Summer Reading Volume 1

Summer time usually means lazy days, perhaps some time off and enjoying the pleasures of doing things you normally don't get to do.  One of the things I picked up as the weather got warmer was reading again.  It's just too hot to crochet.  Working with yarn on the train is not something I'm interested in doing on a 90 degree day.  So I got a library card and started sorting through their fiction, hoping to find some good stuff.  I lucked out that whatever my local library doesn't have, they can usually get pretty quickly from one of the local branches.

I typically read chick-lit, general women's fiction, and humor.  So I started there and am sharing some reviews for you.  You can click the links at the bottom of this post to get any of these books on Amazon.




Best Friends Forever by Jennifer Weiner

I'm a huge fan of Jennifer Weiner and have read nearly everything she's written.  Unfortunately, this was not my favorite of her books.  It's good, just not her best book as far as I'm concerned. I appreciated that she stretched to a different kind of humor, but the back story was heartbreaking and I couldn't get the humorous parts to match up given the heart ache in the rest of the story.  It's well written though, easy to read, and the characters are likeable, but after reading her other work, it just doesn't seem congruous.  It's a look at the lives of two former best friends, torn apart by some terrible choices when they were teenagers and how their lives bring them back to each other, and how they move forward given their past.




Certain Girls by Jennifer Weiner

Now this is the Jennifer Weiner I know and love.  And as a follow up to Good In Bed, I was in seventh heaven getting that extra story of the characters.  You don't need to have read Good In Bed to enjoy Certain Girls as Weiner does a wonderful job weaving in the parts of that story that are important.  A look at the relationships between mothers and daughters, a struggle with family secrets and how hard a stubborn teenager will work to find out the truth, this book is really enjoyable.  A great story, the beauty and humor that Weiner is known for, and a special way of pulling the protagonists into your heart, making you love them and wanting them to be happy are all wrapped up in a neat package with this one.  I definitely recommend this one.



The Bed Wetter: Stories of Courage, Redemption and Pee by Sarah Silverman

I know Sarah Silverman is kind of polarizing, and truthfully I'm not a huge fan of her stand-up.  But I was drawn in, thinking I might get a laugh or two.  I actually laughed through most of this book.  It's an honest look at how Silverman grew up always wanting to be in the spotlight, but yet dealt with depression and other issues in her adolescents and eventually came through the ranks to make it as a comedienne.  It's very funny and accounts for the beginning of her stand up career, her stint at SNL and the beginnings of her show on Comedy Central. Toward the end it started to drag, (it was right about that spot that Dave stopped reading it, although he enjoyed it to that point), but it was predominately funny.  It's full of toilet humor (if you couldn't figure that out from the title, you probably don't want to read this), but it also casts a light on how society really needs to understand that sometimes you need to laugh at a fart joke so your don't stab your own eyeballs out.



Let's Pretend This Never Happened: A Mostly True Memoir by Jenny Lawson

I'm not even going to review this book.  You know I love this blog.  I'm just going to tell you that you need to read it.  It will bring a smile to your facing, you will laugh hysterically out loud in public with tears streaming down your face while other people on the train look at you like you forgot to take your medication (wait, that last bit just might be me).  If you are in a funk, need a laugh, or are so stressed out you might inflict bodily harm on yourself or others, you need this book in your life.  It'll make you happy that your life isn't that jacked up, but it will also make you wonder which parts are "mostly true" (and make you secretly hope it's all true because learning that something that funny was made up will make a piece of you die).