Review: Hyperbole and a Half

Hyperbole and a Half
by Allie Brosh

Synopsis

This is a book I wrote. Because I wrote it, I had to figure out what to put on the back cover to explain what it is. I tried to write a long, third-person summary that would imply how great the book is and also sound vaguely authoritative--like maybe someone who isn’t me wrote it--but I soon discovered that I’m not sneaky enough to pull it off convincingly. So I decided to just make a list of things that are in the book:

Pictures
Words
Stories about things that happened to me
Stories about things that happened to other people because of me
Eight billion dollars*
Stories about dogs
The secret to eternal happiness*

*These are lies. Perhaps I have underestimated my sneakiness!

Review

This was a funny book. It really truly was. It had me giggling and at some points flat out loud-laughing to no one. The drawings are so simple, but the expressions fit so well with the overall story going on around it. It's a great book for those memories of bad moments growing up. Or weird moments. 

Basically, if you're weird, you're gonna like this book. 

I have to be honest, however. The book lost me toward the end of the book which is a shame because I think that's where the author was the most serious in the whole book. But the change in pace...it lost me. 

Verdict

Borrow it, read it, laugh. Move on. 

Review: Can You Keep a Secret?

Can You Keep a Secret?
by Sophie Kinsella

Synopsis

With the same wicked humor, buoyant charm, and optimism that have made her Shopaholic novels beloved international bestsellers, Sophie Kinsella delivers a hilarious new novel and an unforgettable new character. Meet Emma Corrigan, a young woman with a huge heart, an irrepressible spirit, and a few little secrets:

Secrets from her mother:
I lost my virginity in the spare bedroom with Danny Nussbaum while Mum and Dad were downstairs watching Ben-Hur.
Sammy the goldfish in my parents’ kitchen is not the same goldfish that Mum gave me to look after when she and Dad were in Egypt.

Secrets from her boyfriend:
I weigh one hundred and twenty-eight pounds. Not one eighteen, like Connor thinks. 

I’ve always thought Connor looks a bit like Ken. As in Barbie and Ken.

From her colleagues:
When Artemis really annoys me, I feed her plant orange juice. (Which is pretty much every day.) It was me who jammed the copier that time. In fact, all the times.

Secrets she wouldn’t share with anyone in the world:
My G-string is hurting me.


I have no idea what NATO stands for. Or even what it is.

Until she spills them all to a handsome stranger on a plane. At least, she thought he was a stranger.

But come Monday morning, Emma’s office is abuzz about the arrival of Jack Harper, the company’s elusive CEO. Suddenly Emma is face-to-face with the stranger from the plane, a man who knows every single humiliating detail about her. Things couldn’t possibly get worse—Until they do.

Review

I was in a mood for a sweet, funny contemporary book - and although I've only read Confessions of a Shopaholic by Kinsella, I knew that she was the way to go if I needed that lightheartedness. I was not disappointed!

Can You Keep a Secret? is one hilarious book. It's about a junior executive, Emma, who spends most of her life lying to the people around her. Not in a bad way really, but in a way that she thinks will help everyone be happy and "keep the peace." All that changes, however, after taking a turbulent flight home that makes her feel like she's going to die. This causes her to spill all her secrets to the gentlemen next to her - a gentlemen that she later discovers is her boss!

As if it weren't bad enough that her boss now knows all her innermost secrets, the event causes her lies to slowly unravel from the rest of her life - something Emma is so not prepared to deal with!

This story is such a joy to read that it took me about a day to finish (granted, I've been home with bronchitis, but you know...). If you are a fan of funny, contemporary fiction and Kinsella's other works, you'll love this!

Verdict

So much fun :D

Top Shelf Short Stories: His Delivery Chick

No, this is not the cover of the story.
This is lovely Pusheen.

His Delivery Chick
by Entice_

Okay so I had this brilliant idea earlier - if I'm reading short stories, why not also read some from independent authors (i.e. not yet published/internet peeps). I actually think I want to read an indie story a day for next month. But I digress.

I thought, why not read at least one for this short story month? So I chose a cute one because my day has not been very cute.

I chose "His Delivery Chick" located at  Entice_'s Wattpad. It's a really cute story! I think young adults would like this best, but I thought it was a good pick me up for a not so good day. It's basically about Maxine, a girl who delivers pizza, and Nick, a well-off guy who orders and seemingly eats pizzas. Maxine and Nick have a run in one day when Maxine delivers a pizza to Nick's house. Some misunderstandings later and you have the budding love story. 

I have to be honest - when I started reading the story, I thought it was finished. I don't think it is. I'm going to go with my gut and say it isn't. So, you may ask, why am I writing about it - well, one because I totally thought it was finished and two, because even if it's not, it's a cute story and the author would benefit from feedback so she can mold her story. Every story worth telling evolves, so hopefully this helps her. 

Now, we're talking about a work that probably doesn't go through as many edits as your average published work. So, there are typos and some sentences that need to be looked at. It needs to be polished and have some details added here and there. That is coming from a reader and former writing tutor. No one's writing is perfect, that is why we re-write re-write re-write. 

Verdict

I am enjoying the story and plan to stay tuned for any future added chapters. It's definitely worth taking a look!

Top Shelf Short Stories: The Search Engine

Ten Little Indians
by Sherman Alexie

Book Synopsis

Sherman Alexie is one of our most acclaimed and popular writers today. With Ten Little Indians, he offers nine poignant and emotionally resonant new stories about Native Americans who, like all Americans, find themselves at personal and cultural crossroads, faced with heartrending, tragic, sometimes wondrous moments of being that test their loyalties, their capacities, and their notions of who they are and who they love. 

In Alexie’s first story, “The Search Engine,” Corliss is a rugged and resourceful student who finds in books the magic she was denied while growing up poor. In “The Life and Times of Estelle Walks Above,” an intellectual feminist Spokane Indian woman saves the lives of dozens of white women all around her to the bewilderment of her only child. “What You Pawn I Will Redeem” starts off with a homeless man recognizing in a pawn shop window the fancy-dance regalia that was stolen fifty years earlier from his late grandmother. 

 Even as they often make us laugh, Alexie’s stories are driven by a haunting lyricism and naked candor that cut to the heart of the human experience, shedding brilliant light on what happens when we grow into and out of each other.

"The Search Engine" Review

I am going to sound completely biased in this review of this short story because I am in love with Alexie's writing. I have been ever since I read the short story, "This is What it Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona." And the love affair kept on when I read Reservation Blues and The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian. This man - I can't even. 

I'm always hesitant to read something from Alexie. Did that just shock you after I told you how much I love his writing? Well, it shouldn't. I hesitate to read (hesitate - but I read anyway) because I worry that my love affair will just be a fluke. I mean, what if this story is the one I don't like? What will happen then?

And of course, the answer is nothing. Nothing will happen because, regardless, Alexie is my writer. But I digress.

"The Search Engine" hit me right in the heart, dear reader. It's about a young college sophomore, Corliss, who loves books. Books to Corliss are basically the air she breathes. She relates to books because they have given her the freedom beyond what her family, her past and culture have been able to give her. Alexie spends the first section of the story relating who Corliss is to the reader - and basically having this reader (yup, me) fall in love with the character. 

Corliss finds a poetry book at her library written by a Spokane Indian (like her!) which has never been checked out. After a FANTASTIC moment of questioning the destiny of books that never get checked out, she reads the poetry. Although most of the poetry turns out to be kinda bad, some of it speaks to her. What speaks to her most, however, is the fact that another Spokane Indian was able to get their words out into the world. This is what ultimately starts Corliss on her journey to finding Harlan Atwater, her fellow Spokane Indian. 

What follows is what the reader will almost always find in Alexie's work. Humor, heartbreak, cleverness and the search for what it means to be a Indian in the modern world

*Note: Usually, I write "Native American," but to stay true to Alexie's work, I will follow suit and say "Indian."

Verdict

READ HIM. READ HIM NOW. EVEN IF YOU'VE ALREADY READ EVERYTHING HE'S WRITTEN GO BACK AND FIND SOMETHING YOU HAVEN'T READ OR READ WHAT YOU'VE ALREADY READ. DO IT NOW. 

About the Author

Winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, the PEN/Malamud Award for Short Fiction, a PEN/Hemingway Citation for Best First Fiction, and the National Book Award for Young People's Literature, Sherman Alexie is a poet, short story writer, novelist, and performer.

He has published 24 books including What I've Stolen, What I've Earned, poetry, from Hanging Loose Press; Blasphemy: New and Selected Stories, from Grove Press; and The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, a novel from Little, Brown Books for Children.

He has also recently published the 20th Anniversary edition of his classic book of stories, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven.

Smoke Signals, the movie he wrote and co-produced, won the Audience Award and Filmmakers Trophy at the 1998 Sundance Film Festival.

A Spokane/Coeur d'Alene Indian, Alexie grew up in Wellpinit, Washington, on the Spokane Indian Reservation. 

Alexie has been an urban Indian since 1994 and lives in Seattle with his family.

Go find out more at: http://fallsapart.com/

Review: I Remember Nothing and Other Reflections

I Remember Nothing and Other Reflections
by Nora Ephron

Synopsis

Nora Ephron returns with her first book since the astounding success of I Feel Bad About My Neck, taking a hilarious look at the past, the present, and the future, bemoaning the vicissitudes of modern life, and recalling with her signature clarity and wisdom everything she hasn’t (yet) forgotten. 

 Filled with insights and observations that instantly ring true—and could have come only from Nora Ephron—I Remember Nothing is pure joy.





Review

How have I not read anything by Nora Ephron before? I mean, the woman and I were practically soulmates (I am mostly being sarcastic here...mostly). 

But I digress.

In a matter of I don't know how many essays, Ephron managed to pack years of life experiences in such a poignant way. Seriously - I don't know how the woman did it. It's not even that she used "big words" or unveiled the secrets of the universe. She talks about very ordinary-but-unique-in-each-person's-way experiences and used understandable language. So how did this woman manage to turn my world upside down in less than 150 pages?

I don't know. But the important thing is that she did. 

Ephron discusses everything from Christmas dinners, divorces to meeting your heroes and meat loaf. And I think that the unexpected thing, after the laughter, were those moments of subtle heartbreak. And that Ephron was a clever one - she waited for the last two pages of the book to completely break your heart. 

I'm not going to tell you what those last two are about - just going to have to read to find out.

Verdict

Read it. And then do as this reader is doing and hunt down her other writings.