Book Review - Bossypants

Bossypants by Tina Fey

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This is a funny, fast-to-read memoir of Tina Fey's life, from childhood through her current career. If you have enjoyed her work as a writer and actress on SNL and/or 30 Rock, you'll probably love this book. If you like smart, witty gen X women writers, you'll probably like this book. If you like memoirs of working class girls who grow up to be fabulous, influential career women, you'll probably like this book.

There aren't many people that I don't think would like this book. There were certainly several laugh-out-loud moments for me, mostly from Tina's asides and remarks rather than the main text. She is very honest in the re-telling of her life, even when she talks about what she's not going to talk about and why. She lays her life bare, in all it's sometimes neck-pimpled glory, to show us all that she's pretty much just like everyone else, whether it's because she's dealt with childhood trauma, or the trauma of overly self-important does-everything-right other mommies.

Definitely a good way to uplift a day or two.



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What's For Dinner? Lime Herb Shrimp

I love quick to make meals, especially if they're healthy.  Stir frys are great for that, and this is sort of along the lines of a stir fry.  After all, I do make it in a wok.  My Jamie Oliver wok, actually, which is non-stick and not particularly traditional, but I have great love for it nonetheless.

This dinner takes about ten minutes of prep time and ten minutes of cook time, except for the brown rice I serve with it.  That I have to start early.  But if you use the bring-to-a-boil-turn-it-off method, (wherein, you bring your rice, water and salt to a boil, stick a lid on it, and turn it off until it becomes magically done), you don't have to spend much time in the kitchen fussing over that part either.

All that goes on here, is that you thinly slice some onion and toss it in your wok with some olive oil (about a tablespoon).  Let it get slightly translucent, then toss in some frozen shrimp.  You don't even have to defrost them!  Then squeeze in a lime.  Right over the wok.  Add some salt and pepper and thinly sliced red and green pepper, along with 2 tbs each of dill weed, parsley, and chives, and a tiny pinch of splenda.

By the time your shrimp are warmed through, everything else is ready to be tossed on top of that rice you have sitting on the other burner.  Yum!  And totally man-approved, which is important in this house, let me tell you.  The lime and herbs are unexpected in a dish that looks like a stir-fry, and create a fresh, tangy dish that is fast to fix on any weeknight.

You can scale this easily for added people, as I've done many times.  I throw in a quarter onion, quarter green pepper, half a red pepper, a tbs of each herb, half a lime and half a cup or so of shrimp for each person sharing the meal.  If you have extra limes left over, slice them thinly and twist them in a half turn to create a pretty plate garnish for your guests.  If you want to get really frilly with it, twist them around a chive stem or two for added punch.

This also goes amazingly well with citrus poppy seed cheesecake for dessert!  If you sub splenda for the sugar, opt for low-fat cream cheese and trans-fat free margarine, it doesn't add much in the way of calories, but ups the protein intake. And poppy seeds are good for you!

You can find the cheesecake recipe here on the Kraft recipes site. Honestly, you really can't tell that it's sugar free and low fat, unless you're used to super-rich desserts all the time.  This one is light, fluffy, and delicious.  And thankfully, not as guilt-inducing.

Book Review - The End of Everything

The End of Everything by Megan Abbott

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


This is another girl-gone-missing tale. It seems like there have been quite a few of those on the market in the last couple of years. The vulnerability of women never goes out of style I guess.

The End of Everything explores the situation from the point of view of the adolescent best friend of the missing girl, who revisits her memory of the last afternoon she'd seen her friend over and over in hopes of uncovering a clue. When she does - an important clue no less - she begins ravaging her memory of the last few months, turning events over and over in her mind, trying to make sense of everything that happened.

Much of this book takes place within the main character's head. For a stoyrline that includes such drama, there is very little in the way of actual action, and so I found myself bored with the story and skipping ahead a bit here and there. While the writing is quite good, and very realistic in the mindset of a young girl, the story suffers from being somewhat slow and repetitive at times.

It's not a bad read, by any means, but since I've read some really brilliant books on this theme in the last couple of years, it paled a bit in comparison.



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Book Review - Daughters of the North

Daughters of the North by Sarah Hall

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


This should really get a three and a half star rating, as it's not really bad enough to rate a three.

Daughters of the North is a post-apocolyptic, dystopian tale of a society past the point of peak oil and environmental disaster. It is reminscent, at least in the beginning, of A Handmaid's Tale, one of my all-time favourite books, and one of the books that I feel shaped me as a person. In fact, I had heard that comparison previously, which is what drew me towant to pick this one up.

The writing borders on academic, which is fine for this particular story, but might be off-putting to those more accustomed to casual styles of writing. The main character is easy to empathyze with; a woman who has grown up in a decaying society, who went with the status quo because it was the easy route, until she simply couldn't stand the daily degradations and humiliations any longer. Most of us have a breaking point, and I felt, reading this, that mine would be close to hers (as, I think, most would; having your boss casually inspect your contraceptive device is just a shade too far).

The story seemed to devolve at the very end, and the end of the book left me a little disappointed. It had begun to build toward an interesting crescendo, then after one particularly emotionally poignant moment, it felt like the author wasn't sure where to go next. Left with uncertainty, the reader has to decide how the story ends, which is okay, and is a plot device many authors use, but it just didn't seem right or well-done here.

The beginning is strong, and it's an interesting take on a possible future, but it's not a fun or particularly compelling read, and with the weak ending, it leaves some things to be desired.



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Book Review - Bitter is the New Black

Bitter is the New Black : Confessions of a Condescending, Egomaniacal, Self-Centered Smart-Ass, or Why You Should Never Carry a Prada Bag to the Unemployment Office : A Memoir by Jen Lancaster

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


In 2001, Jen Lancaster was an up and coming marketing executive with a huge salary, a handsome live-in boyfriend, a fabulous apartment in one of Chicago's trendiest neighborhoods, and a closet full of designer bags and shoes. She bought expensive perfume, took cabs everywhere, looked down on her less-classy neighbors, and had it all. Sort of.

Then her world exploded with the dot com bust. She lost her job. She lost her apartment. She lost some friends. She lost some stuff. She lost some dignity. But this book isn't about loss, it's about all the things she gained in those two years of unemployment, and how she became a different person with different priorities and a very different career path. I really, really like the "after" Jen better.

This book is bitingly funny, and the author is sarcastic almost to a fault. It would be too much if she didn't poke as much fun at herself as she does at everyone else. I'm all for equal opportunity humour. I kept bursting out laughing - often loudly - garnering odd looks from a very confused husband. I understand struggle, as most of us do, and had a lot of empathy for what Jen was going through, but it's impossible to feel too much sympathy when she's this funny.

And yes, I'll say it again. So. Freaking. Funny.

Despite the rather somber subject matter - dealing with unemployment and a bad economy - this book is a true pick-me-up and a great read.



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Book Review - The Night Circus

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I loved this book. It drew me in immediately, and I dropped everything else I was reading to concentrate soley on this book. What a fantastical, magical story.

The setting of the story - a circus in the late 1800s - early 1900s - was enough to capture my imagination. The idea that the circus was only open from nightfall to sunrise and was composed entirely of black and white with dashes of red? That set my brain spinning into all the possibilities. Toss in some old-school, kind of scary, ancient magicians having a contest of true illusions - not slight-of-hand - being performed by their proteges, a touch of a love story, a mysterious clockmaker, identical twin children who train kittens to perform acrobatic feats and attractions that include a laybrinth of clouds and a tent filled with scent-experience bottles and jars and I was done in.

I want to live inside the world of The Night Circus.

I loved this book. And you should, too. It has something for everyone, whether you're looking for history, drama, suspense, romance, or action. It's beautifully written with tight dialogue and sweeping, lyrical settings. It's a very good book, and I think I'll be reading it again.

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Paper Pregnant

I'm coming out of the closet: I'm paper pregnant.

Now, some of you either already know about this or suspected, based on things I've said or hinted at over the last couple of months. And others of you may find this term offensive, as I've seen hinted at on the adoption boards I frequent, but I don't care.

When, on the last day of our training, the social worker announced that we were now "paper pregnant", the term resonated with me, and I fell in love with the idea. We still have cross-cultural training to do (this Saturday!) and a half day left of FASD training since one of the social workers was sick on the day we were scheduled, but we're moving into the waiting process.

It's funny, the first time I was pregnant, I read tons and tons of pregnancy, birth, and baby books. Now it's adoption, child-raising, and special needs oriented books. Before we planned a nursery, and now we're planning bedrooms. Before, and now... it's better now because I'm not sick, but it's scarier now because there isn't a set "due date".

I haven't wanted to talk about it much because it's such a long process with so little news here and there, and so fielding a lot of questions about where we were is sad and difficult sometimes.  The waiting is so hard on us, especially when we want to have our family home with us so badly.  So instead of having lots of conversations, how about I update you all here?  Sound good?

Richard and I are adopting.  Yay!  We've done a lot of researching and investigating and considering where and how.  We stopped and started and stopped again.  We decided against international and private domestic in general (though we are open to private domestic if it drops in our laps somehow, which is possible - part of why I'm "coming out") and began in-depth pursuit of public domestic adoption.

Last night we were out with a large group of friends, and we mentioned something about adoption.  A friend across the table looked up and said, "I wish I'd known, as I have a friend who was looking for a family for her 2-week-old, but I think she found someone now."  Oh, did my heart ache in that moment.  By keeping our journey private, were we cutting off the universe from possibly sending beautiful possibilities our way?  Maybe.  Or maybe it was just a wake-up call for me to be open about this, because what is meant to be is going to be, and if that baby was meant to be ours, they would be ours.  But by being open about this, we are at least not closing off that avenue.

Lastly, for my local friends, if a match comes unexpectedly quickly (which can happen, in some circumstances) I would love to hear from you if you are willing to loan us a car seat, booster seat, and/or travel crib/cradle/toddler bed short term if we're matched suddenly and need a little time to shop!  It would be helpful for me to have a list of people I could call in case of emergency. We were told a story of one of our social workers calling a couple and saying, "Sooo, I have a baby for you at the hospital that needs to be picked up!"  That's rare of course, and we're expecting a toddler and up age-range wise but it could still happen. And better to be prepared just in case than to be tearing my hair out at the last minute.

We're scared.  We're excited.  We're happy.  We're on an emotional roller-coaster just like any pregnant couple, even if our added weight is a giant binder of paperwork and our doctor's visits are actually visits with social workers. We miss the family we want to bring home, and can't wait for them to arrive.  I hope you can share in our excitement on this amazing journey.