The Book: The Year of Magical Thinking, by Joan Didion

The Story: This book covers the full year after the author’s husband dies during dinner of a heart condition.  During the same time, their daughter is being scooted around from ICU to hospital to ICU because she is having serious, serious issues after what seemed to be just the ordinary flu.

Something Joan Didion keeps coming back to is the idea of, “You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends.”  She is totally blindsided by all of this and the book really covers her journey through that grief of losing a husband while meanwhile trying to focus on getting her daughter well again. Through her grief, so many memories of she and her husband’s early life together come out- way important things and just little moments.

What I Thought: I had no idea what this book was about when I bought it or I probably would have left it on the shelf. Once I started reading though, I had to just kind of face the fear it brought to my heart and just get through it.  I finished it in less than a day, but it reminded me of when the kid on Matilda had to eat that whole big cake…. doing something because you feel like you have to and doing it because you want to just feel different.

Anyway, as far as writing goes, I think that this was well written, although a little cold.  I kind of expected, at some point, for the author to really just shake her fist at God or go a little bit nuts, but she was so cool and collected.  I know that everyone deals with stuff like this differently, and this only documents the first year.  I am sure that having to deal with her daughter at the same time really put her grieving process on hold.  I guess I felt like the book was supposed to be this book about her journey, but then why was it riddled with stuff from textbooks and name-dropping famous people like crazy? Meh, it just didn’t go together for me.

For some reason, the part that struck me right in my gut was how the author couldn’t make herself get rid of her husband’s shoes because she thought he’d need them “when he comes back.”  This was maybe the most emotive that she got during the whole book, and it really did have me in tears.

Conclusion: This will make you hug your loved ones a little bit tighter after you read it.

The Book: The Idiot Girls’ Action Adventure Club: True Tales from a Magnificent and Clumsy Life, by Laurie Notaro

The Story: There isn’t really a story here, so much as a collection of essays (and that is to intellectual a word… I don’t know what to call them) about random stuff happening in this woman’s life.  From what I can figure out, I’m pretty sure that these were previously published as articles that she writes for some newspaper.

Anyway.

Funny little pieces about normal life stuff.  Going to a high school reunion.  Taking her grandpa shopping.  Scraping drunk friends off the sidewalk.  Putting together an office in her house.  Teaching her mom about the internet.

What I Thought: When I started this book, I was laughing out loud.  No, not just laughing out loud… that’s not accurate.  I was laughing til I cried.  Snorting.  I thought it was hilarious.  It really IS hilarious.  The parts about her mom and her grandparents got me every time.  So, so funny.

However, at some point it dawned on me that she’s not 22 or even in her 20’s or 30’s.  This is a woman in her 40’s.  And that makes it much less funny.  It makes it almost sad.  I don’t know why but searching for your drunk friend on a city street has the possibility of being funny when you’re, I don’t know, 25.  By 45? It just seems pathetic.

I still liked it, but by the end I just wanted her to move and get new friends and go to counseling or something.

I have been in  a real book rut- starting books and sitting them down, not able to focus.  This book kept me reading because the little chapters were quick and easy to get through.

Conclusion: If you are a woman, I’d say this will probably crack you up.  Mostly if you are kind of nerdy or misfity or a drunk.  It’s worth the read, but don’t expect too much substance.