It's Hard Not to Hate You - by Valerie Frankel

It's hard not to love this book and to love Valerie after reading it.  Heck, I think I love myself a little more for reading it.  To say that I couldn't put it down would be an understatement.  I LOVED IT!  From the first chapter this book resonated so honestly with me that I felt like I could be reading my own story. 

For the record, unlike most of her other books, this is a memoir, a story of Valerie's life as a writer, a mother, a wife, but most of all a hater of the worst kind.  It began for her in 6th grade when she was shunned by her friends, laughed at in school and generally mistreated.  She decided to put on her "poker face" and not let the world see how much it got to her.  She let her hate fester and grow, but at some point it had to get out.

In her 40's after working years as a writer, losing her first husband to cancer in his 30's, leaving her with 2 small children and remarrying, she finds that she's inherited a rare genetic predisposition to cancer.  Luckily, her tumors were pre-cancerous, but this finding set her on a journey to discover a few things about herself.  She was angry at life, angry at everything, and hated everyone.  She had to learn how to let it out and calm down.  Over the course of a year, her discussions with a psychic, a Buddhist monk and Joan Rivers finally allow her to find a calmer version of herself.  She learned how to express her needs rather than just standing by and letting things happen around her (or not happen). 

"I'd ask you to please......" Read This Book.

It's Hard Not to Hate You

*I received a free promotional copy of this book for the promise of doing a review.

The Might Queens of Freeville: A Mother, A Daughter & The Town that Raised Thme , by Amy Dickinson

The Mighty Queens of Freeville: A Mother, a Daughter, and the Town That Raised Them is the memoir of Amy Dickinson, the writer selected to replace Ann Landers.  This book is her story to some degree.  It's by no means a biography but more of stories of her life.  Each chapter is written around a theme and usually shares multiple small stories and one major one along the theme that ties them all together.

While the subtitle declares the book to be about "A Mother, A Daughter, and the Town that Raised them", I really wanted more of "the town that raised them".  I could see the stories as they were being woven together into a great movie, and I could also see someone coming along and fleshing out the stories of the smaller characters to make for a great little television series.

Amy comes from a long line of strong women in a small town.  Women, who for many generations have been used to going it alone. To the extent that the one aunt she has who got married and stayed married to her death was seen as an anomaly.  After years of marriage, Amy found herself returning back home to Freeville, a single mother.  By what seems like happenstance, but is closer to reality than what the movies want us to believe, Amy stumbles from one job to another and simply by knowing the right person gets her foot in the door to apply for the job as the countries most read advice columnist.  If knowing the right person was what got her foot in the door, giving the right answers was what got her the right job.  Amy shares the ups and downs of her life and what we learn through it is that she's just a normal woman from a small town, with lots of common sense that she inherited from all the other women in her life.

Faith: A Novel by Jennifer Haigh

I was sent an advanced reader copy of this book, for review purposes, by the Amazon Vine program.

I read early reviews of this book comparing it to the books of Jodi Piccoult, since I really enjoy her books, I thought I might also enjoy this one and I was right.  Although, it was a little slow going in the second and third chapter, once she started getting to the meat of the story, it all came together and really kept me intrigued and wanting to read more.

"Faith: A Novel" delves into the story behind the priest molestation scandal of the early 2000's.  This is the story of Father Arthur, one of the many priests who found himself ousted from his post after an accusation that he molested a child.  The story is told by his sister, Sheila, the one member of his family who opted out of their Catholic faith and is considered somewhat of the black sheep.  Despite this, her older brother, the priest, never turned his back on her and they stayed close.  Through the course of the book, Sheila shares what she learned about her own family, a family she really knew little of, in the months following the accusation.  While she chooses to stand by Arthur faithfully, her brother Mike instantly chooses to believe the allegations.  The truth is much deeper than any could know and Sheila finally uncovers it as she learns more and more about her own family.

There is always more to any story than meets the eye, and much like the books by Jodi Piccoult, that's what Haigh is getting at in this book.  While the press focused on the top layer of the story, this book examines the "what if" behind the stories.  While this book is fiction, it does make me wonder more about the stories of those affected by this scandal, on both sides of the story.  This is the story of a family changed forever, and of a faith changed forever.
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Radio Shangri-La by Lisa Napoli

It's a true sign of a good book when you are still thinking about it a week after finishing it (while halfway into another book). I've wanted to write a review for a while but I've had a really hard time processing my thoughts on this book to get them into words and I wanted to say a little more than "I really liked this book".

From the very start, "Radio Shangri-La" felt a bit like "Eat, Pray, Love", with that vibe of journeying across the world to find ones own self.  Lisa's journey is a bit different and in some ways maybe not as profound as Elizabeth Gilbert's, but at the same time just as important.

The subtitle of the book is "What I Learned in the Bhutan, the Happiest Kingdom on Earth", and it is not just what she learned about herself that makes this such a good book and so interesting a story. As much, if not moreso, it's what she learned about Bhutan itself, and its inhabitants. 

Through a strange twist of fate meeting, radio reporter, Lisa Napoli gets an offer to go to Bhutan and help the Kingdom start their first radio station.  This is a Kingdom that rarely allows outsiders and when they do they charge a pretty steep travel surcharge.  Until the mid-90's, the people there did not even have television.  A one month trip to volunteer becomes several trips over the course of a couple of years and through her trips and her eyes we watch two parallel evolutions.  We see how Lisa changes how she looks at herself and at life in general, and we see how the people of Bhutan change their outlook on life.  Perhaps it is seeing possibilities that keep one from being happy?

Unlike Elizabeth Gilbert in "Eat, Pray, Love", Lisa didn't embark on this journey as a means of self-discovery or looking to change herself.  It was just an opportunity that fell in her lap and bored with the status quo she decided to accept the opportunity, with little knowledge of what she would find when she got to there.  In the end, I think that's what really seperates this book from the other.  While Gilbert's book is internal, Napoli's is external.  This book is less about her and more about others.  However you choose to look at it, I think it's a great book, not only interesting in the story but interesting in an informative way of learning about a culture you've rarely, if ever, heard of.

I was sent a free copy of this book from Read It Forward, which is an online service that provides advance reader copies of various books (free) with the idea that when you are finished, you pass it on.  I already know who this book is going to.