Virtually Well Read

We’ll Just Act Like Nothing Ever Happened

January 29, 2013 By The Well Read Hostess 5 Comments

Life goes on…

A little cancer (not mine), kids growing up, career progressing, family happy, beloved friends dying, new people washing up on our shores and folding into our lives, vacations, adventures. Life goes on. Even, as it happens, if I don’t write about it. Or particularly care to.

And then, one day. I do.

I had a conversation via email once, with a friend, about whether or not female authors can successfully write male protagonists. Mostly, I think we agreed – although my memory sucks these days – they cannot. You might think that’s sexist or narrow minded of me. But that’s what I’ve found. Until and behold: Liz Moore and Heft.

Mercy. Such a good book. And not just one, but TWO, count ‘em, TWO male protagonists. Shazam. If you told me that I would rate a novel about a teenage boy raised by a slightly off-center single mother in poverty and an obese shut-in depressive with delusions of grandeur so highly, I would have said, “HA! Not likely.” But I would have been wrong. I’ve recommend it to my reader people, and they agree. Best book of last year. It irritates me on Liz Moore’s behalf, yet delights me because it makes me feel like I know something they don’t, that this book wasn’t on all the Big Time “Best Books” lists. Because it is. It would also make excellent summer reading for high school students. I know something about that.

And one more thing: Junior Baby Love. JBL. Just saying.

Next. I’m so late to this particular party that it’s embarrassing because I showed up in my pretty dress and made a space for myself in the center of the room and started twirling and showing off my sparkly earrings and was all, “Check me out, you guys! Jonathan Tropper’s This is Where I Leave You! It’s so funny and so perfect and so quick and so sad and so authentic and so…what? Oh. Never mind.” Because every person at the party had already read it.

But in case you haven’t, that’s all true. And also, my dress is really pretty and my earrings are very sparkly.

Filed Under: Mama Like, On the Nightstand, Virtually Well Read Tagged With: Heft, Jonathan Tropper, Liz Moore, This Is Where I Leave You, Where the Hell Have I Been

Well I Love Him More, Clearly

February 6, 2012 By The Well Read Hostess 7 Comments

I’m always late to the party.

Henning Mankell’s Kurt Wallander mysteries are nothing new to the readers of serial crime novels. And these days it seems almost trendy, or worse – trendy but slow, to read something Swedish. Nevertheless, I’m walking out onto this limb fully aware.

Mark Lawson wrote about why he loves Henning Mankell’s Wallander series in The Guardian in 2003, you can read what he had to say HERE, but his review is a bit on the short side and somewhat unsatisfying. There is so much more to say about what there is to love about both the novels and the unbloodyrelentlessly miserable but nonethless endearing Detective Wallander than Lawson gave up. The mysteries are tight, the police work is fascinating, the characters are realistic and full of the itchy oddities that real people are made up of, and the grey, grey, grey Scandinavianness of it all, punctuated by the fleeting rarity of color – but not flashy red or kelly green or royal blue that Stieg Larsson gave us, but maybe, just maybe if you’re very lucky you might glimpse a sliver of teal or lavender.

There are 11 Wallander novels, and now…behold, what joyous discovery I have made:

It’s almost enough to get me through my period of mourning after finishing The Wire (R.I.P. Omar).

Filed Under: Virtually Well Read Tagged With: good books, Henning Mankell, In Case You Ponderin', Kurt Wallander, Omar, Stieg Larsson, Sweden, The Wire

Critical Mass

January 17, 2012 By The Well Read Hostess 12 Comments

Over the weekend my daughter turned 8. She spent a lot of time making little signs that said, “Happy Birthday!” and sticking them to windows and doors, as if to remind us that we weren’t quite meeting her standards of celebration. Everybody’s a critic. I’d put the picture my brother took of her wearing the outfit her aunt got her for a birthday present up here to show you that she might actually be 17, not 8, but every time I look at it I get hives because she’s too good looking and too saucy for everyone’s good.

Yes. I just said “saucy.”

We saw We Bought A Zoo over the weekend. Worst title for a movie I think I’ve ever heard. It wasn’t a movie I really cared much about seeing. I’m not a big animal-story fan. It’s not about animals, as it turns out. It’s about people – and I cried seventeen times. Every so often my son would look over at my and announce, “Oh look, there goes mom again!” I was like the freaking Trevi Fountain, minus the filthy tourist-maimed coins. I don’t even know if I liked it; I know I wasn’t manipulated. I just know it worked.

Animal print hair extensions:

Nope.

Temporary lip tattoos:

Oh, yes. I rather think so.

Yesterday, whilst dodging reminders that it was someone else’s VERY SPECIAL DAY, I got a present. This book:

Not only is the book completely spectacular – more on that later, but the giftiness of it just took my breath away. You know how you’re just living your life, minding your own business, when these perfect people wander through your door? Out of the ordinary but sane, funky but brilliant, uplifting but grounded? And then they become your friends and your life is so much the better for having them in it – there is laughter and community and did I mention the laughter? Well…that. Sometimes fate has other plans and when you are too good at what you do, you have to follow where your star leads – even if your star leads to New Haven, or thereabouts. So they moved, but not without taking the spirit of Wednesday Spaghetti with them. They’ve had two of their own Wednesday Spaghetti dinners now in their new home.

This cookbook begins with an introduction written by the author that captures the absolute spirit of Wednesday Spaghetti – don’t freak out, just invite people over. Of course, then she gives some gorgeous recipes so that the food is somewhat more impressive than boxed noodles and jarred sauce. Maybe if I can, one week, get the numbers down under 50, I’ll rustle up a Wednesday Pork Roast (but don’t count on it).

Filed Under: Facts of Life, Holidays, In the Kitchen, Virtually Well Read, Wednesday Spaghetti Tagged With: animal print hair extensions, I cry too much at movies, Lip tattoos, Pam Anderson, Perfect Recipes, We Bought A Zoo