Book Review: Inside Passage

   Yo, friends. Have you, like me, been reading heavy stuff for months on end? Are you nourished, edified, and inspired, from the inside out, but at the same time feeling a bit threadbare around your sweet little bibliophile eyeballs? Have you enjoyed the snuggly winter and then the tumultuous springtime, and now are you perhaps in need of a big gulp of summertime reading pleasure? I mean, it is summer now, right? Yes, yes it is. Okay, then. I have a great book for you.

   Just last night I was very happy to polish off a relatively new title by Burt Weissbourd called Inside Passage. Released last year by Rare Bird Lit,   ***hi there sweet Julia!***  this novel of only 282 pages is part thriller, part mystery, and all suspense, human psychology, and natural beauty. Weissbrourd has added several healthy doses of sexy in there, too, so please don't hand this over to your teenager when you're done. Or your Mom. Trust me.

   We once took my Mom to see Superbad. In the theater. On the big screen. Not cool.

   That's a weird story. Let's get back to the book review.

   Set in the gorgeous and foreign-to-me Pacific Northwest, Inside Passage is no long winded epic, a fact I greatly appreciated after the reading that's been going on here lately. No, Inside Passage follows a short time line of tense and dangerous interactions between characters who hook you from the first introduction. A woman, Corey Logan, is fighting both for her life and for a life lived safely with her teenage son, who is trying to make sense of it all while going through every normal teenage boy experience. Together with allies they collect along the way, this strong but desperate mother and son duo is battling a powerful and vengeful man and all of those under his influence. Monstrous people. 

   Another woman and her son are involved, too. This woman proves herself to be desperate like Corey, but in wildly different ways. The family dynamics and insights to human behavior had me reeling several times. It's all juicy, fascinating stuff, and it is written with a light enough hand that the reader is drawn in but never exhausted. I really liked that. I need to learn how to write like that. How to speak like that. Think like that.

   I exhaust my own self is what I'm trying to say.

   Weissbourd writes efficiently, packing each paragraph with several cleanly written, informative sentences; yet his descriptions are luscious. At times I could feel the cold, salty ocean spray and smell salmon being grilled over a beach bonfire. 

Somehow this part of the world keeps cropping up in things I read. 

It all sounds incredibly beautiful, and I hope to visit someday.

   I definitely felt invested in the characters, the "good" ones, and repulsed by the "bad" ones. In fact, these dark characters rank in my opinion with some of Koontz's and King's worst imaginaries. Given more stage time, they could become cult characters themselves.

   I had not read anything by this author before, and ***TINY SPOILER ALERT*** apparently this is part of a series of books centered around a main character, the heroine Corey Logan. I only gave you that spoiler alert in case it would ruin any suspense for you regarding that character's longevity. Trust me, no matter what you think you know about the outcome, and that fact doesn't tell you much, the book is so much fun to read. Pick it up and dive in. Surrender yourself to each setting, each detail. Get inside the head of each fascinating character and work out the intricacies yourself, following the swell of action page after page. It's quite good.

   I would like to thank Julia for offering me this fun and succulent read. I would like to thank the author Burt Weissbourd for writing it. And I hope many of my friends give it a go. Good stuff you guys! Really tightly written and fast paced. Lots of action, lots of insight. If you need a reprieve, you'll like this. 

   Over and out.

   xoxoxo

You Take it From Here (Book Review)

   Having just returned from six days in New Orleans, I have three and a half thousand beautiful stories to share with you guys. I really should have been writing constantly all week long to keep up with the inspiration, and in fact I was scribbling things on hotel stationery every day, but I had almost no internet and was too busy enjoying the magic of the French Quarter and my Handsome guy anyway.

   Tonight, instead of Nawlins stuff, I just finished another VEEEERRRY interesting book and have a review to share. Got a few minutes?

http://pamie.com/books/you-take-it-from-here/ 

   Another generous gift from Julia, my most recent selection has been You Take it From Here by Pamela Ribon. It's a new release, and I actually get butterflies in my stomach to realize that as I read these 311 pages, most of it at home floating on our 97-degree pool filled with dragon flies, Ms. Ribon was touring the south talking to her fans about her newest novel.

   One of these days I will finish a book in time to catch its author on tour somewhere and, while snagging an autograph, find time to discuss the original literature at length with its creator. I would really liked to meet Pamela Ribon in particular. She relays through her writing a lot of warmth and empathy that I think would be perfectly delicious in person.

   Okay, the book.

   I liked it a whole lot. I actually like it more and more as it sits in my Creole-stuffed belly, and I expect to want to read it again and also share it with friends and family. It seems to belong to a genre I would not normally say is among my favorite (chic lit maybe?), but that doesn't matter one bit.

   You Take it From Here is immediately engaging, infuriatingly truthful, and wildly thought provoking about big, heavy topics. It weaves together maternal abandonment, cancer, coming of age, divorce, friendship, romance, and more. Ribon effortlessly juggles the weight of so many important themes at once that I am stunned to accept this as fiction. The wanna-be writer inside me kept thinking, Only real life could be so complex and yet so accurate, it's just crazy how she orchestrated this much at once. Pamela Ribon, you have my respect. I found it very easy to relax into your story and let it flow over me.

   Reading this book's teaser might tell you what it's about technically, but only by devouring the actual story cover to cover can you experience all the author wants to give you. Just for fun, though, a sample:

On the heels of a divorce, all Danielle Meyers wants is her annual vacation 

with sassy, life-long best friend, Smidge — complete with umbrella cocktails by an infinity pool — 

but instead she’s hit with the curveball of a lifetime. 

Smidge takes Danielle to the middle of nowhere to reveal a diagnosis of terminal cancer, 

followed by an unusual request: “After I’m gone, I want you to finish the job. 

Marry my husband. Raise my daughter. I’m gonna teach you to how to be Smidge 2.0.”

   I strongly suggest that you read this book if you fall into any of these categories:

• You have ever had a best girlfriend you loved more than a sister, who might even compete with your husband for space in your heart.
• You are a child of divorce.
• You have lost anyone to cancer, but especially a parent, and even more importantly your mother.
• You have left your hometown for a new life but feel that gravitational pull to return even though you are an independent grown up. Especially if the town you left is in the south.
• You have ever fallen in lust before falling in love, with the same man.
• You are SICK of being bossed around by strong willed, controlling, arrogant women.
• You are a strong willed, controlling, arrogant woman yourself. (I admit to hating Smidge right at her introduction, and I was actually relieved when she was soon to be no longer hurting and controlling her friends and family. I know, I am an awful person. But Ribon wrote a terribly difficult character, and I wonder is she maybe intended her readers to detest this cancer patient so we could let go more easily.)
• You are raising a teen aged daughter who is closer to adulthood than you would like. 
• You are a woman. Mother, daughter, sister, friend, any of it. 

    There is something in here for all of us, ladies, and I  hope you give it a few days of your life. I hope you encourage someone you love to read it, too, so you can discuss the emotional tide that will inevitably happen.


   Thank you for sending the book, sweet Julia! And thanks ever so much for writing it, Pamela. I am much better than pleasantly surprised by a new genre; I feel good all over. Just warmed and challenged and inspired to appreciate my health better; to see things from other viewpoints more often; and to love my people more deeply. Reading has, once again, enriched my life. Just as it should. 


Read Outside Your Zone
xoxoxo

Craving a Smart but Twisted Read? (Book Review of Survivor)

   Holding my breath and sandwiched sideways between book club projects and an ever growing Goodreads list, I have rebelled and spent the last few days peeled away from the crowd. Devouring an offbeat novel all by myself, with nobody's permission and nobody's company. What has been at the center of my papery affair?

Survivor by Chuck Palahniuk, author of Fight Club 

   This feels so sneaky, except that I am neither alone nor terribly original. This book was loaned to me by our very youngest book clubber, Mysti. Also, its author Chuck Palahniuk, creator of a little thing called Fight Club, comes highly recommended by Julia. 

   Ignoring these facts, I have for a few days been pretending to be an independent, free thinking reader. My ego takes what it can get.

Most of you know Julia by now. She is my baby sister's ten-four good buddy and my west coast literary mentor. Julia is the shiz-nay. You should read my two-part interview with her here and here. She is a cool chic with a fascinating job. 

   

   Survivor has been a trippy read, you guys. When Mysti handed it over to me in secret at the end of a particularly crowded book club dinner, she touted it as "a little twisted," and now I see why. So the question is, does having thoroughly enjoyed this book make me a little twisted? Cast your vote in the comments, please. 

********************

   Survivor grabbed me with the first sentence and has since then confused me, made me chuckle, made me wonder about so many social and religious themes, and inspired some fastidious house cleaning in the most literal, physical sense. (The main character is a housekeeper by trade.)

  I definitely recommend this book, though with a few caveats: Potential readers should know that a major theme of the story is suicide and that for the most part it is handled with unemotional casualness. Dark humor, certainly. The story's sexuality could be perceived as perverse by some people, too. Finally, its religious commentary is, well, not flattering to most of the Christian community. That is sometimes uncomfortable for people, so head's up gentle reader.


   The author's message is somewhere behind and betwixt all of that, though. I was able to glean from these 289 pages (listed in reverse, by the way, another strange delight) a lot of positive energy and worthwhile thinking then even laugh and pretend to be really smart for a few days. 

"Still, just dawning on him is the idea 

that now anything is possible. 

Now he wants everything...

After moments like this, 

your whole life is gravy."

   That quote is chalkboard worthy.


   Honestly, telling you what this book is about is a bit tricky. The storytelling and flavor are unconventional for sure. I know I say that a lot, but today I really mean it. The speaker jumps from present tense action to internal commentary with little warning and even less dialogue punctuation, all the while telling his own life story and keeping a myriad of story lines and character developments taut and interesting. I loved it. I may have been cringing through about a third of the pages, but I still loved it. The laughing more than made up for it.

   Palahniuk manages to wrangle so many controversial and agitating topics at once that for the first half of the book I was constantly guessing what he wanted me to care about most. Religious cultism, extreme materialism, media machinery and our new culture of attention addiction, psychobabble diagnosis obsessions (perhaps all cults unto themselves), and more. While he prompts plenty of self analysis, I gradually learned to stop forming opinions, mostly because nobody asked. That seemed to be a message unto itself: Mass movements are bad, you guys. Think for yourself but please keep your opinions to yourself. Live your own life. 


   Through one unanticipated misadventure after another, Palahniuk pokes fun at serious stuff. He makes almost sarcastic remarks on society by building his plot in ridiculous, exaggerated ways, and by inserting just enough realism to make it all believable. Then suddenly the controversial and agitating topics are so well braided together that I saw how the story would have been incomplete without any of them. And then a moment later the story has ended. Just like that. I was so frothed up by the final chapter that I had to block the remaining paragraphs with my hands, forcing myself to only read one line at a time, as slowly as possible. I was in a panic about the ending and would have been happy for the story to continue a wile longer.

   The characters of the book are as offbeat as the book itself and provide gritty, sometimes uncomfortable texture to the weird story. I found myself rooting for everybody at one time or another, only barely understanding each of them. Is this guy messing with us? Did I just fall for a big literary practical joke? Don't care. Loved it.  

********************

  Rumor has it that Julia just might be able to get this dorky girl (yours truly) an interview with Chuck Palahniuk. I already have a million questions, but I am pretty sure he'll be rolling his eyes because I missed something big. This novel is so layered with implication that I wonder if even its creator gets all of it. It would make either a fascinating or a devastating springboard for friendly debate.


   Read Survivor. Keep track of how often you cringe or laugh out loud. And get back with me. I need to talk about this in exhaustive detail.


Be Weird and Accidentally Brilliant,
and Keep Reading!
xoxoxoxo



<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22283.Survivor" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img alt="Survivor" border="0" src="http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1327346693m/22283.jpg" /></a><a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22283.Survivor">Survivor</a> by <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/2546.Chuck_Palahniuk">Chuck Palahniuk</a><br/>
My rating: <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/262439524">4 of 5 stars</a><br /><br />
WOW. Proper review on my blog, The Lazy W:<br /><br /><a href="http://thelazyw.blogspot.com/2012/06/craving-smart-but-twisted-read-book.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">http://thelazyw.blogspot.com/2012/06/...</a><br /><br />
<br/><br/>
<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/5281587-marie-wreath">View all my reviews</a>

Certified Bibliophile Spills Her Sassy Guts (1/2)

   Perhaps you remember me prattling on from time to time about my very happy acquaintance with Julia Callahan. She is a close friend of my sister Guinevere and has become my friend too. Julia is a literary publicist out in Los Angeles. She has been overly generous with her time and expertise this past year, guiding our famous little  book club through some voracious adventures, sharing ideas, listening, and encouraging us to flex our eyeballs more. Now this sweet derby girl has foolishly agreed to suffer an interview with yours truly.

   You guys, Julia was even more forthcoming and interesting than I knew she would be. I have divided this beefy endeavor into two parts for safer, slower consumption. I dare you to read both parts and NOT find something to discuss with a good bookish friend. Enjoy!

********************

You must know that I want your job in the worst way, as do many of my friends. Please dispel the romantic images I have of being paid to read books and communicate with people. Please tell us a typical day in the life and what your job is really like.

   Haha. Well, it is a pretty awesome job, and I do get paid to read books, but really, reading books is just part of what I do. In fact, I get paid to do everything else, I just have to read books if I'm going to promote them. I know it sounds hard. Basically, the thing that's great about my job is it's different every day. Some days I'm editing all day, some days I'm emailing people all day (usually media contacts), some days I'm just answering emails, and some days I'm booking author tours. Usually it's a combination of all of those things. I'm lucky to have a flexible job so I come in between 8 and 11 and I go home between 6 and 9 pm. Depending on the day, I might have to go to an event in the evening, or maybe not. It's different all the time. You can continue being jealous. It's a pretty great job.

How did you prepare for this career, both academically and personally?

   I’m a reader.  I always have been (except for a brief period between sixth and ninth grade).  I had a wonderful eighth grade history teacher named Mr. Sullivan who, among other things, taught me that history wasn't just boring names and dates, that Elvis and The Beatles were history, that To Kill a Mockingbird was history, that James Dean was history.  I came to the realization that what I loved most was the intersection between history and literature.  I loved that when I read Dickens I got a picture of Victorian England, but also the fact that Dickens and the serial novels changed the way Victorian England looked; it changed the way people thought and acted.  That intersection of life and art in the context of history was and still is just endlessly fascinating to me.  So, when I went to UC Santa Cruz, I majored in history and literature. 

    

   After college I aimlessly worked in places that had nothing to do with anything I studied until I needed a second job and ended up working at a bookstore in West Hollywood called Book Soup on weekends.  I was part time for a year or so and then the events coordinator, Tyson Cornell, took me on as his assistant.  I was his assistant for four years.  He left and started his own company called Rare Bird Lit and then hired me soon after. 

   I’m good with people and I’m an enthusiastic reader.  The rest I learned on the fly.  But luckily that came quickly. 

You are exposed to a large number and a wide variety of people all the time. Can you identify an innate personal quality that tends to distinguish the published authors among the world’s numerous writers? Is there something they “have” that gets them printed?

   I don’t know if there’s a certain personality trait.  I find that the best authors are the best readers.  I don’t believe someone can write without reading.  I also think that the best authors are the hardest on themselves.  If you’re a reader you know what good writing is and thus, you know when you have or have not achieved it. 

You keep numerous and long lists of books for different audiences and purposes. Thank you for sharing those with me, by the way! Now. Let’s pretend Earth is planning to colonize another planet and you are in charge of filling a time capsule with literature. What ten books would you include?

Oh man! How long is this blog post? Okay, in no particular order, and excluding A LOT: 

• To Kill a Mockingbird
• Shakespeare
• Catch-22
• On The Road
• Infinite Jest
• A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
• Pride and Prejudice
• Vanity Fair
• Jane Eyre
• East of Eden
• Catcher in the Rye
• The Sun Also Rises
• One Hundred Years of Solitude
• The Great Gatsby
• Huckleberry Finn
• The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
• The God of Small Thing
• Maus.  

   Also, like 1 million others, but this is off the top of my head and I figured you didn't want a list of 250 books.

What different authors would you like to represent and why?

   Michael Chabon is my favorite living author (his book, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay is my all-time favorite book), so working with him would be amazing.  Every literary nerd’s wet dream is Thomas Pynchon.  As far as more realistic, and this is kind of a cop out answer, but I’m a big fan of working with promising first time authors.  It’s challenging for me as the publicist, but also very rewarding.  When a first time author gets recognition for a great book and I've worked on it, it’s a source of immense pride, and I love to see what they go onto next. 

Do your authors keep other jobs, too?

   Some do, some don’t.  It depends on how long they've been around and what job they had before they started writing.  It’s extraordinarily hard to make a living as a writer, especially a novelist, so many of them have other things going on.  A lot of them teach writing. 

Do you write as well as read? We’d love to hear about that.

   Yes and no.  I used to write a lot, but I've realized that I really love editing more than writing.  I like shaping narratives and giving feedback about what a piece of writing needs to make it soar.  That being said, I do write a little bit.  Mostly I write a blog-like email that goes to my family.   It makes them feel like I see them more than I actually do.  I write a lot of press releases, too. 

In the scheme of things, what deficiency do you see in modern literature? What do we need more of, probably vampire romances?

   There is such a dearth of vampire romances!  We need more!  I actually think that modern literature is in a really exciting time.  There’s kind of a changing of the guard happening right now.  The older male-dominated regime is fading out (people like Mailer, Vonnegut, Vidal, Roth, Updike, etc.).  Roth and DeLillo are really the only guys left from that class.  Now we’re getting this new class coming in, who were influenced by these great writers.  People like Michael Chabon, Junot Diaz, Jeffrey Eugenides, Jonathan Franzen are doing such exciting stuff.  And the women!  Zadie Smith, Karen Russell, Aimee Bender, Amy Bloom….I could go on.  I just can’t wait to see where this all goes.

   

   As for deficiency, because I’m so good at answering the questions being asked, I think that more people need to discover these great authors.  The biggest deficiency I see is book coverage in media.  How can people know how wonderful White Teeth by Zadie Smith is when only a few media outlets are reviewing books?  Books are covering such a wide variety of cultures and times and places that the only deficiency is there’s not enough time in the day. 

You were so great to connect me with two brilliant authors, first Aimee Bender and now Adrienne Sharp. When I am rich and famous because of your talented publicizing, will you make me do unpaid interviews with dorky bloggers?

   Yes.  Absolutely. 

   In all seriousness, I believe that the more an author connects with their audience the better.  Those are two wonderful and amazing women that I’ve had the honor and pleasure of working with, but they also both are people who appreciate and understand how important their audience and their fans are.  And that makes them the smartest kind of author. 

That begs a question, actually. Your firm is called “Rare Bird Lit.” Do you seek out unusual material; does it find you or what? And what makes a book “rare” by your standards?

    Interesting question.  Also, you’re reminding me that I need to ask my boss where that name comes from. 

   We like material that challenges us professionally.  We’re independent booksellers at heart and we’re pretty snobby when it comes to literature, so it’s nice when we’re working with authors and books out of that wheelhouse.  It presents challenges and we have to figure out who to connect with and how best to market those books to the right people. 

   Also, we like doing things that other people are scared to do.  We throw crazy parties, we find interesting and original ways of marketing, and we’ll take on books that other people turn down, if we like the book and believe in it.  So yeah, we’re a bit rare in that way.  We’re also just kind of weird people.  It makes life more fun. 

   As for what makes a book rare, I guess all books are rare in a way, but I like a book that surprises me.  I like a book that doesn’t follow a trajectory that I can see coming from a mile away.  It’s rare that a book catches me entirely off guard. Actually, lately, when I was reading The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides, I was just thinking that there was no way he was going to end the book that I would like.  And somehow, he pulled it off. The ending was perfect and caught me off guard.  I love that.

********************

"That intersection of life and art 
in the context of history was and still is 
just endlessly fascinating to me."
~Julia Callahan

      Whew! Is your mind racing a bit with questions and answers of your own? Please leave comments. I'd love to hear your thoughts on Julia's answers or your own answers to some of these questions. Lots of my friends are bookish, so spill it ladies. Spill it messy. And remember to come back tomorrow for part two. 

Thank you for indulging us Julia!!

People are the Interesting.

Books are Necessary.

xoxoxo