“Ramblings in Ireland” by Kerry Dwyer

Publication Date: August 15, 2012

Kerry, a Brit ex-pat living in France, and her French husband, Bertrand, ramble literally and intellectually through Ireland. Their rambles include life, love and the helpfulness of having a partner who can read a map.

My husband and I visited Paris during our honeymoon. I didn’t notice at the moment but when later watching the video of our visit to the Catacombs, two things stand out – the first is the bride sobbing softly (I am deeply claustrophobic – and the Catacombs cotain skeletons – need I say more?). The second thing that stands out is a in-depth conversation for nearby visitors of the difference in the English words “mess” and “mass.” I picture Kerry Dwyer as one of the people analyzing the uses and definitions. Kerry has a deep love for the English language. Does this sound annoying? Kerry brings a charm to her obsessions that make the reader like her even more for them.

Kerry warns us in the foreword that she rambles. Rambling can go very bad but Kerry manages to bring it all back to relevance. She paints the picture of her parents and Bertrand and their difficulty with maps and the beauty of Ireland in vivid detail. Reading Ramblings in Ireland is sitting down with a good storyteller and enjoying the journey rather than the destination. Despite the troubles they have in traveling together, neither Kerry nor Bertrand grate at the reader. They treat each challenge in a way that allows the reader to laugh with them rather than at them.

I find it fun to read how different cultures see different things and through Kerry we get the English, French and often Irish perspectives. Each character we meet while on the road is unique and memorable and drawn in such a way that this reader wanted to head over and meet them. I’m not a walking tour person but I almost want to do it after reading Ramblings in Ireland.

I read this book while on a long trip and found that the bits of time spent with Kerry and Bertrand were light, easy and brightened my day. This is not the best book I’ve ever read but I have absolutely nothing negative to say about it. I would advise anyone who likes fun travel memoirs to pick it up.

“No Easy Day: The Firsthand Account of the Mission That Killed Osama Bin Laden|” by Mark Owen

Publication Date: September 4, 2012

Mark Owen recounts his Seal training, the previously unreported missions that his team executed and the ultimate mission in which Osama Bin Laden fell. This is a first hand account of the War on Terror.

Who doesn’t remember where they were on September 11, 2001? I was pregnant and getting ready to head out to work. I watched in horror as the towers fell. Mark Owen, also watching on the other side of the world, knew that this would be the time for action and waited for the call he knew that he’d get saying that things were just starting for his elite team. While it took longer than anticipated, Bin Laden was always the brass ring and Owen is clearly pleased to be part of the team that took him out.

When I sat down to read this book, the media had prepared me for a salacious tale – the book that should have never been written. What it actually turned out to be was the story of a solider. Who he was, what he struggled with, how his family suffered and ultimately the achievement of the goal of his Seal career. Owen tells us at the start that he won’t recount any top secret material or give the reader any information that could compromise national security – his career is all about protecting the US and he didn’t plan to stop now. I have read other first hand books about military history and this one will fit next to those comfortably. Owen himself tells us that he intends this to be the “Black Hawk Down” of the War on Terror.

We’re educated by this book. Owen uses military terms and explains them. He tells us what Seals go through to qualify and training and the high number of dropouts. He tells us that a military man puts his job first and even when they’re home it’s hard to get mentally away from the military. He is honest but not sensational. He tells us about the preparation and detail oriented nature of preparation by his team. When they went into the compound, they didn’t know what the inside of the house looked like but they knew every door and which way it opened from the outside in. They built a model on which to practice. We know what it would have meant had that helicopter crashed when they prepared to fast rope into the compound. Owen’s narrative, even in action, is relatable. We’re having coffee with this guy and listening in awe to his life story and the things he’s done which may sounds very hard to us.

On a negative note, the narrative jumps around in a way that can be distracting. One moment we’re in training with Phil and Charlie and the next we’re in Mark’s native Alaska wearing a homemade fur hat with feet freezing. The jumps are indelicate and distracting and many times I had to track back to rediscover where we’d gone.

At the end of the day, this is an account of someone who lived history. I didn’t find No Easy Day: The Firsthand Account of the Mission That Killed Osama Bin Laden to be the sensationalized tell all advertised. This was a story meant to inspire the future and to make us understand the gravity of the responsibility that the men and women who serve our country carry everyday.

”Bitter is the New Black : Confessions of a Condescending, Egomaniacal, Self-Centered Smartass,Or, Why You Should Never Carry A Prada Bag to the Unemployment Office” By Jen Lancaster

Are you wondering what happened to Indie Monday? I read two indie books over the weekend and neither were good or bad enough to review. I am reaching back into the vault for this review of a book that I truly hated. I wonder if, like me, you read this memoir and marveled at how it made the NYT Bestseller List. This memoir highlights that the list is based on sales and not quality.

Publication Date: March 7, 2006

Jen Lancaster was living the high life until she lost her job and her man and could no longer afford the things that had previously defined her. What would this narcissist do in a bad economy and with a horrible disposition to restore herself to her previous glory?

That I didn’t hate this character (or real person, I should say) as much as I expected to is a testament to just how much I expected to hate her. Anyone working in the RL knows someone like this. She is defined by what she wears and her position and knows EVERYTHING. You leave her every day thinking it must be great to be she and be so sure about everything no matter how wrong she always proves to be. At the start of the story, Jen is nothing short of an entitled, self- absorbed, mega-bitch and by the end she hasn’t changed a whole lot.

Jen, herself, is unpleasant. She’s not someone I’d want to buddy up with in daily life and, frankly, she probably wouldn’t want to buddy up with me. We’d annoy the crap out of each other. I cheered when another charater that Jen thought not as good as herself stole a job from under Jen. With Jen’s “My need is so much more than your need” attitude, she would have done the same to the other person given the chance. Stealing a Coach briefcase, as she does early on, speaks of the lengths to which she goes to get what she wants and how she views the plight of others…if you have it and I THINK I need it it should be mine. The more downtrodden people are, the funnier she finds them.

I have seen many reviews that laud the memoir as witty. The humor is so mean and degrading that I often found the memoir difficult to read. I did not want to be a party to the hurtful nature of her commentary. The memoir itself it written in Jen Lancaster’s voice so it does feel like a conversation – and one you just don’t want to be having.

In the end, this is the story of humility but not really a lesson learned. Jen does learn that she doesn’t need all the stuff she’s indulged herself with to define her. That having been said, she’s still a bitch and she still loves confrontation. I seriously dislike people who get joy out of making others feel bad and therefore I seriously dislike Jen Lancaster. If you are itching for this kind of read, I would suggest the Shopholic series by Sophie Kinsella whose novels are much better written and provide less of an urge to rip the pages.

“A Killing in Iowa: A Daughter’s Story of Love and Murder.” By Rachel Corbett

Publication Date: November 14, 2011

Rachel Corbett grew up knowing that her mother’s ex-boyfriend had killed himself but not knowing the full details of his death. When she finds out that his death was the suicide part of a murder/suicide, she launches a quest to find out more about the crime and why this man she considered a father would have done such a thing.

In the synopsis I may have overstated what the book is about. It’s a short book written with the intent of being something a person will read in one sitting and that’s where it suffers. Corbett starts her narrative with a history of Iowa and while I think she tries to paint a picture of desperation born of poverty, I don’t think she quite pulls it off and could have better used those pages for more information about the crime and her connection to the killer. This is less a story about Scott Johnson’s killing of his girlfriend, his dog and himself (after putting the girlfriend’s son out in his truck where the child sat until the bodies were found) but Corbett’s desire to rationalize Johnson and make him a sympathetic killer while balanced with a healthy dose of “It could have been me.”

The only real connection to the crime itself, beyond bare and brief facts, is the son, who Corbett tracks down. She tells us that she had to find him and doesn’t seem to know her own purpose in doing so but in the telling comes off as not really caring what impact she has on this young victim as long as she gets what she wants. The real information, which she doesn’t seem to have considered before despite the large amount of drugs found in the house, is that the boy believes that Johnson was probably taking hallucigenic mushrooms when he killed his girlfriend and dog and ate his gun. The information Corbett gives the son in return is that his mother was found naked, a fact he must have already known (not to mention she was shot on a waterbed that, then punctured, leaked and bloated her body so that the people carrying her out could hardly carry her). When he reacts with anger, she seems to believe it’s because she has bettered herself by escaping Iowa and he hasn’t. This person’s mother died and you’re giving him the tritest bit of information you could find and you think his reaction is jealousy? We know, as readers, that her implication was that the boy’s mother has made a pact with Johnson, pure supposition on Corbett’s part as there’s no way she could know this information. Corbett wants the son to feel the sympathy for Johnson that she does. This is true crime and the man that killed his mother and left him without parents (his dad was in prison), he’s not going to say, “I understand my mom was probably complicit in her murder and now my life is all happy and good.”

Corbett projects the arrogance and all knowing nature of youth and those qualities pour from the pages of this book. She remembers Johnson as gentle and so sensitive that it was him that needed to be comforted when he accidentally dropped her. She has the love of a child for an adult but not the perspective, even as an adult, to understand that maybe she didn’t know him that well. She hints that was maybe the case but goes back to alternating between feeling sorry for him and the rejections he faced (she regales us with a memory of his spending the night at their home the night before and asking her mother to sleep with him – platonically – and, in her words, “once again being met with rejection.”) and the fear that it could have been her.

I think everyone reading this will know how annoyed I was at the author. I would have loved to read a full length book about the crime but what I read was a self-serving narrative by a person who comes off as arrogant and superior and who I’m not sure I believe was as close to the crime as she thinks she was. Not a book I’d recommend.

Rabid Reader Ramble #1 – Richards Apologizes to Jagger.

Here’s the problem with being famous – if I say someone is a jerk, no one cares. Who am I? My opinion may interest me but not anyone else. If Keith Richards says that his bandmember is an uptight, controlling, prick, the world takes notice and every media outlet looks to throw a further wedges between them so that the every drop of interest can be wrung from the ashes of what was maybe a good thing or maybe not so that when the apology comes, it can be hard to find

Blazoned across the headlines of page 345 of our local paper (that may be an exaggeration) this weekend was the headline “Richards Apologizes to Fellow Rolling Stone, Jagger.” The apology was for comments that Richards made in his 2010 Memoir “Life” about Jagger. As a reader, I kind of saw Richards looking at Jagger as the “Man” in a sense. The person making all of the decisions and pulling all the puppet strings but, in reading, you wouldn’t want those strings in Keith Richard’s hands. Keith Richards at that time (and maybe still) was a hot mess. The sense was of rebellion against authority but when you’re the bad boy band that’s probably not the image Jagger wanted of himself out in the media no matter how true. According to the media, the band’s rift over those comments was of such seriousness that their 50th Anniversary Tour was in jeopardy. Or was it? It’s a good money making opportunity, would they have just gone on with it.

Richards’ is quoted in the article as saying, “As far as the book goes, it was my story and it was very raw, as I meant it to be, but I know that some parts of it and some of the publicity really offended Mick and I regret that.”(Read more: http://www.windsorstar.com/entertainment/Richards+apologizes+fellow+Rolling+Stone+Jagger/6313143/story.html#ixzz1pZfl3sXD). It was extremely raw and in my review I lauded him for that and I don’t believe here he’s saying that what he said wasn’t what he felt but that he’s sorry that it hurt Jagger’s feelings. When is an apology not an apology? When it’s an “I was just being honest.” LOL

At the end of the day, Jagger accepts the apology and life moves on for this band. The last sentence in the article cites a groundbreaking upcoming documentary about the group to be released in September. Will we see some of this rift play out? Let me know because I’m opting out of this one.

“She Ain’t Heavy, She’s my Mother” by Bryan Batt

Publication Date: May 10, 2010

Bryan Batt is a Broadway actor and played Sal Romano on the award winning show, “Mad Men” In “She Ain’t Heavy, She’s My Mother” he tells the story of Gayle Batt through key moments in his own life. From his debut in pink silk at the Spring Fiesta Parade in New Orleans to running through the streets with a wheelchair on 9/11, Batt relays his experience of life in the south and as the son of a truly strong southern woman.

I saw this book on an endcap at the library and am a big fan of the show “Mad Men” so thought I’d pick it up. The dust jacket paints it as the story of Bryan Batt, which it’s really not. It’s the story of Bryan’s mother, Gayle, and the way she’s shaped his life and the lives of everyone around her. If there’s one thing any reader will walk away from this book knowing it’s that Bryan Batt deeply loves his mother. He eloquently paints a picture of who she is and who he became because of her innate qualities.

The language of the novel is flowery and dramatic but so warm and humorous that it’s hard to hold it against the author. Batt goes to the hairdresser with his mother in one sequence and says, “I soon felt the instinctual desire to explore and was discovered later with perm rods up my nose, imitating the walruses we had recently witnessed at the Audubon Zoo.” This passage is typical of not only the humor but the prose of this memoir.

Not all moments are happy. When Gayle talks with her family about needing chemo and her decision regarding the procedure, the scene is so vivid and perfect to the character we’ve come to know. I thought to myself while reading this memoir that when I either stop laughing or crying I’ll be sure to think the prose is too much.

The highlight of the way the memoir is written comes on page 167 when Batt’s mother is visiting New York on 9/11. If you do nothing else, go to the Amazon copy and search in the book for this. It’s a beautiful, if brief, telling of the event and how the people of New York pulled together in the face of tragedy.

Batt does use a lot of creative license. There are some things he would simply never know but that did not in any way bother this reader. He could not have been a party as an early teenager to a call that his mother gets from his father’s girlfriend and the ensuing scenes after. There’s no way he could know but he doesn’t idealize his mother, he stays true to the Gayle that we’ve been reading and have come to know. Batt is an actor and he shows us his flair for the dramatic from the very first memory he claims to have which is in infancy.

This is not a story of Batt growing up gay in Louisiana, as advertised on the jacket. He does have moments, like ordering gay porn magazines by pretending to be his mother but that’s not the overriding theme of the book. This is truly the story of Gayle Batt conveyed in a perfect love letter of a memoir from her son.

“She Ain’t Heavy, She’s my Mother” is a quick and warm read and I recommend it highly for those who like humor, memoirs or quirky characters.

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