Taste by Stanley Tucci

I like to listen to audiobooks while I ride my bicycle. Usually, I listen to books I've already read so that I don't miss anything in the plot if I get distracted. One of the exceptions that I make is memoirs. It is usually easier to keep up with the story being told and my favorite way to experience a memoir is through the voice of the person. My latest listen is Taste by Stanley Tucci. I have long enjoyed the parts he's played in movies, but now that I've listened to his book, I absolutely adore him!

Tucci tells about growing up in New York state with Italian parents and grandparents who loved food more than life itself. He shares family recipes and draws the listener into the family kitchen so that they feel like they are really there at the table. In one scene, he describes trying to leave his grandparents' house after a visit and the argument that ensued when his grandmother was trying to get his mother to take a large bag of food with her. I would try to describe it to you here, but that would only ruin the joy of you hearing Tucci telling the story himself.

He also talks about his first wife, who died from cancer, and his current wife with whom he lives in London. He talks about his acting career a little, his famous friends a bit, and even shares his own fight with cancer. Every story he tells drips with love, and also butter. He says only the nicest things and always in a way that you can tell he truly means it. I cannot recommend this book enough. Please add it to your list, and if possible, choose the audio version.

 

Meant to Be Mine by Hannah Orenstein

I was feeling the need for something light and fun to read and the synopsis for Meant to Be Mine by Hannah Orenstein sounded about right. This is the story of Edie, a twenty-something living in New York who runs her own fashion business, has her own apartment, and loves her life. She has been waiting for the day at the beginning of the novel since she was sixteen years old. It is the day that her fabulous grandmother, Gloria, has predicted she will meet the love of her life. Gloria has never made a bad love prediction and so Edie's eyes are peeled in the airport and on the flight to see her twin sister get engaged to her own match. When a handsome sits down next to her on the plane, Edie can't help but wonder if this is it.

This book was pretty cute. I'm not a huge romance fan, but this one was smart and featured strong female characters who, while happy with the men they find, are also more than capable of having amazing lives without them. Edie's sister has postponed her engagement until after she's finished all her training as a doctor so that nothing gets in the way; Edie's mother chooses an unexpected path to get what she wants from her life without a man; Edie's grandmother rejected all of the conventions of the time as a young woman to seek out the fun that society thought inappropriate for her.

This was light and fluffy reading, and I'm all for that when you need it. The characters were people with whom I'd like to be friends and Gloria is a role model for us all. Add this book to your list.

 

Corinne by "Rebecca Morrow"

Corinne by Rebecca Morrow is about a young woman who is cast out of her fundamentalist religion and shunned by her entire family. When she is finally able to begin mending fences nearly fifteen years later, she is pulled right back into the thing that got her into trouble in the first place.

I heard about Corinne while watching a video speculating that it was actually written by Stephenie Meyer. If you look at the back flap of the book cover, a space usually reserved for the "about the author" blurb, it simply says this:

Rebecca Morrow is a pseudonym for a New York Times bestselling author.

That's it. That's all the publisher will cop to, but speculation abounds. What was actually said about the possible author of this book in the video I saw was that it could be Stephenie Meyer, but that the prose was just too good. She couldn't have improved enough to have written this so it was probably someone else.

Folks, I could not disagree more. This ABSOLUTELY could have been written by the author of Twilight. And the prose was NOT too good. In fact, I thought it was pretty awful. I'm sorry. I know that's not very nice, but please allow me to give an example. First of all, remember how annoyed everyone was that Bella in Twilight was constantly described as being clumsy and awkward? The same thing happens with Corinne except that the descriptor of choice is "fat". Perhaps the author meant to imbue this book with body positivity and prove that chubby girls deserve love, too, but it just comes off as pandering, insulting, and lazy.

Corinne still looked exactly how she'd looked in high school-- like a fat girl with a mildly unpleasant disposition.

This is repeated many times throughout the novel.

Also included with the terrible prose is the excessive use of the parenthetical. Far too frequently, the author adds in several asides in the middle of a paragraph that I found unnecessary. Perhaps she was hoping to give the reader insight into the mind of the character, but it was heavy-handed. Take this paragraph for example:

And once, they'd laid out Monopoly, Parcheesi, and Clue, and played them all at once. (When it was your turn you'd roll the dice, then decide which piece you wanted to move, on any board.) (It was fun. They should play that again.) (They called it Monocheesue).

My third complaint is the numerous sex scenes that to me seemed excessive and excessively awkward. Perhaps this is why Meyer, if that's the actual author, chose to write under a pen name. She received a lot of criticism from a large portion of her readership that there was too much "fade to black" when there should have been more spice. Frankly, I prefer the fade because most authors make such a bumbling mess of love scenes, but that isn't the only reason I didn't like those scenes in this book. Let me share a couple of lines with you:

He opened his mouth to catch hers. Corinne licked his fat tongue, his gappy teeth. 

Gross, right? And how about this one:

He rubbed his big hand against the pad of her pubic bone. ("Pubic bone"; English was a failure.) Corinne hadn't shaved or done anything weird to get ready -- she'd be damned if she resorted to pubic grooming, even for the love of her life. Enoch was growling into her mouth. He didn't care. Or notice. Corinne tried not to imagine Shannon Frank's no doubt impeccable vagina.

Ewww... and just one more, I promise:

Enoch kissed her. He kissed her with his jaw thrust forward, looking down at her from the very bottom of his eyes. It made her heart drop into her vaginal canal. Like a key dropping into a lock.

What. The. Heck. And someone was saying the prose was too good to be SM? No. No, no, no.

And then there's this line that seems to clinch it for me:

But Enoch had always been different. Maybe she'd imprinted on him -- no really, she thought that she probably had.

Sure, this could have been written by someone else, but I can't help but think this is either SM or someone who read her books so many times that they imprinted on the author's own style. 

Lastly, and then I'll stop tearing this book to shreds, the story is flat. It is missing any type of arc at all. This is supposedly written by a NY Times bestselling author so perhaps the editors were afraid of offending her by telling her it was not good, but they have done neither her nor the readers any favors. 

I will say that it was a fast read. The chapters are short and the pace is quick. I kept reading because I kept hoping that beautiful prose was just over the next hill, but alas it was not. The cover of the book has a blurb written by Jodi Picoult that says "It's a modern-day Romeo and Juliet, and you'll whip through pages to hope for the impossible." This was not R & J. This was a story about two people who weren't supposed to be together, but that is far from all that is needed for an R & J story. The mystery and the hype are all that will sell this book. The words on the page do it no good.

Again, I'm sorry. This seems like a mean review, and I hate to be mean, but it's just that bad.

Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin

I absolutely adore The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin and I was super excited about her newest release, Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow. Set at the dawn of the video game age, Sam and Sadie have been friends since childhood when they, as seniors at separate elite universities, decide to try making their own game. Teaming up with Sam's roommate as producer, the three of them become famous in the world of gaming. There are successes and failures, loves and losses, and heartbreak both temporary and permanent. These characters are brilliant and brilliantly written. They are flawed and perfect in the most wonderful way. 

The push and pull of friendship and the various kinds of love in this novel give it so much heart. The prose is beautiful. Zevin forces the reader to see her characters and so is drawn into their adventure and plight. I truly enjoyed this book. It was a fast read that kept me up too late at night. I hope you'll read and enjoy it, too.