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Book Review + Giveaway: THE PARTICULAR SADNESS OF LEMON CAKE

Aimee Bender‘s The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake is a bittersweet piece of literature that is both filling and light, with a satisfying secret ingredient I’m not sure I can identify but am happy to consume.

Right before her ninth birthday, Rose discovers she can taste her mother’s despair in the lemon cake she made. Besides the shock of realizing she now has this strange ability to taste people’s true emotions in the food they create, Rose is surprised to learn how her mother really feels beneath her always sunny facade. Turns out everyone in her family has secrets—her genius brother who often seems to disappear into thin air, her father who has a strange aversion to hospitals—and Rose just isn’t prepared to know them. She goes out of her way to consume only factory-processed foods, e.g. snacks from the school vending machine, as she tries to navigate life while knowing—and feeling—too much about the people around her. The most important revelation comes when she finally eats a meal she cooks herself.

I feel as if I didn’t just read this book; I absorbed it. It washed over me in a lovely, melancholy way that left me moved but not sad. It deals with unrequited love, unfulfilled potential and imperfect family dynamics, but all are ingredients of life and I could only nod and think, It happens. Though it contains magical realism, many scenes and emotions ring very true. Bender has a way of stringing ordinary words together to form enchanting sentences that made me envy her skill. In Rose, she has a vulnerable yet resilient character who may have an extraordinary power but is absolutely relatable in her struggles to find her way and place in the world.

Thanks to Doubleday, I’m giving away two copies of this book. That’s right, it can be yours for the incredible price of FREE.

To enter:

  • be a subscriber or Twitter follower (tell me which—new subscribers/followers get 1 entry, current ones get 2, you get 3 if you tweet about this)
  • leave a comment about what emotions you’d taste if you had Rose’s power and ate your own cooking right now (I’d taste wanton lust for a beautiful house I just saw that’s way out of my price range)
  • have U.S. address, no P.O. Box, per Doubleday’s request

Giveaway ends Monday, July 19, 5 p.m. PST. Winners will be randomly chosen via Random.org and only announced here and on Twitter. I will not contact you personally so please check back to see if you win. Winners have 48 hours to claim the prize before alternate names are chosen.

Now, let’s hear how tasty your cooking is!

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Book Binge

My parents recently asked if they can come visit, which is a happy thing, but then I thought, “Uh oh, where will I put them?” Because my den has been completely overrun by books. Books in piles, on shelves, serving as furniture, crammed into drawers and stacked on the guest bed. So I locked myself in there, crawled among my books, getting paper cuts in weird places but determined to read until I can at least see the bed cover.

Perhaps you’ll find something interesting among what I managed to finish so far.

The Stormchasers by Jenna Blum

Storms are the new black because this is the third book in a row I’ve read that features them. In Sophie Littlefield‘s A Bad Day for Pretty, a tornado uncovers a dead body at the beginning of the book; in Michael Koryta‘s So Cold the River, the story builds up to a climactic storm; but in this novel, storms are at the heart of the story, not just literally but metaphorically.

Karena hasn’t seen her twin brother, Charles, in twenty years when she receives a phone call from a clinic in Kansas saying he’d just checked into a psychiatric facility. By the time she arrives from Minnesota, he’s gone from the hospital. She joins a tour with a professional storm-chasing company, hoping to track him down because Charles is a gifted storm chaser. He’s also bipolar and often a danger to himself and others. He and Karena share a terrible secret, something that happened on a chase twenty years ago, the resulting burden partly responsible for their estrangement.

Blum spins a fascinating tale with an impressive knowledge of the different kinds of storms, getting the lingo and details down, but it’s her descriptions of bipolar disorder, an electrical storm inside the brain, that are most riveting. Any reader who has ever known anyone with this disorder will recognize how authentic Charles’s behavior is. When he’s having a good day, he’s kind, loving, charismatic; when he’s manic, he’s a nightmare. Charles doesn’t take his meds because of the horrific side effects, creating the central dilemma: “Either Charles takes his medication and suffers, or he doesn’t and everyone else does.”

That’s what Karena does—suffer—but it’s the reason she’s a sympathetic character. At the beginning, she does a couple things during a chase that are incredibly stupid and dangerous but as I learned more about her motivation and love for Charles despite all he has put her through, I forgave her and wanted to hug her instead. There is no cure for bipolarity but the end implies Karena and her brother might experience calmer skies ahead. Nerd verdict: Electrifying, raw Stormchasers.

Buy The Stormchasers from Amazon
Buy from Barnes & Noble
Buy from IndieBound

The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness and Obsession by David Grann

Every once in a while, I like to read non-fiction books so I can feel smarter. They not only tell me a story, they teach me facts! Grann‘s book is a collection of previously published essays about, well, those topics in the subtitle. The first, “Mysterious Circumstances,” deals with the death of the world’s premier Sherlock Holmes scholar, Richard Green. He’s found garroted in his home shortly after he alleged that the priceless papers from Arthur Conan Doyle’s archives which turned up at Christie’s for auction in 2004 were stolen. The police find no signs of forced entry and rule the death a suicide, but certain details—e.g. no note, Green’s telling friends he feared for his life days before dying—leave many questions unanswered, resulting in a speculative conclusion that, if true, makes for quite a Holmesian twist.

The second essay, “Trial by Fire,” about a man on death row for murdering his three toddler-aged children by setting his house on fire with them inside, details a race against the clock to save him from execution with compelling new evidence of his innocence. Todd Willingham maintained he had no idea how the fire started; he was also inside and asleep at the time but got out without being able to save his babies. Grann includes facts from studies by a noted scientist and fire investigator who was able to debunk all the alleged arson indicators found at the scene. Dr. Gerald Hurst’s reports made me doubt everything I’ve read in other books or seen in movies about arson markers, and the ending kicked me right in the throat.

There are several other strong stories, tales that are truly stranger than fiction, and some which aren’t so engaging. Overall, I was impressed by Grann’s access to sources and information and his willingness to put himself in hair-raising situations to get the story. He methodically lays out his facts and sometimes makes you feel almost as smart as the titular detective. Nerd verdict: Uneven Tales but some are Devilishly good.

Buy The Devil and Sherlock Holmes from Amazon
Buy from Barnes & Noble
Buy from Indie Bookstores

The Seven Year Bitch by Jennifer Belle

Isolde “Izzy” Brilliant is a recently laid off financial analyst who’s trying to figure out her next move. She has a toddler and a husband who’s becoming increasingly annoying to her. The guy who got away years earlier conveniently resurfaces in all his rich and handsome glory, enticing her with offers of romantic, exotic trips. Izzy vacillates between her patch of lawn and eyeing the grass on the other side before discovering her perfect place and the life she truly wants.

Yes, the synopsis is thin because the story is more Izzy’s personal journey than plot driven, but boy, is that journey hilarious. I laughed out loud quite a few times, not just chuckles but actual guffaws. A lot of the humor is R-rated and politically incorrect but here’s a sample I can reprint of Izzy interviewing potential nannies:

The first nanny showed up right on time and took her seat across from me…I asked her my first question: “Do you cook?”

“You want me to cook!” she said, making her eyes so wide it was as if I had asked her to take off her blouse. I crossed her off the list.

I crossed the next two off my list right away because one brought her baby with her to the interview and the other had long, decorated nails with pastel stripes.

“You speak excellent English!” I told one enthusiastically.

“I’m from Trinidad,” she said.

“Yes, but your English is excellent,” I said, nodding my head like a crazy person.

“We only speak English there.” She looked at me with unmasked disgust. I crossed her off my list.

One had an almost contagious case of mush mouth. “Yesh, yesh, thatch nicesh,” was her answer to all my questions. I croshed her off my lisht.

You may think Izzy doesn’t have reason to complain, with her cushy life and NYC pad, but the right to be dissatisfied with one’s situation doesn’t belong exclusively to the unprivileged. Ennui can affect anyone and at least Izzy processes hers with a large dose of humor. Nerd verdict: Funny Bitch.

Buy The Seven Year Bitch from Amazon
Buy from Barnes & Noble
Buy from Indie Bookstores

Following Polly by Karen Bergreen (out June 22)

After being fired from her job as a casting director’s assistant, Alice Teakle becomes obsessed with a former acquaintance from Harvard who seems to have the perfect life. Alice follows Polly all over NYC, hoping to discover her secrets to success so maybe Alice can have a taste of it, too. When Polly ends up being viciously murdered, Alice becomes suspect number one. She manages to elude police and seeks out the help of her unrequited college crush, Charlie (though that’s not his real name), to find the real killer and clear her name.

Though the Publishers Weekly blurb on the jacket says, “It’s like Comedy Central picked up Law & Order for an episode,” the humor is mild and the mystery isn’t that gritty. The story is more about Alice growing up and finding her way (when her therapist asks her at the beginning of the book what her dream is, she realizes doesn’t have one). Alice is a pleasant enough protagonist and I enjoyed her relationship with Charlie, who lets her hide out in his apartment and is quite a prince.

I might have liked the book more if it weren’t for a repeated distraction—the author’s overuse of the word “that.” Example: “I’ll tell him that I’ve always loved him, and he’ll tell me that he knew there was someone right under his nose, and that it wasn’t until he found me going through his garbage that he knew that I was that someone.” Out of six “that”s in that sentence, only two—“that” #4 and the last one—are needed. I know this makes me sound super picky but it disrupted the rhythm in Bergreen’s writing and happened so often, I couldn’t ignore it. Nerd verdict: Slight Following.

Buy Following Polly from Amazon
Buy from Barnes & Noble
Buy from Indie Bookstores

What did you finish this weekend? What are you reading now?

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Hell is Other People: Review of Piper Kerman’s ORANGE IS THE NEW BLACK

This review is by contributing writer Thuy Dinh, a practicing attorney and editor-in-chief of the literary webzine Da Mau.


Piper Kerman’s memoir, Orange is the New Black, deftly invokes the themes of “white girl gone wrong” and No Exit. In fact, the memoir’s best selling point is the atypical profile of its author: a blond, blue-eyed Smith graduate who happens to be a federal offender, sentenced to 15 months in prison for a drug charge committed thoughtlessly in her “bohemian” youth. (Kerman was released after 13 months for good behavior.)

Early on in the book, Kerman describes her self-surrender at the women’s minimum security federal prison in Danbury, Connecticut with dissonant yet arresting (no puns intended) details: slowly shedding her identity before going behind bars by first taking off her seven gold engagement rings, then the multiple earrings from “all the extra holes that so vexed my grandfather.” In the lobby of the prison, she stalls the inevitable moment by munching on a foie gras sandwich chased with Diet Coke, wryly wondering if she is the only Seven Sisters graduate who samples her last gourmet meal at the entrance of a penitentiary. The book’s epigraph—lyrics from “Anthem,” a song by Leonard Cohen—says it all:

Ring the bells that still can sing
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in

The attraction of Kerman’s memoir is the story of a privileged, middle-class girl who transgresses, then later redeems herself through her own self-discipline and the emotional support of her family and prison peers. The horror of her condition is not unlike the horror of hell described by Jean-Paul Sartre in his famous play No Exit: hell is not an external condition like torture or physical pain, but the deprivation of one’s community and the relentless confrontation of the imperfect self.

Kerman’s prison, her version of hell, is in fact the classical notion that her self-worth and free choice as a functional member in society have been taken away due to her crime. Behind bars, a prisoner is forced to become institutionalized by accepting all the arbitrary rules, spoken and unspoken, about prison life. Yet, as Kerman reflects, the prisoner’s acceptance of her new environment reveals a cruel paradox: Most prisoners with long sentences are not given any preparation or emotional support to cope with the outside world once they are released. Like the characters in No Exit, prisoners are conditioned to feel as if they will never be free, even after all barriers to their physical freedom have been lifted.

Kerman is most effective in evoking this constant stigma: the strip search—the women are forced to remove their clothes, squat on the floor, and cough hard—after every visit or contact with the outside world, the grim notion that a prisoner’s words have no value if weighed against the “truth” as asserted by her jailer, the sight of small children being wrenched away from their mothers as the visiting hour ends, prisoners giving birth, then having to leave their newborns in someone else’s care before being whisked back to prison in shackles.

While Orange does not try to scale the cosmic questions raised in Crime and Punishment, its central message echoes the lesson learned by a penitent and existential Raskolnikov: Even if there is no God or no viable authority to guide anyone, a moral code exists naturally within the individual. This moral code makes him suffer once he transgresses. Yet the awareness of a moral code is like “a crack that lets in the light,” the very thing that redeems the individual in the end because it makes him realize he has the freedom to choose between good and evil.

When not in her introspective mode, Kerman speaks of the prison’s unspoken but entrenched code: No one is supposed to ask how anyone ended up there. The reader does not know specific details about many of the women’s crimes, only that most of them are amazingly kind, and fairly normal, like any woman who’s not in prison. They gossip, bicker, commiserate, give each other forbidden pedicures, cook prison food with the aid of a microwave (Kerman’s signature prison cheesecake serves as a nice contrast to her foie gras sandwich eaten prior to her admission).

Photo by Sam Zalutsky

But all this normalcy, meant to encourage public acceptance, is a bit disturbing. By making the world behind bars accessible to the average reader through her Margaret Mead observations, rendering Danbury as a gritty “all-girls high school” with West Side Story tribal overtones, where Kerman becomes healthier and thinner by running track and practicing yoga, the author occasionally dilutes or contradicts her message. While it’s unusual for a well-educated, girl-next-door type to land in prison, Kerman’s confinement does not make it more fashionable, more tragic, or more acceptable than for someone who comes from the wrong side of the social equation.

Orange should not, ever, be considered the New Black, given the personal stigma and erosion of self-worth that Kerman so eloquently evokes in the book’s more forceful, memorable chapters. I wish she had probed more deeply into other cases besides her own, to prove that the mandatory minimum sentences in non-violent drug cases are inherently unfair to defendants and financially disastrous to the country’s economy. (Kerman’s Justice Reform links on her website makes a better argument than her memoir). Nevertheless, Orange is the New Black should probably be required college-level reading on social justice.

Buy Orange Is the New Black from Amazon
Buy from Indie Bookstores

(I get a tiny commission from Amazon.)

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Book Review: Jean Kwok’s GIRL IN TRANSLATION

Just as Jean Kwok is hesitant to reveal how similar her novel Girl in Translation is to her real story, I wondered if I could review it without getting too personal about why it moved me. Well, I could, but it’d be a vague, disconnected review. So, I decided to write this one.

The titular girl is eleven-year-old Kimberly Chang, who emigrates from Hong Kong to America with her mother. They land in Brooklyn where her aunt Paula gives them work in the sweatshop she owns with her American husband. Aunt Paula also puts them up in a squalid apartment in a condemned building with no central heat but plenty of roaches. Kimberly helps her mom at the factory after school every day, doing her homework late at night.

Luckily, as Kimberly says, “I’ve always had a knack for school.” Despite her lack of English skills, she excels in science and wins full scholarships, first to an exclusive prep school then Yale. But the road to success isn’t an easy one, as Kimberly struggles between feelings of duty towards her mother and feelings of a different kind for a boy at the factory. She eventually makes a difficult choice that leads to both love and loss.

Reading this book, I felt like someone had stolen some of my memories and spilled them out on the page. Kwok’s depiction of how Kimberly’s classmates and teacher (!) make fun of her took me right back to fourth grade when I’d just arrived in America and kids pushed me in hallways and laughed at my mismatched clothes. Kwok speaks from inside that feeling of alienation, of being treated as stupid even though you’re not. Immigrant or no, who hasn’t felt that way?

I could also relate to Kimberly’s confusion when encountering her classmates’ childhood games:

They were busy with cooties: catching them, getting rid of them and inoculating themselves against them…I had no idea what cooties were and often ended up as the recipient of all the cooties in the class.

I used to get all the cooties, too, and still don’t know what they are.

Kwok puts the reader in Kimberly’s head by using a voice that’s both innocent and too knowing for her age. The author doesn’t explain everything Kimberly sees, leaving it up to the reader to figure it out as Kim does, so we can discover her new world along with her. Her first lunch in the school cafeteria sounds almost identical to one of my first meals in America and her reaction also resembles mine at the time:

I wound up with this: minced meat in the form of a saucer, potatoes that were not round but had been crushed into a pastelike substance, a sauce similar to soy sauce but less dark and salty, a roll and milk. I had hardly ever drunk cow’s milk before and it gave me a stomachache. The rest of the food was interesting, although there was no rice and I felt as if I hadn’t really eaten.

But you don’t need to be an immigrant to appreciate this story. We can all use a reminder that even if we’ve got it tough, there’s always someone whose wildest dreams is to have what we have. If we’re unhappy with our lives, we have the freedom to change it. Sometimes perseverance isn’t enough; we must find a way to overcome. It may require great sacrifices but can result in even greater fulfillment.

Nerd verdict: Resonant Translation

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Winners of Scott Turow’s INNOCENT

I’ve been MIA the past few days because friends are in town for the L.A. Times book festival. I was also sacked by a two-day migraine that made me want to self-lobotomize with a melon scooper.

But enough excuses. Below are the 5 winners of Scott Turow’s Innocent (read my review here), his sequel to Presumed Innocent. The names were randomly selected by random.org and the first one on the list gets a copy of both books, courtesy Hachette Book Group.

  1. le0pard13
  2. Vicki
  3. WotV
  4. Sarah E
  5. Naomi Johnson

All winners must contact me by midnight PST, Tuesday April 27, with a mailing address or alternate name(s) will be chosen.

Thank you all for entering and sharing your stories about being falsely accused. They made me want to strap on a cape and slap some justice into this world.

Innocent comes out May 4 and you can buy it from Amazonor from an indie bookstore.

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Review & Giveaway: Scott Turow’s INNOCENT

No, I didn’t accidentally omit the Presumed in that title. Scott Turow follows up his 23-year-old blockbuster debut with a sequel, out May 4, titled simply Innocent. But that’s the only thing simple about it.

Rusty Sabich has aged in real time and is now the 60-year-old chief judge of an appellate court in Kindle County. He’s up for state Supreme Court when he wakes up one day to find his wife dead next to him. He waits almost 24 hours to call in authorities, claiming shock. But Tommy Molto, the lawyer who accused Sabich of killing his mistress in the previous book, doesn’t buy it, and once again, Sabich finds himself on trial for murder with Molto as his prosecutor.

Having read Presumed, I anticipated a final twist and tried to crack Turow’s formula to figure it out early on. I couldn’t. All my theories were debunked and 25 pages from the end, I still hadn’t guessed the whole truth. When Turow finally reveals everything, it’s horrible but makes perfect sense, not something tacked on just for cheap shock value.

Though Innocent is expertly plotted, the characters are hard to like. I often referred to Sabich as Sumbich in my head because he, along with a couple other characters, behaves selfishly and stupidly at times. They use emotional pain as an excuse, or say mistakes are necessary en route to self-realization. That’s an understandable justification if they only recognize their wrongdoing in hindsight. Knowing something is deplorable and doing it anyway is another thing altogether.

But, hey, these people make you glad you’re not nearly as screwed up as they are. The legal and mystery aspects are engrossing, and I could clearly envision the sure-to-be-made movie. Harrison Ford and Bonnie Bedelia could return as the Sabiches; Jesse Bradford, who portrayed 8-year-old Nat in the 1997 movie of Presumed Innocent, has grown up to become a fine adult actor and could easily reprise his role, too. But someone else would have to play Sandy Stern, the lawyer who reps Sabich in both trials, since he was played by the late Raul Julia. His would be big shoes to fill.

So, want to be able to say to your friends, “Of COURSE I know there’s a sequel to Presumed Innocent coming out next month, I’m already reading it”? Thanks to Miriam at Hachette Book Group, I’m giving away FIVE copies of Innocent, with one grand-prize winner getting a copy of Presumed Innocent, too. (You don’t need to read the first novel before the sequel because Turow skillfully avoids spoiling the former’s surprise ending, but it would give you a deeper understanding of some characters’ motivations.)

To enter:

  • leave a comment about something you were falsely accused of
  • be a subscriber or Twitter follower (tell me which). Current subscribers/followers get two entries; people who tweet about this giveaway get three
  • you must live in U.S. or Canada, no P.O. Boxes

Giveaway ends Saturday, April 24, at midnight PST. Five names will be randomly drawn; the first name chosen will get both Presumed Innocent and Innocent. I won’t be contacting each person individually; winners will only be announced here and on Twitter so make sure you check back. Winners will have 48 hours to reply with a mailing address before alternate name(s) are selected.

Now, let’s hear some guiltless secrets!

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Book Review: Michael Harvey’s THE THIRD RAIL

I’d just schlepped my way through a couple books that were dull and slow-moving so as I picked up Michael Harvey‘s The Third Rail, I thought, “If this doesn’t grab me in three pages, I’m done.” No worries there. The breakneck pace compelled me from the first, third, forty-seventh—all the way to the last page.

In this third novel featuring Chicago P.I. Michael Kelly, he’s on the hunt for a sniper targeting random commuters on an L train and along a busy highway. After the killer (or an accomplice) makes a personal call to Kelly and delivers cryptic clues to his home, the detective starts wondering if the events may be related to an L crash thirty years earlier, one that Kelly happened to be in when he was nine years old. In a plot that never stops hurtling forward and taking unexpected turns, Kelly uncovers nefarious plans involving bio-weapons, greed, corruption and the Catholic Church.

Though I sped through Rail and enjoyed the ride—it reads like a ’70s action flick starring Steve McQueen as Kelly—I realized afterward some things didn’t make sense. Revenge is directed at a blameless person because the blamed party isn’t available, and it’s unclear what a sniper attack on Lake Shore Drive has to do with the 30-year-old L accident that occurred at a different location. (There are other spoilery head-scratchers I can’t discuss.) I even asked my husband to read the book in case I missed something and he could answer some questions for me. He couldn’t.

I think the problem stems from Harvey incorporating aspects of two real, unrelated incidents—a 1977 L accident and a 1993 Pentagon report called “Terror 2000”—into one story and they don’t mesh seamlessly. Throw in the Catholic Church angle and there’s a lot of ground to cover; two separate novels might have been a better idea (Harvey said in this Amazon interview a follow-up is possible). I take no issue with the ending leaving some threads untied—it adds to the sinister feel—but am confused by the lack of clarity and logic of the answers that were provided.

Nerd verdict: Third Rail zips by, but derails a few times along the way

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Five Phrases That Should Be Permanently Retired from Reviews

Happy Monday! Hope you survived all the chocolate eggs and ham, or Pad Thai if you celebrate Songkran.

Since it was Easter weekend, I didn’t do much work. Read plenty, slept and ate even more, but didn’t quite get around to finishing my reviews.

In thinking about them, though (I’m much more productive in my head), I came up with a Top 5 list of words/phrases that make my eyeballs roll when I see them in reviews. If you ever see these in mine, you have permission to send me hate mail.

  1. “A roller-coaster ride.” Seriously, have you ever said this in your life after seeing a movie or finishing a book? Besides, I hate roller-coasters. They make me sick.
  2. “America’s Sweetheart.” This label has been slapped on everyone from Julia Roberts to Sandra Bullock to Meg Ryan to Jennifer Garner to Reese Witherspoon. Shouldn’t the correct phrase then be “one of many members of the America’s Sweethearts Club”? Plus, who determines this status? Sometimes I’ll look at someone labeled thusly (not anyone mentioned above) and think, “She’s not my sweetheart.”
  3. “Best movie/book of the year” when it’s March. ‘Nuff said.
  4. “Breath of fresh air.” I thought this was stale first time I heard it.
  5. “Unputdownable.” I just hate that word, and not because it’s not a real one. I’m all for new words being coined and it was (maybe) cute the first few times, but after the 2,927th time, I’m done.

What about you? Is there a hokey phrase that will guarantee you won’t buy a book if you see it on the cover?

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Book Review: Elizabeth Gilbert's COMMITTED

After reading Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love three years ago, I became almost evangelistic about it, discussing it nonstop with others, buying copies for friends, etc. Wish I could do the same for her follow-up, Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage (out today). Because I think Gilbert is such an engaging writer, it pains me to say I didn’t love this book. **Mild spoilers ahead if you haven’t read EPL.**

The events here follow what happened at the end of EPL, specifically her meeting her Brazilian lover Felipe in Bali and their pledging love to each other with promises to never get married. (Both are shell-shocked survivors of divorce.)

At the beginning of Committed, they’ve been living together in Philadelphia when the Department of Homeland Security throws a monkey wrench into their non-wedded bliss by denying Felipe re-entry into the U.S. after an overseas trip. A sympathetic officer says the fastest way for Felipe to get a permanent visa is for the couple to marry.

Filled with dread, they nevertheless apply for the necessary papers then spend almost a year traveling through Southeast Asia (where the dollar stretches farther) while awaiting approval. Gilbert also uses the time to obsessively research the history of marriage and its different customs throughout the world in order to better understand the institution and hopefully reduce her fear of it.

Gilbert’s conversational style is winning; she’s smart, funny and not afraid to reveal her deepest fears and flaws. She still comes across as someone I’d love to have lunch with. But while EPL is charming because it’s her personal story, the author spends much of Committed delving into the origins of marriage, drumming up everyone from Greek philosophers to early Christian leaders to feminists, causing entire chapters to read textbook-y. The conclusion she finally reaches about marriage is interesting, a perspective I hadn’t previously considered, but I wish the focus stayed more on her relationship with Felipe.

Nerd verdict: Not totally Committed to this

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Book Review: THE LINEUP

It was cold this weekend in L.A. so I wore everything I own, causing my husband to say I looked homeless, but it was good because it made me stay in. I slept, read, drank lots of coffee, watched reruns of Fantasy Island without knowing why. And I finally wrote this review of The Lineup: The World’s Greatest Crime Writers Tell the Inside Story of Their Greatest Detectives, edited by Otto Penzler.

This is a collection featuring some of crime fiction’s most successful writers—Robert B. Parker, Laura Lippman, Lee Child, Robert Crais, among others—discussing the creation of their popular characters. Michael Connelly’s revelation that a real tunnel near his childhood home inspired Harry Bosch’s tunnel-rat background is both chilling and enlightening. Crais has a funny yet poignant conversation with Elvis Cole about their mutual fears and sense of hope, and gives a glimpse of Joe Pike’s inner world (it’s green!). Carol O’Connell’s badass ‘tude reminds me I gotta pick up another Mallory book. And though I’d heard most of Jack Reacher’s origin story at Child’s signings, it retains its charm in print.

Some of the other essays aren’t as successful. A few are too earnest and one outright creeps me out (not in a good way), but this is a great intro to the crime fiction world for those of you who haven’t taken the plunge. If you’re already a junkie like me, you’ll enjoy learning more about your favorite detectives while meeting those you’re not familiar with. I’m ashamed to say I’ve never read Ken Bruen, but after experiencing his blistering, profanity-laced piece (love his description of an Irish sport called hurling as “a cross between hockey and homicide”), I will rectify that situation.

I also want a hurly.

Nerd verdict: Insightful collection from great Lineup of writers

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