Love The One You're With by Emily Giffin

So, first off, I just realized that her name is Emily Giffin, not Griffin, so for the mistakes in my last posts, I apologize. Now on to my review of this book. Wow. I didn't expect this book to be this good.

I liked Something Borrowed, Something Blue, and even that other book she did that I just read about the doctor and his wife and the little boy and Carol... You know the book? Well, Carol makes her cameo here. She is a minor character in a book that fills out the minor character in that book.

Can I just reveal that I related to this book to the point that I was talking out loud to myself and blushing hard core because I understood very much what the main character was going through. She was married to a great man, but in love with a man in her past, a man she had an intense love for, and though things were touch and go with their relationship, there was something she had to find out, regardless of everything else that was going on in her life. There was one particular passage that really struck me, and against my better judgement, because I know this will come back to haunt me one day because everything I have ever posted has, I am going to post it, if only to take it out of my head:

                Time passes, but neither of us speaks, as Leo’s hand completely covers mine. The weight and warmth of it is the same as it was as the diner, the day all of this began, but the gesture feels completely different. This contact is not incidental to a conversation. It is the conversation. It is also an invitation. An invitation I accept with a languid turn of my wrist until my palm is up, facing his, and we are officially holding hands. I tell myself that it is the most innocent of gestures. Grade-school crushes hold hands. Parents and children hold hands. Friends hold hands.

                But not like this. Never like this.

                I listen to the sound of Leo breathing, his face close to mine, as our fingers interlock, unlace, rearrange. And we fly east that way, eventually drifting off, suspended in the sky, in time, together. 

So here it is. I offer this section to you in an attempt to get you to read this book, to love it as much as I almost loved it. There were parts that I wanted to be different, but isn't that the way with life? If only some small little thing were changed, it could could all turn out differently. 

Anyway, this book it making the trip to my sister's apartment, and hopefully back here, so I can guard what I have found and think about what has been excavated.  Read it and enjoy it. Then, safely store up what you got from it. 

Drama is Her Middle Name

I recently joined a book club. This was the selection chosen, with the one merit that there were enough copies for each of the members and it was free due to Wendy Williams doing a book signing/promotion at a college where one of the group members has a child in attendance. The book was okay. It wasn't super exciting, but it was an okay enough read. I think it felt like the beginning of a story, not enough for an entire book, but it was interesting. I was able to come up with several questions for discussion, but I realize that many of the questions were about the necessity of all the characters that were given prominent roles and the possibility of the constant brand name dropping becoming distracting. I would not recommend this book to anyone, particularly not for a book club, but I am glad to say that I have finished it so we can move on to our next selection.

Heart of the Matter

I finished this book last night. It is written by Emily Giffin, the same author who wrote Something Borrowed and Something Blue. I wasn't sure if it would be as good, but there are moments where Dexter and Rachel are mentioned and I really enjoyed those, until I became fully involved with the two main characters - Tessa and Valerie. Both women run in the same circles, mainly due to their children, but their lives become more involved when Valerie's son, Charlie, has an accident, and is treated by Tessa's husband, Nick. Each chapter is from a different point of view, alternative from Tessa to Valerie. I related more to Valerie, but I didn't dislike Tessa. It is strange how you know both women and feel such a connection to them as their stories become more and more intertwined. I really enjoyed the book, although I was heartbroken at times and am still ambivalent about the ending. I am saving this book for my sister who loved Emily's first two novels. I think she will continue to enjoy these books.

I Just Want My Pants Back

I finished this book on the beach, too. It has no easy resolutions, no clean ending, no real summation. It is a journey that you take with the main character as he takes drugs and drinks and follows his friends through the city. He grows up a bit as he wanders through his life, just as any of us do as we move through life on a daily basis. This book is a meandering walk through a life that I am glad I don't have and desperately want sometimes, the life of an underachiever living in the city, just having fun. I felt a part of this book, felt as though I was a bit different after finishing it, the mark of a good book, I believe. I am passing it on to my friend, K, when she finally is settled in a new apartment in the UK. It is good enough to pay the shipping on.

The Scandalous Summer of Sissy LeBlanc

I was blessed to be able to take a mini-vacation this weekend. Because it was cold and I was at the beach, much of my time was spent reading. I brought this book with me, not sure if it was going to be something I would enjoy or one that I would just drop off in the room for the next visitor or the maid. Fortunately, it was a good read. The book focused on Sissy LeBlanc, a married woman and essentially her youth and one summer that changed her life.

There were moments when I thought this was going to be a Harlequin novel at certain points from the purple prose that riddled a few pages, but it really wasn't. It was a coming of age story, mostly based in the 1950's, but with a few detours here and there. The feeling I got from the book was that of a person living a too small life who is finally able to burst out of it and live. I needed to read it when I did. I left it in the hallway so that someone else can pick it up. It was good enough to pass on.

Cleaving by Julie Powell

I just finished this book, and despite it being late, I thought I should write about it. It took me several months to read this book. Initially, it was not interesting. I did not like reading about the butchery that Powell was learning about and finding out about the cuts of meat, particularly when she went into some vary gross details about butchering a pig, the only type of meat mentioned in the book that I actually do eat. I trudged through because I knew that I love Julie and Julia and I had to believe that something redeeming could come out of this novel as well. From the butchery, there came something else: details about a long-term affair Powell was having with a man she knew from college and the revelation that her husband was also dating someone else. As Powell attempts to work through her marriage, she has sex with various men and leaves her husband to travel the world and learn about meat.

I caught myself at one point wanting Powell to sleep with her guide in Africa, forgetting for a moment that she is married. When I remembered, I felt bad for even thinking such a thing. Powell stated that she felt she deserved the attempted rape just after a session making out with the guide. I don't agree with that at all, but I feel like something isn't right. This book just made me sad. I don't understand the ending either. As she and her husband cry with one another, they talk about how her meeting with her lover can be okay and, finally, that he is seeing his girlfriend again. I immediately personalized this and thought about how horrible it must be to have a relationship like that. I know that it can sometimes seem like the only way to end a relationship is to cheat, but with the relationship that Powell portrayed, how can her relationship be on that kind of ground. Perhaps I am not a good one to judge, as my heart still hurts when I think about reading that horrible book, something by Ngugi Wa Thiong'o, I think, about a man with many wives, and I still can't wrap my head around the thought of being able to love two people at one time. My heart doesn't work just that way. All of this aside, I want to know what is next for Powell and her husband. I want it to be happier because I can't accept things the way this book left it. She may say she is okay now, but I am not. 

Teach Me

I read this book and my first thought was that it should be required reading for student teachers or those going through the program in college. It is not a feel good book. It is raw and gritty and shows how messed up a relationship with someone in power can really make you or make the student for that matter. I think this book is great. It is strange and there are parts that I think were put in the book in an attempt to be artistic, and those sections don't always totally work, but there are parts that do work. I think it is a book to read, but it is more for an adult than for a teen, even though the subject matter seems relevant to a teen.