Failure is Not an Option

It's been awhile since I've posted, mostly due to craziness here, but my previous book choice is partially to blame. I picked "The Empty Glass" by J.I. Baker as my next book and I've been battling to read it ever since. Okay, that's a lie, I've been trying to read it, but I've been interspersing it with books that don't make me want to rip my eyeballs out.

With about two weeks notice I decided to pack up and take a trip to France, so life has been a tad crazy getting ready for that and I wanted books that were light, fluffy and European. In my time of great need I turned to the Kick Keswick series by Marne Davis Kellogg. I'll freely admit that I'm totally cheating owing to the fact that I've read these books multiple times, but since it's my game I get to bend the rules.

There are four books in the series; "Priceless", "Perfect", "Friends in High Places" and "Brilliant". The last book in the series came out in 2007 and it seems that Ms. Kellogg isn't writing anymore. :( It's sad when such a brilliant author takes a hiatus from writing (or quits entirely). That's not to say that these books are highbrow literature by any means; they are light and fluffy and decadent. These are the perfect summer beach reads (or summer in front of the tv reads) to get lost in another world.

The four books follow Kick Keswick, a middle aged woman who happens to be London's daring Shamrock Burglar. The Shamrock Burglar robs the rich and famous of their priceless jewels and leaves a bouquet of shamrocks in place of them. By day she's a mild mannered executive assistant at auction company Ballantine & Company (she leaves this position in later books) and by night she's pulling off daring and dangerous heists.

Kick is a woman who loves the finer things in life; fancy clothes and expensive food, and she has the money to afford them using her ill-gotten gains. She haunts the locales of the wealthy (they are the ones with the best jewelry after all) and lives the high life. The books are full of descriptions of the food she's eating, the clothes and jewelry she's wearing and the beautiful European cities she's traveling in. These are not books for someone who wants intellect, they are an indulgence. Since Kellogg has spent so much time traveling to these places and living this life (minus the whole burglary thing I assume) she is able to have descriptions that are rich and full of detail. These books do an excellent job transporting you into Kick's fantastic life and letting you imagine the possibilities. The only negative is that they can get a little tedious with the descriptions and sometimes plot is sacrificed in order to describe one more piece of jewelry or one more outfit.

Overall, I'm giving these 4/5


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I Love Everybody (If everybody is my dog)

It was a very busy weekend at our house. Saturday the dear fiance and I adopted a puppy from our local shelter!

Meet Massey!

She's a ten month old (according to the vet) Lab puppy. She was given to the shelter by her first family because they just couldn't deal with her puppy behaviors (chewing, housebreaking issues etc.). We didn't take this decision lightly, I've been begging the fiance for several years for a dog. When we finally bought our house in January I was totally ready to head straight to the shelter and pick out a dog, he stepped in and said we had to wait until summer so I would be home all the time to work with the dog. In mid April my parents had to make the tough decision to put down our 12 year old chocolate lab and my jonesing for a dog increased exponentially. We went on Saturday and looked at several dogs and ultimately decided on her because she seemed calm and happy. She is, at least partially, she is totally calm if both of us are sitting in the room with her. Her sole goal in life is to be with her people and she isn't particularly happy if we aren't all together. There is nothing more she loves than cuddling with me or sleeping at my feet (of course the second I move she's all over the place). She also throws up in the car and likes to run wild in the yard and chase birds and bugs. She also hasn't quite yet mastered the "come" command (as evidenced by her taking off into our wheat field today and refusing to return), but she's great at sitting down!

This is a lot of backstory for a blog about books, but I honestly cannot stop gushing about my sweet little girl. It's fun to see her personality develop so quickly and to see how different she is from other dogs. I have known. However, she requires a lot of attention and work and for that exact reason I've read a grand total of two pages this weekend. Getting a new puppy is a lot like having a baby (not that I've every actually had a baby but the concept seems similar) and I wasn't too interested in my book (even though it is an awesome book). Turns out even for an avid reader when you have something as cute as a new puppy book reading tends to go by the wayside.

However, I did finish Laurie Notaro's book and without further ado here is my short and brief review.

I've admitted to a fondness for Laurie Notaro so it's not a surprise that I adored "I Love Everybody and Other Atrocious Lies". Laurie is like a meaner (and slightly stupider...in a good way) version of myself. Her writing verbalizes my internal monologue. I especially connected with her struggles to get her book published and the struggle when yet another rejection letter arrived in the mail.

She says "Each said I sucked. Each said I was 'not right for their needs.' Each wished me 'good luck
 in my pursuit to get my book published. And they meant it, the same way my mom meant it when I told her I had finally found a boy that liked me back" (61). When I read those sentences and the continuing rant about how all she would have to do to get her book published is become Anne Heche or Oprah Winfrey and I connected. The best thing a book can do for me (or any reader) is to make a connection with the reader. It's a tough thing to do, especially in the memoir genre when the author is sharing specific stories about their own life. I've read a lot of memoirs that I just can't connect to, it's almost becoming an overdone genre with entirely too many people telling stories that to be honest aren't that interesting (Living Oprah comes to mind). It's a tough balance to strike, you have to be honest yet it is difficult to make the mundane funny and exciting. Notaro strikes that balance with ease, she's able to take the smallest most mundane events that every person has experienced (shopping at Costco, going to the movies and helping the elderly with their electronics) and turn them into something epic.

When I read her book I feel like I can look at my most mundane activities and find the humor in them all. It's a gift really to look at shopping at Costco (sub in Sam's Club for me, we're too much of a cow town to get the fabulous Costco) and write several whole pages about it (To be fair I can write several pages about shopping at Target-but absolutely no one wants to actually read them) and make me laugh out loud. I'm sure if I could get my dear fiance to read it he would identify with Laurie's long suffering husband Victor (since I'm sure the reports he gets about my day sometimes sound like her books in the level of ridiculous).

I'm giving this one 5/5

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