Twenties Girl: A Novel

I do not normally read books like Twenties Girl. It's straight up fiction, modern day, set in London. The last couple of times I've read similar fiction have not, honestly ended well. There was The Spoiler, which left me wondering how all of the reviews (and NPR - NPR, for God's sake!) had gotten it so wrong; I could not even bring myself to finish Last Night at Chateau Marmont. But Clio wrote a fantastic review and since she (almost) never steers me wrong, I figured, why not? Twenties Girl is absolutely laugh-out-loud hilarious. It is the funniest book I have read since Good Book and that was a year ago.

Here's the set-up: Lara Lington's life is a trainwreck. Her boyfriend has inexplicably walked out on her, and her business partner has decided to stay in Goa somewhat indefinitely. Lara has no money, no life, and she's desperate to remember which lies she's previously told her parents so not to confuse the story line when they come to pick her up for the funeral of 105-year-old Great Aunt Sadie, whom Lara has never met.

Life goes from bad to worse at the funeral when dead aunt Sadie, whose casket is just there, feet from Lara, refuses to go to her grave quietly, but rather begins to haunt Lara. See, she has lost her necklace and she's in a sort of purgatory unless Lara can find it. She's also rather bossy and saucy and reappears at the most inopportune times. In addition to finding her necklace, Sadie is obsessed with the Charleston and determined that Lara will learn.

Twenties Girl is completely and utterly over-the-top. It is ridiculous in the best sense of the word and it is hilarious pretty much from start to finish. Sophie Kinsella has created a lighthearted masterpiece here and I'm sorry I doubted for a minute whether I should read it.

Alice, Let's Eat: Further Adventures of a Happy Eater

A few months ago, one of my friends posted a great review of Alice, Let's Eat. I wasn't familiar with Calvin Trillin, but her "bottom line" was that the book was hilarious, as she had come to expect from Trillin.

Alice, Let's Eat is a memoir in which Trillin recounts many of the great meals and delicacies he has enjoyed over the years, mostly (but not always) in the company of his dear wife, Alice. As many of the meals and regional delicacies he recounts are tied closely to one corner of this world or another, Alice, Let's Eat is a bit of a travelogue as well as food log. I like to travel. I like good food. And I especially like to eat good food when I travel (it's quite possible that the best meal I've ever eaten was at the Blue Pig Tavern in Cape May, New Jersey...unless it was at 82 Queen in Charleston, South Carolina...or, well you get the idea). Frankly, I thought I'd be hard-pressed to find more appropriate Thanksgiving reading than Alice, Let's Eat - which I kept thinking of as "Let's Eat, Alice," not to be confused with "Let's Eat Alice," a very Eats, Shoots & Leaves mistake, but I digress.

In any case, I found Alice, Let's Eat to be amusing, if not hilarious. It took until the end of one chapter for me to realize that, yes, country ham was evidently a real dish, that it did come was remnants of mother earth still clinging to the meat, and yes, Alice is obviously a much more adventurous cook - and eater - than I. And if I hadn't already figured that out, it would have been hard to miss when she attended a church picnic where the fixings included healthy helpings of beaver, coon, and bear chops.

This is a quick, fun read for anyone who likes food, travel, memoirs, or some combination thereof. Strict vegetarians may be appalled by the quantity of meat consumed within these pages; everyone else is more likely to mesmerized.

Dear Girls Above Me (Inspired by a True Story)

I'm pretty sure I have USA Today to thank - or blame - for bringing this book to my attention. The premise is this: Charlie McDowell, a rather hapless, and aimless, guy in his late 20s, discovers that he can hear practically every word spoken by the people in the apartment directly above him. (Also everything they do.) Unfortunately, these people appear to be two of the dumbest bipeds since the beginning of time. Example: Isn't it weird that we use the same word for the devil as we do for the most fab fabric? Charlie deduces they do not know the difference between satan and satin. In any case, he names the girls Cathy and Claire and then starts a Twitter account in which he pens 140 character missives to them, hence the "Dear Girls Above Me." Said account becomes wildly popular and then inspires this book. (It probably doesn't hurt that his mother is an Oscar-winning actress.)

Here's the thing: there's just not enough material here to be a full book. It's a rather "fab" idea for a Twitter account, and the account is really funny, but in book format, it really starts to drag and is not helped any by McDowell's insertion of childhood anecdotes about, say, Disneyland. Said anecdotes do nothing to move the story forward and usually left me scratching my head - and skimming quickly to find the next interesting bits. As the review on the cover says, "By introducing us to the memorable American folk heroes known as the 'the girls above him,' Charlie McDowell sneakily does one better: he introduces us to Charlie McDowell..." The problem, for me at least, is that I don't really care that much about Charlie McDowell; I'm more interested in Cathy and Claire who remind me way too much of a girl I went to school with for years who once asked, in front of the entire class, how she could have possibly gotten a negative score on an AP prep exam. Her name also began with a C.

Unless you really enjoy the intimate details of total strangers' daily lives (and childhood),  I'd recommend giving Dear Girls Above Me a wide berth.

The Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible

The first thing to say is that A.J. Jacobs' wife deserves a medal. Seriously. If my husband told me he was going to stop shaving for a year (we're not talking about a tidy little Abe Lincoln beard here; we're talking terrorist facial hair), wear only white garments (sometimes in the form of a shepherd's robe), carry around his own seat (one of those old and infirm cane-with-built-in-seat contraptions) so as not to sit anywhere "impure," carry unleavened bread upon his back (even if only for a day), and eat no fruit grown on tree less than five years old, there is a distinct possibility that I would file for divorce. I would certainly insist he have his mental health examined. And that's before you consider the constant nattering about the Bible, amending "God willing" to virtually every future-tense statement, or replacing certain choice words with "sugar" or "fudge." That his wife merely takes to whistling the theme song from The Andy Griffith Show is a testament to at least one virtue, patience. I'm sure it helps that this quest was undertaken for the purposes of writing a book, which undoubtedly pays a good many bills.

That said: The Year of Living Biblically was referred to several times in Good Book, I like The Know-It-All (A.J. Jacobs' previous book about reading the entire Encyclopedia Britannica from a-z) well enough, and Clio recently listened to it on tape and heartily recommended it. All good enough reasons for me to pluck it from the library shelves. Parts of it were definitely laugh-out-loud funny. Even greater parts were head scratchingly bizarre. But, I'm sure because I read them so close together, I couldn't help but compare these two Bible books, both written by secular East Coast Jews, and sprinkled liberally with humor and irony, as well as Biblical scholarship. In a head-to-head contest, Good Book comes out ahead, although I can recommend them both, but maybe not in immediate succession.

Both Jacobs and Plotz note that their religious studies/immersion/projects changed them intrinsically in ways they couldn't necessarily articulate, but which definitely were spiritual in nature. This phenomenon, if you will, makes me curious about earlier decades, when society was, on a whole, more religious. Essentially, my question is this: Were people simply more religious because they spent more time with the Bible? And did they spend more time with the Bible simply for lack of Nintendo Wii and the Internet, or was there something inherently different about them? My guess is the former, but I think I'll pass on undertaking the research myself. I wouldn't want to turn into a Bible thumper.

Good Book

The full title of this book is Good Book: The Bizarre, Hilarious, Disturbing, Marvelous, and Inspiring Things I Learned When I Read Every Single Word of the Bible. A mouthful, right? It's so long that it actually summarizes the entire book perfectly. For example, the bizarre: after Jonah was swallowed by the whale, he was actually spit back on a beach and continued on his merry way. Did I learn this in Sunday school? I can't remember. I have a vague notion that Jonah and the whale was somehow miraculous, but really this tale is nuts.

The hilarious: Now, this assumes that David Plotz is not pulling his readers' legs (and since most of us will probably never undertake such a close reading of the Bible, I suppose it would be easy enough for him to do), but Plotz writes that in 2 Kings 2, "As Elisha is walking to Bethel, a group of boys - 'small boys' - starts mocking him: 'Go away, baldhead! Go away, baldhead!' ... Elisha turns around and curses the taunting kids in the name of the Lord. After his curse, 'two she-bears came out of the woods and mangled forty-two of the boys.'" I should note that this is also highly disturbing.

Plotz's writing is lively and, frankly, hilarious throughout and so Good Book is a quick and enjoyable read, right up until you realize "twenty-five hundred years later and it's the same fights, the same land, the same people." Or, in Biblical terms, Judges 11: Do you not hold what Chemosh your God gives you to possess? So we will hold on to everything that the Lord our God has given us to possess." As Plotz concludes, "And there, my friends, you have practically the entire history of Israel, of the Middle East, and of planet Earth, in two short sentences."

When You Look Like Your Passport Photo, It's Time to Go Home

Thanksgiving weekend was productive, reading-wise; not only did I start and finish History of a Pleasure Seeker, but I also managed this light and funny travel memoir.

I was given this book by my sister, who remembered my adolescent fondness for the late humorist Erma Bombeck, whose columns appeared weekly in the newspaper. As you might have guessed from the title, When You Look Like Your Passport Photo... describes Erma's adventures traveling to places near (the Grand Canyon) and far (the Great Barrier Reef), exotic (Papua New Guinea) and less exotic (Canada). Beyond a bad case of traveler's envy, this book provided an interesting perspective on international travel 25 or 30 years ago. For example, Bombeck devotes one chapter to airline food, as in the complimentary meals that haven't been served in coach for the past decade. As she vents her frustration about being lost in one country after another my first thought is 'I can relate,' but my second 'yes, Garmin is my friend.'

The most interesting chapters for me were those devoted to her travels in the former Soviet Union, specifically the panel discussions in which she participated with the intent of fostering greater Soviet-American understanding. I believe she cuts to the heart of why so many of us travel when she writes, "Once you have looked into the eyes of people in a foreign country, you realize you all want the same thing: food on your table, love in your marriage, healthy children, laughter, freedom to be. ... [T]he dreams are all the same."

The Polysyllabic Spree

This is another book I really struggled with, though I can't figure out precisely why. At only 140 pages, it certainly wasn't too long. Polysyllabic Spree is a collection of Nick Hornby's columns from The Believer in 2003-2004, and the vast majority of them are colorful and humorous, even if I didn't find many books to add to my reading list. (I did find three, which doesn't seem too bad - Random Family, George and Sam: Autism in the Family, and On and Off the Field, the latter of which is improbably a cricketer's biography. As in the British sport, not the insect-obsessed.) At the end of the day, perhaps it's that I'd rather read the books myself than read someone else's impressions of them. Undoubtedly there's a bit of irony in writing that sentence in a blog dedicated to my own, not-as-entertaining-as-Nick-Hornby's impressions of books.