Happy June, all you readerly types!
Spring just flew right on by, didn’t it? I am happy to say that while :ahem: enjoying bountiful spring showers and helping my preschoolers wrap up their year, I did manage to get a few books read. Here is the 2015 Spring Round-Up for Earl Grey and a Million Words.
#2. Yes Please by Amy Poehler
This was a fun read! I have enjoyed Amy Poehler’s work since Upright Citizen’s Brigade somehow made its way onto Comedy Central in the late ’90s. Though I didn’t always understand the performance art vibe of the quirky sketch show, I liked the brazen energy of that little blond woman. This book acts as a scrapbook of her childhood, the formation of her career, the heartache of divorce, and the joy she finds in her sons and her deep friendships with other funny women. The section devoted to Parks and Rec made me predictably weepy, and her reflections on motherhood are sincerely charming. I especially appreciate how much she focuses on embracing joy in life and being kind. It feels so genuine, and reappears constantly as she describes crummy jobs and meeting big-time celebs on SNL. Through the highs and the lows, be kind to your heart. Laugh a lot. Help when you can. It’s all great advice.
Yes Please is an excellent autobiography; I am only sad that I didn’t wait and purchase this one on audiobook. She reads the book herself, and I can only imagine it’s a riot.
Caffeinated Accompaniment: Amy declares in her book that she drinks tea instead of coffee, as it has always been the beverage she drinks with her Bostonian mother while they chat. In this spirit, I recommend Paris Tea by Harney and Sons: a bright, fruity black tea with dreamy vanilla tones.
#3. The Martian by Andy Weir
I had read about this book on a Best of the Year list somewhere, so I picked it up in paperback toward the end of March. I won’t lie: this took me a long time to read. It’s a fantastic sci-fi survival story, but it focuses intently on very real science. It was the most frustrating part of the book for me — as I am not the most tech-minded person out there — but also the thing I admired most about it. Weir took real-life space travel protocol and extrapolated it out into a very readable, suspenseful book. It became a bestseller overnight for good reason. Hell, there’s even a movie adaption:
If you don’t mind reading page after page of water condensation logs and satellite trajectories, you will be rewarded with plenty of laugh-out-loud gallows humor provided by our protagonist Mark Watney. He’s stranded on Mars after a freak accident during a sandstorm, but he’s not ready to throw in the towel just yet. His tenacity is impressive, though perhaps misplaced: the terrain is unforgiving, the supplies are low, and Mark has an unfortunate gift for making things explode. Armed with botany skills and an annoyingly vast array of 1970s music and TV shows left behind by his crew mates, Mark tries his damnedest to stay alive long enough to get rescued. That is, if anyone ever realizes he’s still up there.
I would definitely recommend this one. It opened me up to the world of hard sci-fi, and I am excited to see what they do with the film.
Caffeinated Accompaniment: For the truly brave of heart, you could do as Watney does and enjoy some Martian coffee: a caffeine pill dissolved in water.
#4. Horrorstor by Grady Hendrix
I love this book! I’ll say that again: I LOVE THIS BOOK! This was a spot-on recommendation from a friend of mine who knows I enjoy horror stories. The book itself is formatted like an Ikea catalogue, with glossy, wide pages, order forms & advertisements, and chapter headings resembling product descriptions. This book manages to combine the soul-sucking nature of retail work with the chilling ambiance of a haunted house. Imagine, if you will, a haunted house. Now imagine a superstore that resembles a gigantic house. Think ghosts can live there?
…
They totally can.
At the Cuyahoga branch of Orsk, an unabashed copycat of Ikea, the workers are starting to notice some strange things. Gross smells, misplaced furniture, water stains, and creepy scrawling notes in the bathrooms are becoming too prevalent to ignore. One night, some of them stay behind to figure out what’s really going on when the store closes. They’re in for far more than affordable living room sets and knockoff Swedish cabinetry.
I started this book on a road trip to Iowa and completed it by the time we settled into our hotel. The action moves quickly, even before any of the hapless employees realize the sinister nature of the Orsk building. It’s a unique setup for a horror story and is filled with characters you root for as they try to figure out a way to escape their horrifying ordeal.
Caffeinated Accompaniment: If you’re anything like our disgruntled retail saleswoman Amy, reluctant protagonist, you’ll opt for a refillable styrofoam cup of gas station coffee. If you’re more like me, you’ll raise a delicious (though slightly overpriced) cup of Starbucks in honor of this consumerist nightmare.
#5. Feed by Mira Grant
Feed is a dystopian horror story set in 2040, one generation after The Rising. The Rising refers to the fateful outbreak of Kellis-Amberlee, a virus which turns humans into zombies. We view this world through the eyes of Georgia Mason, voracious Newsie in this frightening place. She works with her brother Shawn and their partner Buffy as they try to make a name for themselves in the highly competitive blogosphere. In this future, blogging has become a more credible news source than mainstream outlets, as most network news stations refused to report on the Kellis-Amberlee virus when it first struck. In a life-changing development in their journalistic careers, Georgia, Shawn, and Buffy win a spot following the presidential campaign of a Midwestern senator and hit the road with his whole political team. But politicking after The Rising is a lot different than it used to be: zombie animals, frightened communities barricaded behind chain link fences, constant blood tests, and security sabotages make the campaign trail a potentially deadly place. In the face of viral outbreaks and political backstabbing, Georgia is determined to deliver the news…no matter the cost.
This was an interesting read, but I didn’t find myself as invested in the story as I had hoped. I will say, the world-building is phenomenal. It’s filled with detailed descriptions of daily life, public policy, transportation procedures, and security features in a world where zombies are just a normal part of the everyday. I really enjoyed that aspect of the book. The main characters, however, did not feel as real to me as the world they inhabited. Georgia is a no-nonsense, high-stakes news reporter from the first page, but her initial motivation is never terribly clear to me. She rants about the power of the truth extensively and has a reputation for being a newshound, but most of the blog excerpts we read are not actually news stories. They are opinion-laden editorials about why she likes reporting the news so damn much!
About halfway in, when the plot thickened and the team was threatened from every possible direction, I was already kind of burned out on Georgia’s truth and justice monologues. I think if her news obsession had been portrayed as more of a growing realization that the search for truth was deeper and different than she had imagined it would be, if there had been some hint of naïveté at the beginning, I think I would have been able to relate to her better. As she is, she is a very strong lead character. She’s just flat.
The other characters feel equally flat, except maybe Buffy. She’s introduced as a sort of in-her-own-world boho figure, writing fiction for the site and never stepping into any zombie hot zones. As the novel progresses, we also learn she’s incredibly skilled in computer programming and creating secret bugging devices, as well as being devoutly religious on the down-low. She’s an interesting character, though unfortunately we don’t see as much of her as we do Georgia and Shawn. Also, just as a side note, Georgia and Shawn’s relationship is very awkward to me. They joke about their codependency, but it does little to lighten the feeling that their togetherness is excessive. Having a sibling myself, I couldn’t 100% get behind their repeated declarations of love for each other. Maybe if I lived in a world overrun with zombies, I would feel differently about it.
I recommend this one if you are interested in zombie stories, but otherwise it didn’t resonate too strongly with me. I might eventually read the others in this trilogy, but I’m still unsure.
Caffeinated Accompaniment: Even in this screwed-up version of the future of America, there’s still Starbucks. So treat yourself to a Vanilla Creme Frappuccino and watch the world end.
Earl Grey and A Million Words 