Alligators, Old Mink, and New Money by Allison and Melissa Houette

This was a delight. Utterly un-self-conscious writing, fun, a book that celebrated it's authors' love of vintage clothing while making it clear that it wasn't life or death, just fun and lovely.

Allison Houette claims that she inherited her sense of style from her mother and grandmother, and that their care for and appreciation of clothing led her to love the clothes they carefully saved from earlier eras.

After she left home to try her luck as a model, she found herself in Paris (I know! It does sound as if it would be eye-rollingly nauseating, but it isn't at all- not one bit) and unable to afford new fancy clothes, a mentor taught her how to find hidden gems in flea markets and thrift shops.

After her modeling career slowed down a bit, she opened her own vintage clothing shop in Brooklyn (Seriously, this was a charming book. I usually balk like a stubborn mule when I hear/see anything about Park Slope, etc), called her shop Hooti Couture (after how people mispronounced her French last name in Florida where she grew up) and, well, sells clothes.

It is a mystery how such a slight story made for such a frothy and delicious read, but it really was like having a great latte after finding a fantastic handbag. Really. That might be the only time I ever say anything like that, so you know it's true!

Alligators, Old Mink & New Money: One Woman's Adventures in Vintage Clothing

Quality: 8 Popularity: 8 Overall: 16

Bitter is the New Black, by Jen Lancaster

I don't know why I keep picking these up. I think I miss Bridget Jones.

Well, this one is at least non-fiction (ish). It tells the story of an uber-bitch power-hungry corporate vp from a dot.com, who gets, well, blown off when the bubble bursts. She carries her Prada bag to the unemployment office, and then carries on stridently about how they won't take her seriously.

It went on and on, and of course, by being unemployed and having to sell all her handbags, and having to move to (gasp) a worse part of town, and even (double-gasp) having to dye her own hair instead of having a salon charge her $300, she finds inner peace and enlightenment. I am just not buying it.

Anyway, it was quick and breezy, and pretty well written. I am just so tired of these "poverty makes people real" books- Jen Lancaster (post short-skirt-and-long-jacket career girl phase) could probably kick back and keep it real with those "poor girls" the Nan Bobbsey so admired.

Bitter is the New Black: Confessions of a Condescending, Egomaniacal, Self-Centered Smartass,Or, Why You Should Never Carry A Prada Bag to the Unemployment Office

Quality: 4 Popularity: 7 Overall: 11

(Yeah, I totally took off points for the title. Nice cover though!)

Luxury Fever, by Robert H. Frank

Another book by Robert Frank, author of Richistan, which I loved earlier this fall.

Older (well, 1999, but feels like in a different financial era altogether) but very interesting look at some common human ideas about relative income, and why it damages our society for individuals to indulge themselves at the expense of collective gains.

Economist Frank somehow makes some pretty intricate arguments seem fun and lively, and the book definitely gives you some great party-arguing hooks - Would you rather make $100k in a world were everyone else made $90k, or make $110k in a world where everyone else made $200k? Why?

Would you rather live in a 4,000 sq. ft. house with an hour drive to work, or in a 3,000 sq. ft. house with a 15 minute rapid transit commute? And so on.

Mixed in with these fun questions are a lot of staggaring (and honestly revolting) factoids about what the truly wealthy spend (some) of their money on- from Bill Gates' $115 million dollar house (the pool alone cost $6 million) to the disgusting whale foreskin barstools on Aristotle Onassis's yacht Christina.

More importantly, and interestingly, Frank's book from 1999 details what he forsaw as fallout from the ludicrous and selfish excesses of the dot.com bubble days- he specifially addresses redshirting, the ( almost entirely) socioeconomically determined decision some wealthy parents make to keep their child out of kindergarten for a year to make them more competitive against their classmates, a problem which many states now are attempting to address with legislation.

He also talks about how individual indulgences (such as driving alone to work) create a massive loss of value (when the air is polluted, etc) without sounding in the least bit preachy.

In another section, he talks about what at least he could see coming- the current disaster with consumer debt and bubbly mortgages, the crisis of school-teacher pay falling relative to other fields, food inspection, and decaying municipal water systems.

Most impressively to me, he talks at length about how deferred bridge and highway maintenance increases costs immensely, and how pressure to balance state and federal budgets lead to decision making that is flawed, at best, and criminally negligent, at worst. After what we saw this year with America's bridges, Frank looks a little like a wordy, number-crunching prophet.

A thoroughly enjoyable book.

Luxury Fever

Quality: 9 Popularity: 6 Overall: 15

(The popularity thing pains me, but this might not be everyone's favorite book, and the chapter on compound interest almost put me to sleep, until I tried to actually follow the math and woke up!)

The Bobbsey Twins at the Seashore, by Laura Lee Hope

The cover, obviously, was the best thing about this. Great cover.

Where to start... I think reading this reminded me why despite an entirely unnatural childhood urge to read children's books published a good 25 years before I was born, I never rocked the Bobbsey Twins.

Sacharine, trite, twee, and painful.

Disgusting little scenes and lines like this (I can hardly type it without retching)

"Queer," remarked Nan as they hurried on. "The two girls I thought the most of in Meadow Brook were poor: Nettie Prentice and Nellie the little cash girl at the fresh air camp. Somehow, poor girls seem so real and they talk to you so close - I mean they seem to just speak right out of their eyes and hearts."

BLECH! If you read the mother's reply to this, you might have the kind of swearing fit I did (scared the heck out of my cats!) so I will not trouble you so, but the book was just chock full of such loathsomeness.

I know it was published in 1952, but there is no excuse for this kind of dreck.

Of course, too, Nettie Prentice's missing father returns with a shipload of mahogany and a fortune- I wonder if Nettie stops being "so real" now that she's Bobbsey-rich?

The Bobbsey Twins at the Seashore Out of print, yay.

Quality: 2 Popularity: 2 Overall: 4

(Popularity score obviously weighted to be era-appropriate- I know this was huge back in the day)

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian, by Sherman Alexie

I hated the start of this book. I've been indulging myself a bit, reading things I wanted to read, so this was a bit of a shock to force myself to pick up and finish one of the RITBA nominee books again, but I'm glad that I did.

Arnold/Junior is growing up on a reservation, with more problems than you could shake a stick at. As a baby, he was hydrocephalic, and as a teen, he is still taunted and picked on and beaten up on a regular basis. His family is saddled with poverty, lost dreams, and alcoholism, and his best friend is increasingly violent and drunk.

After his first day in Geometry class, when the textbook he recieves turns out to have been his mother's, all those years ago, Arnold gets furious at the system which denies him a decent, up to date education, and transfers into a nearby white farm-town highschool. His Indian tribemates resent him for that, and his new classmates treat him horribly, initially, with some painful racist scenes.

I don't want to spoil the book for anyone who might read it, but it ended up being tearjerkingly good. For all that, though, I have to say it felt like a tearjerker from page one. Now, from my posts about the Gilbreth books, one might assume I love a book that makes me cry, but this is not the case. I love a book that makes me cry incidentally, a book that moves me so much by its own weight or character that I find myself weeping despite myself. When I call a book a tearjerker, I mean that I find myself weeping when I am supposed to. Big difference, there.

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

Quality: 9 Popularity: 8 Overall: 16

The Luxe, by Anna Godberson

Well, I was so excited to read this, and thanks to a friend (Hi Robin!) I was able to get a hold of an advance reader copy- yay! I felt so, well, fancy. After hearing (ok, reading) some buzzy stuff about the book, I was convinced this would be huge. Maybe it will be- I mean, how many YA books get namechecked on Gawker???

But.

I am so sorry to report that in this reader's eyes, the book didn't really work.

Too many affairs, too implausible- it reached a kind of Harlequin-level silliness. Which can be magnificent- if it works, but I don't think it did, and I am kind of crushed.

Good girl Elizabeth is from an old society family, and her marriage to Henry is all settled- or is it? It turns out that Elizabeth has a tendresse for the stable boy, and her scheming maid... oh, heck. You can fill in the blanks, I'm sure.

I was so tantalized by the initial sell - Gossip Girl crossed with Edith Wharton - that I still have to kind of love it, just for the idea, but the actualization really didn't work for me. Bummer.

The Luxe (coming out in hardcover next month)

Quality: 6 Popularity: 9 Overall: 15

(Popularity points coming from fantastic cover and pre-release buzz)

Microtrends:The Small Forces Behind Tomorrow's Big Changes, by Mark Penn

Interesting book, detailing our increasingly niche-market oriented society. Penn (known as the guy who defined "Soccer Moms" as a key voting block for Clinton) covers 75 "microtrends" (1,000,000 people being enought to pop up on his radar) that he feels will have a big impact on America today.

His methodology seems sound, and many of the trends he points out are interesting and quirky, but the book (2007) already seems a little dated- it's like FutureShock or Faith Popcorn or something- when you try to write about the next big thing tomorrow, you might be better off writing for magazines, because by the time your book is published, you might already be behind the times. In one major misstep, Penn points to Zunes as the big MP3 player- a glaring, jarring error in a book that claims to be on top of such things. Zunes were made to try to enter the Ipod dominated MP3 player market, and never caught on at all, and it just seems like a weird mistake.

One of the most alarming statistics was out of California, where 1% of teens polled expressed a desire to be "military snipers". 1%. Scary stuff.

MicroTrends: The Small Forces Behind Tomorrow's Big Changes

Quality: 8 Popularity: 9 Overall: 17

Time Out For Happiness, by Frank Gilbereth Jr.

Another fascinating book about the Gilbreth family, but this one a little more serious than Cheaper by the Dozen or Belles on Their Toes.

In this book, Frank Jr. writes more seriously about the theories of scientific management that his parents developed, and even more seriously about how hard Lillian Gilbreth had to work in order to be taken seriously as an expert in the field in her own right.

In one painful story, she had been asked to address the Association of Mechanical Engineers, as a keynote speaker- a great honor- but was not allowed to enter the building - the society had failed to check if the club where the meeting was held allowed women inside. It did not, and despite her being the keynote speaker, she was denied entrance.

Many anecdotes were recycled from the previous books, but this one had a more reflective tone, and allows that for all the fun, that the 11 surviving Gilbreths might have been a little busy and crowded!

And once again, I ended this book with tears streaming down my face. Sometimes genuine warmth can just knock you off your feet.

Time Out For Happiness (Out of print, used copies available)

Quality: 9 Popularity: 6 Overall: 15

Fame Junkies, by Jake Halpern

Finally something I really had fun reading! I loved Braving Home by Halpern- that was a fantastic book, and I was thrilled to see another by him.

This time he takes a look at celebrity culture in America, from a few different angles. He attends a talent expo in NYC, following teens from Buffalo whose parents have invested thousands of dollars in acting and modeling classes, in hopes that their child will 'make it'. He interviews celebrity assistants, who devote their lives to making sure that their celebrity gets everything they want exactly when they want it. He interviews fan-club presidents, in one of the saddest sections in the book, and he interviews academics who have based their careers on studying fame, and who seem to teeter narrowly on an ethical edge- between studying monkeys who will give up Juicy Juice to look at dominant males and female hindquarters, one professor guages his success by his appearances on the Today show and Good Morning America.

The numbers Halpern tosses around are familiar- the terrifying expectations of teens today that they will be famous, the percentage of teens who think that they are uniquely talented and deserving of fame, the sad but true fact that lonely people are more likely to want fame, but he is such a good writer that none of it seems repetitive.

His obvious empathy for his subjects is clear here, and although in Braving Home, his writing was tinged with a little bit of awe for those wacky people living in a lava ruined town or on top of a coal fire, in this book there might be a tinge of sorrow. Ludicrous dedication to the idea of home, I think he kind of admired, but ludicrous dedication to Rod Steward, I think made him sad, as it did me.

Fun, quick, interesting read. Can't wait to read his next book. If I was a writer, I would want to be able to write like Halpern. Can't say anything better than that.

Quality: 9 Popularity: 9 Overall: 18

Fame Junkies

Craftivity, by Tsia Carson

I came across this one while looking for crafty fun YA books, and had to have a read of it. Great cover.

The projects were ok- definitely aimed at 'hipsters' what with painting Leonard Cohen's face on your dining room wall, or making crocheted skulls, etc etc. All very clever.

Actually, there wasn't a single project I would make or that inspired me. I don't know why I feel compelled to be so nice when I write these. It felt all very last year Brooklyn.

Craftivity

Quality: 3 Popularity: 8 Overall: 11

Damsels in Distress, by Joan Hess

Another Claire Malloy mystery from Joan Hess. Yes, I know- it's not YA. But hey, that's ok. Anyway, I remember distinctly that when I was a teenager, I read books that were not specifically targeted to me. Anyway, Claire's daughter Caron and her friend Inez are teenagers, so close enough.

To be fair, I read this because I was still feeling desperate to read something adult-ish, and I usually enjoy Joan Hess. I like the Maggody books a lot more than the Claire Malloys, and this was no exception. I read it, I like it, it was fine, but really wish she'd write another Arly Hanks in Maggody book.

This one was set in Farberville, of course, where a group sounding suspiciously like S.C.A. (Society of Creative Anachronists) but in the book was called A.R.S.E. (which, eh) was holding a festival, quirky characters, elaborate costumes, swordfighting, ballads, and murder. I kind of enjoyed it. It felt very familiar.

Damsels in Distress

Quality: 5 Popularity: 7 Overall: 12

Belles on Their Toes, by Ernestine and Frank Gilbreth

Oh, what a treat. This was a re-read, and I loved it. When I was 12 or so I think I read Cheaper by the Dozen and Belles on Their Toes over and over and over. About a year ago I found a yard sald copy of Cheaper By The Dozen (with awful movie-tie-in cover- Hillary Duff- spare me) and it went into serious bath-reading rotation, so I was really pleased to get ahold of Belles On Their Toes, the sequel.

After Frank Gilbreth dies, his wife Lillian Moller Gilbreth steps into his shoes running their motion-study business, and their 11 children (Anne, at 18, is the eldest) have to run the household while she tours Europe giving speeches trying to convince the world that a woman can run an engineering consulting firm in the 1920s.

I love these books, the detail and the sense of time and place- the slang, the wet smacks and ukeleles, the flappers, and Martha's big scene at the beach where she refuses to wear a 2 piece bathing dress anymore- I love the way the boys coach Jane into being a bobby-soxer rather than a vamp, I love the warmth of these stories. I cried like a baby at the end- literally sitting there howling. It is so lovely to read something that was clearly written to tell people a good story- a real, loving story- rather than all these freaking message-y youth in crisis stuff I've been reading.

Belles on Their Toes

Quality: 10 Popularity: 8 Overall: 18

Epic, by Conor Kostick

Cool book, set in a dystopian future where all conflict is solved through fights in games, and the whole world plays this game called Epic. One's wins and losses within that game translate into real-life status and possessions, and a small group of teens from a remote island shake up the balance of power by becoming dragon-slayers.

Interesting story, good premise, a little predictable, but fun. This book seems to be getting a lot of buzz but I'm not convinced that this is the best YA book I've read this year.

If you're not into gaming, you'll be pretty damn lost reading it- I have played my share of kobold killing druids, etc, so it wasn't complete babble to me- I think my problem with the book was that even though there have been days when I sat in a seriously messy room, having my sim clean up their considerably cleaner home, in order to max out my room score, I just can't buy that an entire world would let that happen and that a power structure - the Casiocracy- could be born of gaming.

Epic

Quality: 8 Popularity: 8 Overall: 16

Not Buying It, by Judith Levine

Lackluster book, I thought. I really wanted to love it (and I felt like I was cheating reading it- I've been choking down as much YA as I possibly can, and just felt desperate to read a book written for adults, but honestly, this was so entirely predictable that I could have written it for her.

The earnest debates over whether extra virgin olive oil is necessary, the longing to buy those interesting kevlar clothes in Brooklyn, how after a few months of not shopping, she started to feel serene....

It was dreadful and disgustingly bobo. I feel I should match the time I spent reading it doing some kind of penance.

Not Buying It

Quality: 4 Popularity: 6 Overall: 10

Masquerade, by Melissa de la Cruz

Masquerade is a tight, well-written sequel to Blue Bloods, de la Cruz's first book about the vampire elite, and the plot thickens in this follow-up.

Schuyler van Alen and Oliver Hazard-Perry travel to Venice to seek out Schuyler's grandfather, and he comes out of voluntary exile to return to New York to watch over her and to train her in the vampire arts. Her mixed blood is causing problems, though, and it is decided that she should take a human familiar to feed from even though she is only 16 (the age of consent is 18).

Texan Bliss and New York It girl Mimi continue to enjoy their new powers, but Mimi's obsession with Jack leads her to experiment witht he dark arts, and the book wraps up with an exciting dramatic scene.

While the first novel was such a delightful surprise, as I hadn't expected such intricate, complex characters and plotting from de la Cruz, (her Au Pair series isn't nearly as good as these), the sequel makes me feel that Blue Bloods wasn't a fluke- this is good stuff. Can't wait for the next one!

Quality: 9 Popularity: 9 Overall: 18

Masquerade

Life As We Knew It, by Susan Beth Pfeffer

A little light reading!

No, this was fantastic- and anxiety-feeding! At first, 16 year old Miranda's diary entries hardly mention the collision. Sure, astronomers are warning that a comet will hit the moon, and some are saying that it could bring severe disruptions to life on earth, but most people aren't panicking.

The collision knocks the moon off its orbit, causing horrible tsunamis, earthquakes, volcanos, etc. on Earth. Now, I love a natural disaster movie, so this scenario was right up my alley, but the way Pfeiffer turned a huge-scale end-of -the-world story into a tight, claustrophobic, hopeful family story was amazing. That's a good trick, right there.

Very well written, plausible, realistic, and somehow elegiacal and offering hope all at once, this was a solid, good book.

Life as we knew it

Quality: 9 Popularity: 7 Overall: 16

How I Live Now, by Meg Rosoff

New York anorexic Daisy is sent to England to stay with her Aunt Penn and her cousins. Shortly after her arrival, an (ominous but unspecified) act of international terrorism makes it neccessary for Aunt Penn (a vague but unspecified politican /advisor /academic?) to go to Oslo. After she leaves, WWIII breaks out, serious asymmetrical warfare, and in the ensuing chaos, Daisy and her cousins are left alone at their farm for a time.

Their struggle to survive without adults is interesting, but the most interesting part of the book was their struggle to get news- the (vague and unspecified) terrorists have (maybe) destroyed the telecommunications infrastructure, and news is just gossip. The government is planting stories (the smallpox) and no one can trust any information.

Daisy and her cousin Edmond fall in love, and begin a passionate romance before they are separated by the soldiers who eventualy commandeer the farm, and all in all it is a confusing, disturbing, wild ride of a book.

The vagueness was frustrating for me, although I can see that stylistically, it added to the anxiety of the book- the swirling rumors and the hinted terrorism gave an almost sickening feeling to the book. Strong book.

How I Live Now

Quality: 8 Popularity:7 Overall: 15

First Daughter: Extreme American Makeover, by Mitali Perkins

Good book! I've been reading some good stuff lately. A lucky run.

Sameera, nicknamed Sparrow, was adopted as a Pakistani infant by an American diplomat and his wife. Fast forward, and he's a Republican candidate for President. Sparrow leaves her European boarding school and her friends to come 'home' to be a part of his campaign. Sparrow is promptly thrust into the political spotlight, with ugly headlines appearing above photos of her and her father like "Is Righton soft on Muslims?"

A campaign aide steps in, offering assistance- an American makeover, starting with her name. Anxious to assist, Sparrow becomes Sammy, a designer-wearing perky girl, with a fake blog written by staffers. In a satisfying twist that leant depth to what could have been a cardboard baddie, the aide who orchestrates the makeover had been a political daughter herself who had been crucified in the press (think Chelsea Clinton).

Sparrow's conflicts are well presented- she wants her father to succeed, and as much as she wants her mother to go back to looking like the fair-trade policy wonk that she is, she understands that appearances count in a modern election, and that Mom will probably stay blond and exfoliated if she becomes First Lady. Sparrow wants to do her part, but to have a life at the same time.

Exerpts from Sparrow's own real blog, and the comments her friends leave are a great counterpoint to the fake Sammy's blog, and when Sparrow begins to wear salwar kameez to preserve her anonymity in DC, the casual racism she encounters is enraging. It was such a well written book, and this character was a delight- thoughtful, interesting, and interested in the world around her.

The only thing that seemed implausable was that her parents were Republicans. I mean, really?

Quality: 10 Popularity: 7 Overall: 17
First Daughter: Extreme American Makeover

The Girls, by Amy Goodman Koss

Girls' senseless cruelty is nicely drawn here.

5 girls, a clique of friends. Maya, Brianna, Renee, Darcy, and Candace. One morning, Candace decides Maya is out.

The narraration shifts from girl to girl, from Maya's lonely agony and bewilderment to Brianna's consciousness of her own weakness and Renee's social insecurity, Darcy's sick and submissive relationship with Candace, and Candace's own unhappiness and need to prove her power. Each girl's voice was unique, and each was very believable.

This book perfectly captured the almost desperate need to belong in middle school, and the pain of social ostracism.

I think the best evidence I can find of why I feel the voices are so authentic is to point to "A Kid's Review" on Amazon

"This is one of the most best book I have ever read. It is about 5 girls named Maya, Ren'ee, Darcey, Brianna, and Candance. Candance is the main member of the group and Darcey is her best friend and the other girl are the more less important one,s. Candace starts to kik out Maya for no reason. Then she kiks out Brianna too! Ren'ee starts to get comfused because they did not do anything. She trys to think what to do but what could she do? If you would like to find out what she does and what happens read the book and it will give you the answer. "
I think that a book making a child want to try "to think what to do" means that that child believed in the authenticity of those voices. I thought it was a very good book(and at a very low-level reading level, which seems hard to pull off.

The Girls

Quality: 9 Popularity: 8 Overall: 17

Blue Bloods, by Melissa de la Cruz

Fantastic YA book!

I thought it had great writing, well developed characters, a great sense of place and history (set among old New York city families - old as in Dutch- but set in the present), and a kind of style and verve that reads (to me) as a kind of cross between the goth-y vampire glamour and shadows of Twilight and the glitzy clubbing richkids scene of Gossip Girl. I thought it was a delicious book in every way.

From ancient Egypt to modern day Manhattan, the Blue Bloods have always ruled. I thought the book was surprisingly readable on a political level, too, with the Blue Bloods (the vampires) aided by the sycophantic upper middle class ( the Conduits) to live off the blood of the poor.

Schuyler is a great heroine, and the spattering of colonial American history (Roanoke colony, the history society, etc) was fun. I appreciate that de la Cruz didn't condescend to her readers- she left enough information that it would be tempting to find out more about 'what really happened' and it would be easy to find. Also, the characters showed familiarity with the world, appreciation for the arts, and a sophisticated worldview (well, they're ancient vampires, after all!) but that is refreshing after YA book after YA book that writes about teenagers as if they live on some desert island with only pop or punk (that depends on how 'deep' the book is) music, a tv, a cell phone, and some annoying/distressing parents and siblings. I love a book that mentions opera and exhibits at the Met.

Blue Bloods

Quality: 10 Popularity: 9 Overall: 19