Fun, insightful, and surprising

I wanted to shake things up a bit on my daily commute so I thought I would give a few audiobooks a shot. The one I started with is one that has been on my TRL for ages but for some reason I never got around to picking it up. Yes Please by Amy Poehler got some major press and accolades but was especially recommended to me as an audiobook and now I totally get why. This is the first audiobook I've read in a long time and I'm so glad that I chose this one to delve back into that medium. Having experienced it in this format, I highly advise you to do the same because it was so much fun. Amy had multiple guests join her in the recording booth (which she mentioned was built at her house well before she wrote the actual book). From her parents and Seth Myers to Carol Burnett and PATRICK STEWART it was like a variety show for the ears. I especially loved the parts where it was Amy exchanging dialogue with the people she had asked to record for her because it felt more authentic and like a gag reel. (It was hilarious, ya'll.) I learned so much about Amy from her childhood in Massachusetts to her creation of the Upright Citizens Brigade in NYC. Amy's refreshing honesty coupled with the format she chose to tell her story...it almost makes me wish it didn't exist as a print book at all because I think audio is the way it was truly meant to be enjoyed. 10/10 highly recommend if you love awesome ladies doing awesome things.

Source: Amazon

What's Up Next: Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman

What I'm Currently Reading: The Outsider by Stephen King

**If you're interested in buying this book or any books really, you can click here or here. The first will re-direct you to AbeBooks and the second will re-direct you to The Book Depository. These are great websites for purchasing books (AbeBooks carries inexpensive used and out-of-print books and The Book Depository ships free everywhere in the world). Full disclosure: I will receive a commission on all sales made by following either of these links. I wouldn't recommend a site that I didn't use and you are under no obligation to purchase anything. :-) **

Women of Our Time: Golda Meir

When I was a child we had a cat which my mom christened Golda My Ear (he was a yellow tabby) which was a clever play on words that went completely over my head. Therefore, when I came across a book while shelving entitled Golda Meir: A Strong, Determined Leader it felt like fate was telling me to take it home and read it. (It's so short that I finished it on my first train home.) David A. Adler decided to write about Golda for the "Women of Our Time" biography series which covers a wide array of spectacularly talented, intelligent, and strong women. Prior to reading this book, I had no knowledge of who Golda Meir was which is pretty shocking seeing as how she was Israel's Prime Minister. She grew up in Russia but her family moved to Milwaukee when she was a young girl in the hopes that they could improve their quality of life with the opportunities that America promised were available to all within its borders. Much like her sister, Golda was homesick and longed to be a part of the larger Jewish nation and to build it in Israel. That determination never left her and she made it a reality after she married and moved to Palestine to be an active participant in the political party that wanted to build the Jewish nation. It covers not only her childhood and her move to Palestine but also her political career as Prime Minister and her meetings with Nixon (as well as her secret missions to the enemy's camps). Lest you picture her as a pacifist, she was not against using weapons to protect her people against the encroaching Arabs, Egyptians, and Syrians which threatened daily to drive them out of the space they had carved for themselves. Overall rating from me is 8/10 because I wanted a little more depth to the narrative.

As this is written with a younger audience in mind the chapters are very short and not exactly chock full of details. If you want the bare facts (or want to teach them to your child) then this is a great resource. I think this book and the rest of the books in the series would be a great resource in a classroom or home library as the women discussed come from different parts of the world and worked in various fields/capacities. It can never hurt to teach children about powerful women who paved the way!

Source: Penguin Random House

What's Up Next: Yes Please by Amy Poehler

What I'm Currently Reading: The Outsider by Stephen King

**If you're interested in buying this book or any books really, you can click here or here. The first will re-direct you to AbeBooks and the second will re-direct you to The Book Depository. These are great websites for purchasing books (AbeBooks carries inexpensive used and out-of-print books and The Book Depository ships free everywhere in the world). Full disclosure: I will receive a commission on all sales made by following either of these links. I wouldn't recommend a site that I didn't use and you are under no obligation to purchase anything. :-) **

What's that joke about a gorilla and a typewriter?

I love a good Swedish to English translation (except for that one time I attempted Wallander) so I thought that The Murderer's Ape by Jakob Wegelius would be no exception. However, I cannot unequivocally state that I loved this book...or that I loathed it. The book is told from the standpoint of a gorilla who has been christened Sally Jones. She's been around humans her entire life and therefore not only understands what they are saying but can read as well. She's a gifted engineer who the reader discovers has the ability to figure out most mechanical devices be they accordions or airplanes. (This is integral to the storyline.) Her best friend is a (human) man she refers to as Chief and who took her on as a partner when he got his own ship. But all of this was before they ran into some trouble. Without giving too much away, the two are separated and Sally is forced to adapt in order to survive. At its heart, this is an adventure story with a lot of drama. What I enjoyed were the illustrations which were done by the author and accompanied the heading of each chapter as well as a gallery of character portraits at the very beginning. Some of the issues I had with this novel were in its dealings with race, religion, and ethnicity. It was hard for me to pinpoint if the problems I had could be explained by viewing it through the lens of the time in which the novel took place but I found them unsettling nonetheless. Overall, I wasn't totally blown away but I wouldn't throw it out of an airplane door either. 4/10

Source: American Library Association

Examples of the illustrations. [Source: Playing by the book]

What's Up Next: Golda Meir: A Strong, Determined Leader by David A. Adler

What I'm Currently Reading: The House With a Clock in Its Walls by John Bellairs

**If you're interested in buying this book or any books really, you can click here or here. The first will re-direct you to AbeBooks and the second will re-direct you to The Book Depository. These are great websites for purchasing books (AbeBooks carries inexpensive used and out-of-print books and The Book Depository ships free everywhere in the world). Full disclosure: I will receive a commission on all sales made by following either of these links. I wouldn't recommend a site that I didn't use and you are under no obligation to purchase anything. :-) **

I'll never look at pickles the same way again

One of the drawbacks of reading so many books is that I have extremely high standards since I've read some truly excellent pieces of literature...and also some major duds. I say all of this because I read We Were Liars by E. Lockhart 2 years ago and so I know she has the capability to write amazing young adult fiction. I chose Fly on the Wall specifically because the review that I heard on BookTube led me to believe that it was a retelling of Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis and because I had enjoyed Lockhart's previous book. What I didn't expect was for it to be chock full of really explicit sexual content. Why on earth did she have to describe penises in such revealing detail? And why did she keep referring to them as gherkins?! (And if I ever hear someone call them that or refer to breasts as biscuits I'm going to slap them across the face.) The main character and the person who we view the story from is named Gretchen Yee and she is the prototypical teenage girl filled with angst. She attends a high school that focuses on the arts and her specialty is drawing comic book style characters (hence the cover imagery). Her obsession with a boy in her school leads her to make a foolhardy wish to be a fly on the wall of the boys locker room so that she can find out how he really thinks about her. (And this is where she begins to ogle the boys as they undress for gym class.)  I guess the story is supposed to be a character study or a revelation that what we think we know about people can be turned on its head if we see them at their most vulnerable. However, for me it was a letdown and vaguely nauseating. This was a 0/10 for me and I'll have to give serious thought to reading anything else from this author in the future.

PS There were also a lot of plot holes in the storyline and the ending truly fell flat.

A/N: Thanks for coming back after the longest break (3 weeks!) I've ever taken off from blogging. Your readership means a lot to me!

Source: Amazon

What's Up Next: The Murderer's Ape by Jakob Wegelius

What I'm Currently Reading: The Intuitionist by Colson Whitehead

**If you're interested in buying this book or any books really, you can click here or here. The first will re-direct you to AbeBooks and the second will re-direct you to The Book Depository. These are great websites for purchasing books (AbeBooks carries inexpensive used and out-of-print books and The Book Depository ships free everywhere in the world). Full disclosure: I will receive a commission on all sales made by following either of these links. I wouldn't recommend a site that I didn't use and you are under no obligation to purchase anything. :-) **

Blogger on break

I meant to write this up a week ago but things being what they were time got away from me. As the title of this post suggests I'm away at the moment and therefore not able to keep up my regular schedule (or actually to sit down to read much of anything). I'll be back to my twice weekly postings that I've been doing mostly on time some time around the middle of the month. Thanks so much for sticking around and I'll see you all soon to talk books!

Hope you have a great weekend!