Working Stiff by Grant Stoddard

Smirk.

In some ways, I should just leave it at that. But I won’t. I can’t.

Just when you think you’re a mature individual and gotten over any possible embarrassment over buying a book about a guy’s sexual exploits, you get comments from an over friendly sales associate. The ever so kind cashier gave me a little smirk while he was placing it in a bag and then had to comment on my choice of purchase. I make some offhand comment about it looking too funny to pass up but on the inside, I’m feeling like I’ve just bought porn and my mother is the one taking my money. And after reading this fun little book, that seems rather fitting.

Basically, Working Stiff is the autobiography of one man’s experience as a columnist for the webzine, Nerve. His assignment was to go out and perform sexual experiments and report back in the form of a high school lab report. He did this for two and some years. And he did everything. Nothing was too weird, deviant, or gross. And you get some of that is this retelling of his life but not really. He didn’t grow up wanting to be a sex reporter, he just wanted to live in America and jumped at a chance that would pay his rent and keep him in the country. He is the everyman thrown into situations that he stumbles his way through. (My favourite would have to be his time at Leather Camp.) What you didn’t get through his old column is his parent’s reaction to his line of work. Or how assignments affected his dating life.

There were a few very explicit scenes and this is definitely not a book I’d recommend for just anyone. The writing style reminded me more of the stuff I’ve read off of the internet than anything I’d read in book form. If you are not used to that, you might find it a little graphic. And the fact that it was non-fiction added a certain sense of surrealism to the text that you wouldn’t accept from a fictionalized story. But it was undeniably funny and I can’t think of a single thing more amusing than sex.

Smirk.

My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Picoult

First book completed on my vacation read-a-thon. Well, perhaps it won’t be a read-a-thon considering I want to get out of the house a few times but I need to get some of these done. This is as good a time as any.

This is the second Picoult book I’ve read and all I can say is that the woman loves to make you cry. She must get some perverse pleasure out of it. Or perhaps, she is like Stephen King and feels that if you write about the things you fear the most, it will cause them not to happen, like losing a child.

In both Picoult books I’ve read, there is a death, and grief, and pain, and loss. All the feelings and emotions people go through and hope to never have to. Here, we watch a family struggle with the effects of leukemia. The oldest daughter, Kate, was diagnosed with cancer at the age of two and from that day on, it has become one mother’s personal battle to keep her child alive. One way to do that is to conceive a child that is a close genetic match for your sick child so that they can donate the cord blood cells. That works for a while but down the road, remission turns into relapse. Then blood is needed or bone marrow. Sometimes, that single-minded focus to keep one child alive makes other things fall to the side. Your oldest son turns into a juvenile delinquent. Your other daughter goes to a lawyer to petition the court for medical emancipation from her parents. She doesn’t want to donate her kidney to her sister or at least, she wants to be asked.

This book is filled with all the moral dilemmas and the what ifs and the what would you do questions. You can understand how a parent would want to do anything in their power to help their child, keep that child with them for one more day. But what of those that get hurt in the process? No easy answers. Picoult loves taking a subject like this and exploring the family dynamics that are affected by this predicament.

Ultimately, Picoult books are an interesting read. I’ve found some similarities in the two that I’ve read: courtroom scenes that come with shocking testimony confessions and lawyers with a slightly skewed sense of the world. Mothers that you sometimes don’t really like but you find yourself making allowances for. It makes you wonder what her relationship was like with her own mother.

The best thing about her books: they are great for book clubs. You will not have any problems coming up with things to talk about after reading them.

Hot Stuff by By Janet Evanovich and Leanne Banks

Quick review. This story was complete fluff and not that much to talk about. It had a plot that tried to be complicated but it felt much more suited in a novel for teenagers.

Basically, girl is working her butt off going to school and working nights in a bar. Boy comes in and is a cutie but is acting awfully mysterious. Girl’s drag queen roommate takes off and leaves her to look after his rather large and new bullmastiff dog named Beast. Girl knows nothing about dogs and in walks handsome stranger to lend her a hand. But why is tall, dark, and yummy hanging around so much? Can girl trust him? You will have to read the book to find out.

There were some laugh out loud moments and some of the friend scenes reminded me a lot of my friends. So it was a fun read. Sort of like ice cream: I really know that I shouldn’t but darn it, it was tasty eating even if I feel a little guilty afterwards.

The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls

It has been way, way, way too long since I’ve sat down and wrote a review. But then, it has been too long since I’ve finished a book or at least, it feels that way. This is a book club book and an awesome one at that. It deserves to have some remembrance given to it.

The Glass Castle is one of those books that make you realize how good you’ve had it all these years. How everyone you know has had it good and how horrible bad can be for others. And sometimes, the choices people make may not be the best for them but they have to live their own life. You can’t save some people from themselves.

Sorry, this has totally told you nothing about the book... it is an actual account of the author’s childhood, growing up with nomadic/bohemian parents and three other siblings who were one step away from living off the grid. They had grand dreams, the mother wanted to be a world famous artist and the father had get rich quick schemes finding gold in the desert. If only he could get his contraption working, if only he could stop drinking. If only. They were extremely smart individuals; they just had trouble holding a job even if it meant that the family didn’t eat that month. The kids would scrounge in garbage bins for their classmate’s scraps to keep from starving. Living in homes, infested with rodents and insects, which should have been condemned. It was like an Americanized version of Angela’s Ashes.

But it wasn’t all bad. There was an attractive sense of adventure, especially in the early chapters before they ended up stuck in Welch, an out of work mining town in the hills of West Virginia. Like the Christmas each of the kids were given their very own star as a gift. Jumping into the car and not knowing what the road had in store. The hours spent drawing up the plans for their dream home, the Glass Castle, which they never got around to building. The sense that imagination and ingenuity were the best gifts a person could possess. The feeling that family was the most important thing in the world and if you had your family, things really weren’t all that bad.

Anyway, I’ve tried to be vague so that I don’t ruin for you all the weird and wacky stuff that happens to this family over the years. Truth is definitely stranger than fiction.