I was on my way to work when I noticed that the minivan ahead of me had its brake lights on. I assumed it was pulled over temporarily by the side of the road, but as I got closer, I saw two blurry brown shapes dart across the road in front of it.
My first thought, trained by years of driving past office parks, was that perhaps some geese had been crossing the road. But geese are usually more interested in slow waddling, the sort that causes suburban traffic jams as they consider whether they really want to cross the road or just want to contemplate their feet in the face of oncoming traffic instead. Geese, now that I thought about it, did not seem to be darting types at all.
Now I needed another explanation, so I decided that it must involve the man walking on the sidewalk, slightly ahead of my car and slightly behind the minivan. Obviously he had been walking his dogs off leash, and they’d gotten away from him. But wait! The man was strolling very casually along the sidewalk. Shouldn’t a dog owner be more agitated about his dogs nearly getting hit by a car? And why were they off-leash, anyway? This was a busy road! One with double yellow lines!
Luckily, before I got further incensed by this imaginary lack of responsible dog-raising and rolled down my window to holler, “Hey, jerkwad, why dontcha get a stuffed animal instead?”, I saw that the minivan was moving again, albeit very slowly. Clearly, there was something of interest up ahead.
Naturally, I also slowed down as I came to the section of the road where I’d seen the blurry shapes. I hated rubberneckers, but I had found that the way to satisfy my curiosity without stopping all the traffic was by demanding that Chris, my passenger, check out the scene of the accident and report all the details to me once I’d driven safely by. (This, my friends, is what marriage is all about.)
But now I was on a suburban street, with no cars behind me, and if something good was going down, something worthy of making a minivan full of kids late for school, I needed to see it.
So I peeked. And– oh my! Two deer! They were standing completely still, both staring wide-eyed at me. One was slightly larger than the other, and because neither had horns, my anthropomorphizing heart decided I was looking at a mother deer and her child. I’d seen deer in the wild before, but a deer prancing through the rural woods of Ithaca was not exactly the same as two deer standing on a neatly-manicured lawn, surrounded by tidy flower beds, in downtown Natick.
These deer looked scared, as though they were doing their best to pretend that they didn’t know how they’d ended up here or where they were headed. And as I looked at them, surrounded by houses and less than a block away from a construction site where new condominiums are being built on a tiny plot of land, I realized that the deer weren’t pretending at all. They simply had nowhere to go, and none of us knew quite how we’d gotten to this point.
by Jacques Pepin
ONE LINE SUMMARY: Jacques Pepin reminisces about his childhood and adult life in cooking.
This is not bad, but I was suprised that a memoir by a chef contains descriptions of food that are strangely distant and passive. There are no mouth-watering phrases as in Ruth Reichl’s Garlic and Sapphires, and the recipes included in this book seem to involve ingredients too difficult to obtain for the casual reader.
The only sections that seemed to come alive for me were the ones describing Pepin’s daughter as a young child, and her involvement with food.
by Rachel DeWoskin
ONE LINE SUMMARY: An American Caucasian goes to Beijing and finds herself starring in a Chinese soap opera.
This book reminds me of a girl I once met. She’d had a wildly eccentric childhood, and various unusual adventures, and yet every story she told just made me think that it should have been more interesting than it actually was. How crazy would it be to go to Beijing for work after graduating from college, and then suddenly find yourself starring in a soap opera? Well, it should be crazier than this book.
I think there are too many topics in this book. I would have gladly read an entire memoir on any of the following: the author’s soap opera career, her relationship with a Chinese man, the upheaval and changes in Beijing while she was there, the death of a close friend. Yet somehow, when all these subjects are tied together in one book, I find myself confused as to timeline and not really enjoying the stories quite as much as I should be.
This book is well-written, but too broad in scope. A pity, because this is the kind of situation that was made for a memoir.
Sometimes dogs can really cheer you up.
I was sitting at Chris’s computer, noodling around on the Internet, when I noticed Mina had brought the little grey bear toy near me. She pranced around, flung her head at the toy and suggested in all possible ways that perhaps I should leave the computer and throw the bear for her.
Well, I was in the middle of typing something, so I said, “In a minute, Bean!” and went on with what I was doing.
Apparently a minute was too long for her, and she immediately ran away and came back with the chickie. She tossed it to the ground, play-bowed, and waggled her rear at me.
Now I couldn’t resist, so I picked up the chickie and waved it around for her. While she was growling and doing her best to kill it, Flacko noticed something was happening and tried to join in on playtime.
Mina doesn’t like to share toys, and will just stop playing and stand completely still if another dog tries to play, so I kept waving the chickie around for Mina with one hand while I grabbed the bear with my other hand.
I wiggled the bear at Flacko, who tried to bite it and play with it. All normal behavior, except that Flacko was still completely wrapped up in his blanket and lying on his dog bed at the time.
So there I was, squatting on my floor, flinging a yellow chick for one dog while simultaneously shoving a tiny bear at a moving, growling blanket, and you know, life could be worse.
You know you’re getting old when you realize it’s Friday, and your initial reaction is dismay because you know Friday just means you have to spend your free time working on the darned yard.
by Kathy Reichs
ONE LINE SUMMARY: Temperance Brennan investigates a two thousand year old mystery.
This book wasn’t as good as the previous Brennan books. The writing makes it obvious that Reichs already had the story in place, as the story draws closely from reality. I felt like Reichs shoehorned her pre-existing characters into this plot, and very little of the actual personality of the characters survived.
by Paul Feig
ONE LINE SUMMARY: The creator of “Freaks and Geeks” writes about his life.
Memoirs tend to cover specific periods in a person’s life, and this one covers that time period when Paul Feig was obsessed with sex. The memoir ends with the author’s loss of virginity at age 24.
This is moderately amusing, but the single-minded focus (it jumps right in with his first boner in second grade) was a bit dull for me. Some characterization and explanation of his childhood in this book would have helped me feel more attached to young Feig, who just comes off as Napoleon Dynamite: The Sex Years–someone kind of funny, but so removed from the people you know that you never quite bond with them and instead watch them from a distance as if you were studying them.
by Janet Evanovich
ONE LINE SUMMARY: Stephanie Plum quits her job as a bounty hunter, takes on several worse jobs, all while trying to figure out who’s stalking her.
In this latest adventure, Stephanie’s charms start to wear a little thing. Her sidekick Lula is just as bold as ever, her grandma as crazy as ever, and the two men in her life as hot as ever. And that’s the problem. Eleven books have come and gone, and the most Stephanie has matured is to suddenly and inexplicably decide the bounty hunter life is not for her. Where’s the leadup to this momentous decision? Where are the regrets, the ponderings, the mental questioning of one’s self?
Alas, all of Stephanie’s concerns get wrapped up in the same old quandary–does she want to be with Morelli or Ranger? By now, I’m thinking I don’t care much which one–just pick one, because after 11 books, she should have made up her mind by now.
I still enjoyed the book, but some of the original charm and humor have been lost to me because of the lack of development and growth for any of the characters. Now I’m a little disappointed that I started buying this series.
by Ruth Reichl
ONE LINE SUMMARY: Reichl discusses her time as the restaurant critic for The New York Times.
Much like her previous books, this one comes replete with mouth-watering descriptions of food. However, I found this book even better than her other memoirs.
Her descriptions of her various disguises to fool restaurant workers are amusing and occasionally bittersweet. Although she doesn’t provide photographs of herself in her disguises, she does include some restaurant reviews by her and recipes.
This is a book I will buy, even though I’ve just finished reading a copy from the library. It’s that good.
And oh yes, some of the restaurant food descriptions will make you want to check if the restaurants are still in business and whether you can make a reservation there.
by Laurie Notaro
ONE LINE SUMMARY: The author becomes Responsible, gets married, and owns a home in this series of humorous essays.
I enjoyed this book much more than The Idiot Girls’ Action-Adventure Club. Part of that may be because I have more in common with the Laurie of this time period than the smoking, drinking, carousing Laurie of the previous book. Or it may be because the timeline of these essays is easier to follow, and there is development with the succeeding essays. The essays deal with her finding Mr. Right, move on to her marrying Mr. Right, visit her purchasing a home, and end with Laurie getting used to kids like her nephew.
I laughed out loud in several spots.
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