Category Archives: Reading

RAS 1: Angry Housewives Eating Bon Bons — Lorna Landvik

Reading, Series, , ,

I finished my first Read a Shelf (hereafter to be known as RAS) book at around 3 in the morning. I started it Friday, the day I wrote the blog post.

Angry Housewives Eating Bon bonsI bought Angry Housewives Eating Bon Bons at a Barnes and Noble many years ago probably because I was angry about something and because it was about a book group. I’d been thinking about trying my hand at writing a book about a book group so I wanted to see what my competition was like. It was also 20% off, according to a big red sticker that was still on the book when I began reading it on Friday I had the book on my “to read” shelf for a long time and eventually it found itself to my, “heck, I’ll never get to that shelf” shelf. The book is so old it is browning around the edges.

I think I avoided reading it because of the word “bon bons” in the title. Also I was watching Desperate Housewives at the same time and maybe I figured too many angry and desperate housewives might make me the same. (although I was working part time — it was from home).

So about the book. It was good. I was completely caught up in the lives of Kari, Faith, Audrey, Merit and Slip. Ms Landvik fleshed out their characters very well. Not so much the males in the book; except for a neighbor, Grant, and Faith’s son Beau, males were more or less one-sided, which makes sense, in a way. And the “bon bons” made sense after one of the husbands remarked that he thought the book group was just a bunch of angry housewives sitting around eating bon bons. The women liked that so much they called themselves AHEB.

The book mentioned three places with which I am very familiar, which I found interesting and put a smile on my face.

  • One of the AHEB’s daughters attends Oberlin College (where my son goes and a place I adore).
  • At a wedding reception in Washington, DC another AHEB shares a table with a developer who claims to have built most of the houses in Bethesda (where I live).
  • Finally one of the children of a third AHEB ends up living in Eau Claire, Wisconsin (a town just south of Chetek — when we got to Eau Claire we knew we were nearly at Grandma and Grandpa’s house).

The book was predictable, but that’s okay. I don’t really mind guessing what is going to happen in a story I am reading. The only complaint I have about the book is the author’s use of clichés and slang when unnecessary. Yes, the book began in 1968 but the only slang that should have been used is in conversation, not narrative. I admit this is a pet peeve of mine — and maybe it is something I need to get over.

Stats: 404 pages (paperback). Started May 8, finished May 12, 2015.

Read a Shelf

Reading

Please note: I created a page for this here. Because it is a thing. Please go to the page I created for updates.

I recently ran across a blog post in which a woman has begun to read a shelf of books in her home. She got the idea from a book called, The Shelf: From LEQ to LES: Adventures in Extreme Reading by Phyllis Rose.

I’m always saying I need to read the books I have in my house before buying another one. I took a sabbatical from my book group to do just that, but failed miserably.

We have at least 8 bookcases in the house, most filled with many unread books so I am going to see if I can read the books I have not already read that sit on the top shelf of one of my living room bookshelves. The only exceptions are books that I’d planned on throwing away, unread, anyway. Also I do not have to read non-fiction or scientific books that might have ended up on the shelves. One more exception — if a book is on the shelf and is part of a series and I have not read the book just before that book in a series, I get a pass on that one until I read the book before it. (Jasper Fforde’s Something Rotten, for instance. I read the first book in the series and thought this was the second, but it was the third. I never got around to reading the second).

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The top shelf

The books are:

So, wish me luck — I will need it with Joyce, Franklin, the Lambs and Longfellow…

Dear Rob Lowe;

People, Reading,

I recently finished listening to your Stories I Only Tell My Friends audio book. I downloaded it from Audible about a year ago to listen to on a long car ride after hearing (and sobbing) as you read from your other book, Love Life, about sending your son off to college. I know the feeling.

If I could travel into the past and tell my younger self that I was going to read/listen to a book written by Rob Lowe, that younger self would laugh and say, “You have got to be kidding! Rob Lowe? That scumbag?”

That younger self was quite judgmental and unforgiving. That younger self had only seen you in a couple of films and wrote you off as just another pretty-boy actor. At one point that younger self grew up and realized that people make mistakes.

I first saw you on an episode of Brothers and Sisters and tuned in for more episodes. Then I saw you on Parks and Recreation and realized you could be really funny. It was not until I binge watched The West Wing that I realized I liked your acting. A lot.

So, back to your book. For the most part I found it highly entertaining and interesting. I really loved the first half of the book, especially your yearly years — before LA. But I also liked the early LA years, and the part about filming the Outsiders. The last half of the book, however, was too name-droppy for me. At one point in the book you chastised the common man/woman for objectifying you, then you write about your exploits with several women and drop famous names right and left. Now who’s objectifying?

The other problem I had with the second half of the book — more like the last quarter of the book, is that you glossed over the video-tape scandal (even made excuses, blaming the person who let the under-age woman into the club). Until I read that in your book, I’d decided you’d learned your lesson, grown up and I was on my way to becoming a fan of your acting/writing.

I am not so sure now. I still might read Love Life because of the way you so beautifully wrote of your emotions about sending your son off to college. I’ll still watch you in films and on TV, but I guess I feel a little cheated that you did not really own up to some of your mistakes. You are so brutally honest in most of the book, but when it comes to your real fuck-ups, I am not sure you were so honest.