-American couple, ostensibly so she can live with few expenses and send her modest paychecks home to her ailing grandmother.

What Purcell does well here is keep the reader on the same, anxious level as Hannah. Even though the narrative follows Hannah’s every move, both she and the reader never quite figure out how it is that Hannah and other girls are making their way out of the country; all we know is that it’s beyond shady, dangerous, and someone somewhere is making a tidy sum off of each transaction. And once Hannah arrives in her new home, there is the constant threat that if Hannah makes a wrong move – or even if her employers simply have no more need for her – she  may be sent home, sent to jail as an illegal, or to a local brothel run by a friend of the family.

Purcell also characterizes the unique experience of a trafficked young girl, powerless almost beyond comprehension. Although Hannah’s employers are wealthy and show her some kindnesses, they are also controlling, demanding and randomly cruel. Hannah submits to their demands on the threat of being tossed to the streets, but every day she seems to realize more and more that she has become nothing more than a slave to these people.

However, I don’t think Trafficked will ever stay with me in the way that Sold did for the simple reason that Purcell lets her narrative diverge from the focus of human trafficking. Hannah begins to suspect that her nannying position was not as random as she believed: that she was, perhaps, targeted by this particular family. She sneaks around her employers house looking for clues, eavesdrops on conversations, and slowly, this plot becomes the main interest of the book.

The anxious tension that feels so powerful as the novel begins devolves into the territory of any typical thriller or mystery. The book, then, becomes a story about a specific, exceptional situation rather than about human trafficking.

Maybe McCormick set my standards too high, but I was ultimately disappointed. I found the book interesting and fairly engaging, but it lacked that emotional punch-you-in-the-gut quality that I hoped for.  Ultimately, I considered the book to be just another mediocre action plot wrapped in a sensational package.

Nothing that will stick.

I don’t feel like I am qualified to write a decent “review” of this book because yes, I am a full-fledged John Green fan-girl.

To my credit, I was a fan-girl before it was actually normal to say you were a fan-girl of John Green (iosome people prefer the term “nerdfighter”). No, I was just an adoring college student with a very tiny literary/not-so-literary crush on an author and his work.

But let me tell you this: despite years now of fan-girl-dom, I find that the more I read Green’s books, the more I like them. The more meaning I find within them. The more they stir up my emotions. I first read Looking for Alaska when I was a senior in high school; last summer I read it for the umpteenth time for a class and found myself Crying While Using Public Transportation.

Despite the near-continual hype – the tour bus, the video blogs, the thousands of signed books – Green continues to deliver.

The Fault in Our Stars put my little bit of Looking for Alaska train-boo-hooing to shame. Narrator 16-year-old Hazel has cancer. For three years, she submits to the gamut of painful treatments, comes very close to dying, and transforms from a normal teen to a sick one. She does survive, but only by the benefit of an experimental treatment and constant oxygen supplementation – she’s still frail, but now she’s isolated too. But when her parents force her to attend a kids-with-cancer support group, Hazel meets Augustus – a cute osteosarcoma survivor with a prosthetic leg who sets his sights on Hazel.

They fall in love. They take a trip to Amsterdam to track down Hazel’s favorite reclusive author. They get sicker, they get better, they get sicker, they get better. But even when they get better, there’s always the promise of getting sicker. And if they get sicker, there’s the promise of dying too soon.

Of course, this is also a very sharp, deeply funny novel. It’s not all kids-with-cancer. But what Green captures brilliantly here is that even when your daily life/immediate thoughts are not about suffering and unfairness and the insane brevity of life and death… your life is still about cancer and suffering and unfairness and the insane brevity of life and death. When you are a kid with cancer, these things are just closer to the surface. In many ways, this book reminded me not of other young adult fiction, but of books like Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking; narratives that transcend narrative and become primers for death, grief, and, ultimately, life.

So go read this book and laugh and cry because… yeah. Life. That’s it.

Do you like to do research before you read a book? Do you browse reviews, check out the author’s website, look it up on Goodreads to see what your friends thought about it?

About a year ago, I stopped doing all of that because I am reading for school. There is no negotiation – Jessica, you will read this book whether you like it or not – so I stopped even reading the back of the book. Who cares if anyone likes it, who blurbed it… who cares what the book is even about?

Suprisingly, I have come to enjoy reading books blind. It’s a bit more suspenseful, first of all – when you jump into the first chapter of a book, it’s fun to feel disoriented for those first few chapters and have to slowly make your way to what the book is about. But more notably, I’ve found that I do end up enjoying books that would otherwise scare me off.

See: Maureen Johnson’s The Name of the Star.

• Set in London (I’m not much of an Anglophile… and those that are tend to to leave me feel alienated? I have issues)

• Serial killer plotline (Gross. I’m a delicate flower.)

• First in a series (Standalone fiction is not yet dead, right? Anyone? Anyone!?)

• Maureen Johnson (I like her books but for some reason I always wish I liked them more… I don’t know)

• GHOSTS (I think we’ve already WELL covered my feelings about paranormal fiction at this point…)

 

So no, I would not have wanted to read this book. In fact, I was aware of its publication and after seeing the G-word, decided not to seek it out.

But the syllabus strikes again. I opened this book last week without knowing much else other than GHOSTS, but I was surprised how quickly the plot swept me up, how much I liked the characters and the setting, and how the GHOSTS didn’t bother me as much as I assumed they would.

One thing Johnson really does excel at is the kind of understated but complex female heroines that you don’t necessarily feel a great affinity towards, but you like them. You want to be friends with them. You think they are sincerely interesting and cool people. Rory Devereaux is one such heroine. The child of two Louisana professors, Rory is excited to spend a year with her parents on sabbatical in Bristol, England. She chooses to apply to a selective boarding school in London because she can – why not live out the true “England” experience while abroad? – but her arrival to Wexford coincides with a serial killer’s first strike. The killer seems to be recreating the Jack the Ripper killings that took place in the same neighborhood as Rory’s school, but nobody can figure out how the crimes are committed, much less by whom. While Rory tries to make friends, find a little romance, and succeed at school, she also becomes a pseudo-witness to one of these crimes, which eventually pulls her into a web of paranormal crimefighters.

One additional point of praise I might offer this novel before I end this overview: the ending. So how is the ending of a series book supposed to end? It is supposed to entice you into reading the next volume of the series. These overblown cliffhanger endings are why I have grown suspicious of most series titles. I’m sorry, but I get annoyed when a book ends and NONE of the central plot conflicts have been resolved, when the only thing encouraging me to read more is that YOU HAVE LEFT EVERYTHING DELIBERATELY HALF-WRITTEN. That is manipulative. The Name of the Star has a perfectly independent structure that does not require you to keep reading. The book ends not on a “what will happen next?!?!!!!” cliffhanger, but a well-played combination of  a subtle “where will Rory go next?” feeling of honest curiosity combined with a last-page paranormal moment so bizarre and unexplainable that you can’t help but wondering “what COULD happen next?”

So kudos to you, Johnson. You have written a ghost book that this skeptic can get behind with a likeable, complex heroine, complete with a completely commendable ending. Kudos!

#1. Born to Run by Christopher McDougall

There is absolutely no reason why I should have liked this book. First off, it’s about ultra-long distance runners – I can barely run two miles, have no interest in running for twenty-four hours up and down mountains, and the whole thing just reeks of excessive machismo. I’m not a fan of books heavy on the machismo. I’m not really a fan of books about sports or sporting events (except for this one Phillip Hoose novel you should definitely buy used for a penny right now and thank me later). I am not interested in reading about people who run too much and how to prevent their injuries. I’m not even particularly interested in hidden tribal cultures.

However, Christopher McDougall managed to somehow twist all of those things into this book that is so compelling, so interesting, so not-put-downable, that I was more than suckered in – I was drinking the Kool-Aid.

No, I do not think a 50 mile race is in my future, but McDougall’s book does make an excellent case for running as something so innately human, that you would be stupid not to do it and if you aren’t enjoying it, you are stupid.

Okay, that’s harsh and not entirely accurate. You aren’t stupid… but McDougal argues that running has so many health/mind/body/soul benefits that it shouldn’t just be a fun way to burn a few calories, it can be joyous. And if you don’t like running – if running hurts, if you have running injuries, etc – then you are probably doing it wrong.

Now, this probably sounds like some manifesto on running. No. This book is actually a little memoir of a period of time in McDougall’s life when he was suffering from mysterious running pains and injuries. Convinced – perhaps blindly and optimistically – that he didn’t have to say goodbye to running, McDougall followed his journalistic training and began to research. He visited doctors, trainers, elite marathoners and ultramarathoners, and historians, all in search of the root of this paradox: you, as a human, can run, but not too much or you’ll break the machine.

Research led McDougall to an unlikely place – the middle of the Mexican rainforest, where a mysterious transient runner had been seen barefooting it around the hills and forests. McDougall found the man, and found that he was living amongst the Tarahumara – an ancient tribe of people who regularly run ultramarathon-type distances, without the help of Western medicine, footwear, GPS watches, hydration belts, etc. These people just ran, and their bodies supported this endeavor.

Anyway, so the story, then, is McDougall trying to organize an ultramarathon in Tarahumara land, pitting these natives against some of America’s fastest ultramarathoners in a friendly competition, and to see what these two groups had in common. So much of the book is McDougall trying to wrangle a bunch of quirky, crazy runners (you’d have to be crazy to be an elite 100-mile-race-runner, eh?) into the middle of the Mexican rainforest. This plot is amusing enough, but McDougall also surrounds this story with his copious research, surprising challenges to modern American conceptions of health, the body, and the sport of running, and other “side quests” that led him to the Tarahumara.

As a new runner, I was glad to read this book now before I accidentally injure myself and then have to backtrack. I am not taking McDougall’s recommendations as law, but I definitely think differently about my body as I am running, which I think will help me develop better physical habits that can prevent injuries.

As a non-runner (which is me, like, every other month), I thought this was just freaking riveting. I wanted to pass it off to every person I know, insist that they read it immediately. Heck, I bought a copy at Barnes & Noble yesterday -of one of those 3 books for the price of 2 tables, thinking I could give it to someone as a Christmas gift, but I have no one who needs a gift. I just bought a BONUS Christmas gift, for no reason… and whoever I decide to give it to should consider themselves lucky!

In case you missed any of my Best of 2011 Reading Extravaganza, check out this page. Thanks for playing again this year, guys! I will see you after Christmas!

 

 

#2. Made for You and Me by Caitlin Shetterly

One reason I enjoy making these book lists is because I like to look at overall trends in my reading habits: how my tastes change, what things I like, what things I don’t like. Narcissism. Yes. Moving on. Last year, food books, young adult-ish classics, and non-fiction were the big winners. This year, I’ve noticed some more abstract trends.

I’m liking books about America:

• what it means to be an American (And the Pursuit of Happiness)
• what it’s like to live in specific American subcultures and geographic regions (Where Things Come Back, Hush)
• books with great rural or urban settings (Annie On My Mind, Charlotte’s Web)
• books about road trips across the country (Amy & Roger’s Epic Detour)

Caitlin Shetterly’s Made for You and Me has all of these things. This is a memoir of the first few years of Shetterly’s marriage, beginning with the newlyweds realizing a lifelong dream and moving from Maine to California with the hopes of making a living as creative people. However, the universe quickly seems to conspire against the two. The moving nightmares pile up. There’s an unplanned pregnancy, and Shetterly is rendered so sick she can’t work as much as she’d hoped. But the big Crusher of Dreams here is The Recession. Shetterly and her husband assume that when they arrive in California, there will be some menial day-jobs to be had while they stabilize their creative careers, but The Recession arrives swiftly; reading about how a sick Shetterly and her desperate husband – both educated, skilled, and enthusiastic – was fairly devastating.

Right now, I live a fairly sheltered, risk-averse existence. But even for me, moving across the country to achieve a dream is something I would consider possible. Something I have done myself. I hope and wish that all people in America feel the same way… but Shetterly’s book reminded me that the economy is acting in ways that go beyond my own “magical thinking.” It’s too easy for many of us sheltered, risk-averse folks to see the recession as an inconvenience rather than a brick wall. Maybe it will take me longer to get a job, limit my job choices, make my retirement/future less certain… but I’ll get by. This memoir rocked me because I felt like Shetterly and her husband could be me – two young people who want to start a life together somewhere new, who want to work in a creative, exciting environment, who want nothing more than to be able to work to support their families, who are educated and smart and diligent. And there are still things beyond your control.

Shetterly’s text takes the reader from her marriage, to California, to the birth of her son, and back to her mother’s home in Maine. By the time the story ends, I was fully invested and wanted to know what happened next to this new family. Even though Shetterly’s life is average, her story mundane, this book, I think is just as emotionally gripping as any other more sensational memoir and achieves that paradoxical task of being both deeply personal and completely universal. It’s her story, it’s your story, etc etc. Love love loved it.