The Last Few Weeks...

So, in the last few weeks I’ve read three books: One Fifth Avenue by Candace Bushnell, Home Safe by Elizabeth Berg, and Grammar Snobs are Great Big Meanies by June Casagrande. They were all pretty quick reads, and they were all pretty good, but all very different.

For anyone who doesn’t know, Candace Bushnell is the woman behind Sex and the City. New York plays a starring role in all of her work, and this book is no exception. But instead of focusing on the single-ladies-looking-for-love-in-the-City, instead she focuses on the EXTREMELY wealthy people who inhabit a world that most of us can only dream about. These are the people who pay tens of millions of dollars for a penthouse apartment and then hire a designer to renovate the place. Granted, they occasionally mingle with normal people who are scraping by to make their rent, but those people are abnormal in other ways (trust me). That is probably my biggest disappointment with the book – there are really no “normal” people. I mean, are there really 22-year-old women in NYC whose parents pay their rent, after having already paid for a boob job and liposuction, all so the little darling can marry a wealthy man? REALLY?? If you are a fan of Bushnell’s work I’m sure you will like it, but it’s not Sex and the City.

After that foray into how the other half lives, I was ready for something a little more accessible. Home Safe was the right choice. Elizabeth Berg is a very good writer, whose characters deal with deep emotional issues but without crossing the line to melodrama or whining, and who generally have a sense of humor about themselves. I think the thing I liked most about this novel is that the main character is a novelist who is going through a very dry spell, and her feelings about writing and reading and books in general made me long to start writing my own fiction. This is a nice novel, about a woman’s journey from loss to acceptance of herself.

When I returned those books to the library I was looking through the pathetically minimal new book selections, and came across Grammar Snobs are Great Big Meanies, which my library apparently considers new even though it was published in 2006. Anyway, as a word geek I couldn’t resist it. Casagrande takes issue with people who use grammar rules to bludgeon people (if you’ve read Eats, Shoots, and Leaves, you know who I mean), and she uses humor AND research to back up her points. A very useful book and a very quick read, and Casagrande seems to have a fabulous time using the various style manuals against each other. I’m considering buying a copy to keep in my office.

Black Hills

I am a fan, so it pains me to say this, but it has to be said: Nora Roberts has turned into Danielle Steele. Her latest novel, Black Hills, is so formulaic that I could have written it. It’s a fill-in-the-blank based on any of a number of her other novels — Nora just changes the setting, the characters’ names and occupations, and the murderer’s motive. Yes, there is a crazy murderer, but everyone figures out who he is halfway through the book.

Nora (I’ve read enough of her novels to be on a first name basis) even uses some of the same scare-tactics she used in other novels. I’m pretty sure I remember dead animals being left on doorsteps from High Noon. I’m not saying I didn’t enjoy the book, and I’m not saying I didn’t read the whole thing in about two days. What I’m saying is that it just felt like Nora wasn’t even trying, like she knows all of us chicks will read her books no matter what.

Another issue: her main characters are named Lil Chance and Coop Sullivan, for crying out loud. And of course Coop has piercing blue eyes, and Lil is beautiful and fit, feisty and athletic. She even likes baseball. Why do we never have main characters named Kathy Baker and Steve Johnson, who both could stand to lose a few pounds?

Anyway, I think I’m going to swear off Nora Roberts for a while, at least until her next mystical realism trilogy comes out; I always go for those.

The Zookeeper's Wife

I picked up The Zookeeper’s Wife thinking it sounded like a great story; it wasn’t until I started to read it that I realized it was a true story. Diane Ackerman tells the story of Antonina and Jan Zabinski, Christian Poles who helped saved the lives of over 300 Jews by hiding them in and around their zoo in Warsaw during WWII. Although Jan is the zookeeper who fights with the Underground – and is injured in the Warsaw Uprising – it is Antonina who keeps her “House Under a Crazy Star” together, providing a warm and “normal” environment for her numerous “Guests.”

For the most part I liked the book. It is a heart-warming story, and one many people are probably unfamiliar with. Ackerman writes with poetry and humor, and her descriptions both the people and the animals are interesting and clever. She wrote the book based on Antonina’s journals and personal interviews with survivors, including Antonina’s son, so her descriptions of Antonina’s experiences regarding the events of the war are probably pretty true, and I found them to be honest without being glossed over.

My main complaint about the book is that Ackerman often interrupts the flow of the story to insert research that I found to be unrelated. For instance, one of the Zabinski’s Jewish friends was a collector of insects, and he amassed a huge collection. When the Nazi’s forced all of the Warsaw Jews into the Ghetto, the bug collector smuggled his collection out with Jan to be held for safekeeping at the zoo. Ackerman describes all of the different bugs in the collection for three pages. I understand that she is a naturalist, but it was totally unimportant to the story.

Overall though, this is an enjoyable book (if any book dealing with the Holocaust can be said to be enjoyable). If nothing else, I learned about two war heroes whom I had never before heard of, and that’s something worthwhile.