bookishjen Book Marks, Uncategorized

Book Marks

Why novels about time travel are so hot now.

A new startup proposes influencer-driven publishing.

Why age-restricted library cards are a liability.

Moms for Liberty group hit with IRS complaint probing nonprofit status.

Authors urge AI companies to pay them for using their work.

bookishjen 1970s, Book Reviews, Books, Celebrities, Children, Fame, Family, Fiction, Jesica Anya Blau, Marriage, Mary Jane, Music, Sex, Uncategorized

Book Review: Mary Jane by Jessica Anya Blau

It is the summer of 1975 and Mary Jane is 14 years old. She lives with her lawyer father and homemaker mother in an upscale Baltimore neighborhood. Shy, naïve, and lacking a huge group of friends, Mary Jane’s life consists of going to her parents upper crust country Waspy country club, attending church services and singing in the choir, listening to Broadway show tunes (rock and roll is verboten), and helping her mother make the nightly dinner. But Mary Jane’s life is about to go through a huge transformation in some major ways in Jessica Anya Blau’s superb novel Mary Jane.

Mary Jane procures a job acting as a nanny for the Dr. and Mrs. Cone’s daughter, Izzy. Because Dr. Cone is a psychiatrist and he and his family live in the neighborhood, Mary Jane’s mother assumes they are the “right people” so she initially has no problems with Mary Jane’s new job.

But the Cones couldn’t be any different the Mary Jane’s family. Whereas Mary Jane has grown up in a household with with rigid ideas and rules, the Cone family is free-spirited, raucous, and quite sloppy. Dr. Cone works from home, and though Mrs. Cone is a homemaker she doesn’t do a whole lot of homemaking. She doesn’t cook, the house is cluttered, and the refrigerator is filled with food that has seen better days. However, Mrs. Cone is kind, friendly, open-minded, and like her husband, clearly loves her daughter, Izzy. The Cone family makes Mary Jane feel completely welcome from the moment she enters their house.

The Cones are about to have some special guests at their house, Jimmy and Sheba. Jimmy is a mega rock star and Sheba is an actress who once had a top-rated TV show. Jimmy is a drug addict, and he and Sheba are hoping Dr. Cone can help Jimmy with his addiction and get back on the right path even though the 1970s was a time of debauchery. Sex, drugs, and rock and roll were truly a thing.

Though Mary Jane is sheltered, she is aware of Jimmy and Sheba and how famous they are. And she’s about to get a glimpse behind the curtain of glitter and glamour that is celebrity. She learns about what it’s like to deal with addiction, the intricacies of marriage (both Jimmy and Sheba’s and the Cones), and how to take care of a rambunctious, precocious, and clingy five-year-old like Izzy.

Mary Jane is also gets more acquainted with rock and roll, and she is even asked to sing along with Jimmy and Sheba, and they are impressed with her vocal talents. Despite being a bit nerdy, everyone is taken by Mary Jane. She brings some semblance of normalcy to the the lives of the Cones and Jimmy and Sheba. Mary Jane is devoted to Izzy. She also is a whiz in the kitchen, using her mom’s recipes to feed everyone.

Mary Jane continues to get an education while working for the Cones. Her world is changing from a strict black and white to a kaleidoscope of color. She begins to realize how rigid her home life is and is appalled over her parents thinly veiled anti-Semitism (Dr. Cone is Jewish) and racism (Mary Jane’s mom flips when her daughter is photographed with the gang at a record store in predominantly black neighborhood and it ends up in the local newspaper).

But Mary Jane also sees that just because Jimmy, Sheba, and the Cones aren’t totally square like her mom and dad doesn’t mean they are perfect as Jimmy falls off the wagon, adulterous acts are committed, and marriages aren’t always “until death do us part.” And maybe Mary Jane’s mother will prove to be not such a stick in the mud after all.

I absolutely loved this book. I found the characters richly drawn and as someone who is of Izzy’s generation, Generation X, I completely recognized the time and place of the mid 1970s, which Blau captures with utter perfection. Mary Jane was a character I rooted for, smart and sensible, but so willing to learn about different worlds. I also appreciated how Blau didn’t turn Mary Jane’s story into a cliché, getting hooked on drugs or getting seduced by either Jimmy or Dr. Cone. Mary Jane is a wonderfully original and entertaining coming-of-age story.

bookishjen Alissa Quart, Books, Bootstrapped, Non-Fiction, Politics, Relationships, Self-Made, Social/Economic Justice, Uncategorized

Book Review: Bootstrapped-Liberating Ourselves from the American Dream by Alissa Quart

One of my favorite TikTok accounts is a man whose account has a running theme that “self-made is a toxic myth.” He focuses mostly on singers and musicians who come from wealth and privilege (Taylor Swift and The Strokes come to mind), and how that wealth and privilege helped them gain a foothold in the cutthroat and highly competitive music industry. He doesn’t deny their talent and work ethic. But he realizes having parents with money, connections, and advantages helped these singers and musicians attain success. Even artists who weren’t flush with cash and connections benefitted from a supportive community like the iconic band Nirvana.

What am I getting at? Well, in other words, nobody is totally self-made, American rugged individualism is total bupkis, and we all benefit from having a sense of community, support, and a safety net.

And this idea of being self-made and picking oneself up by one’s bootstraps is thoroughly investigated in Alissa Quart’s eye-opening and impactful book Bootstrapped: Liberating Ourselves from the American Dream.

The idea of American idea of being self-made. Quart gives us examples of hyper individualism and total self-efficiency naming people like Laura Ingalls Wilder for creating “A pioneer-Western-self-creation-fantasy,” the Horatio Alger stories, and the likes of Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Ayn Rand.

Interestingly enough, if you dig deeper into those people you will find out many of them benefitted from the government and the largesse of other people. Pioneer families like the Ingalls benefitted from 1862’s Homestead Act, which gave 160 acres of land to citizens that they could nurture and live on. Emerson grew up with considerable wealth and Thoreau often depended on the generosity of others. And though Rand thought of Social Security as some type of welfare (even though we pay into our entire working lives), she had no qualms about taking Social Security in her latter years.

However, those truths are often buried under a load of myth, and I must admit it did open my eyes quite a bit. We all benefit from a collective of some type of community both public and private. The trick now is to get Americans to understand how we benefit from a sense of a supportive society for all of its citizens. And Quart gives us examples of people who are trying to do things that help others thrive.

One such group of people are the Patriotic Millionaires. Patriotic Millionaires actually want to be taxed more (yes, these people exist). And they want their taxes to go to things that actually benefit all Americans, not just themselves.

Quart also mentions various grassroots organizing that is occurring all through out the United States that benefit communities and individuals. But she also mentions we shouldn’t live in world where people have to rely on GoFundMe to pay for their cancer treatments or go through countless hoops just to get food stamps. Quart also talks of how the Covid 19 pandemic really made us look at ourselves as a sense of community in such a critical time. It was a time where we relied so much on essential workers like those in healthcare or those working at the grocery stores, as delivery drivers, and teachers educating our children through Zoom. But sadly, there were also vile people flipping out when they were asked to wear a mask while shopping at Wal-Mart.

Bootstrapped is a book that focuses on a very fraught concept and is one that should inspire conversation and perhaps some change in this idea that relying on others is a bad thing. As Prince one sang, “Dearly beloved. We are gathered here today, to get through this thing called ‘life’.”

bookishjen Book Reviews, Books, Bookworm, Chick Lit, Fiction, I Read It So You Don't Have To, Marriage, Relationships, Robin Yeatman, Uncategorized

I Read It So You Don’t Have To: Bookworm by Robin Yeatman

When I came across Robin Yeatman’s novel Bookworm at my local library, I thought I had come across my ideal book, a story about a woman who escapes into the world of books when real life isn’t so great. Bookworm turned out to be this book.

Meet our protagonist Victoria. She works a few days a week as a massage therapist at a local spa. She sees her job as a dead-end, almost beneath her, but doesn’t have the ambition to find a new job.

But why should she? Victoria is married to Eric, a prosperous high-powered attorney who is currently trying to make partner at his firm. He’s totally stressed out, and of course, brings his stress home.

As Bookworm begins, Victoria and Eric have hit a rough patch in their marriage. The two (not) love birds are totally unsuited for each other. In fact, their marriage seems more like it was arranged by Victoria’s in-laws and her hyper-careerist, status-seeking parents.

To escape the daily grind of her loveless marriage and her crappy job, Victoria loses herself in books. While at one of her favorite cafes, she notices a handsome man reading the same book she is, incidentally a book she hates. Victoria decides right then and there that this fellow reader is her soulmate. She must be with him.

However, there is one thing standing in her way. That’s right, her husband Eric. Victoria goes into the most nefarious areas of her mind and fantasizes about Eric’s deadly demise. She even messes with Eric’s car. And even though Eric could have died in a car crash, he doesn’t quite figure out Victoria wants him dead. Despite being a highly-educated lawyer, Eric doesn’t come across as very bright.

Throughout all of this, Victoria fantasizes about the man she saw at the care. She even has weird nocturnal trysts with him through some oddball astral projection. Huh?

However, Victoria’s fantasies about this mystery man come to fruition when she has a chance meeting with him. The man in question is named Luke, and he is a woodworker with his own shop. Victoria and Luke get to know each other, and she even buys a huge book shelf from him thinking Eric won’t notice. Victoria and Luke soon start a clandestine affair, Victoria telling Luke that she’s going through a divorce. Of course, Victoria is still married to Eric. And instead of asking Eric for a divorce, she is imagining him suffering some awful death. She definitely wants him dead after gets proof Eric might be having an affair with her ditzy, breast-implanted friend, Holly.

Will Victoria divorce Eric? Will Eric fall into a volcano? Will Victoria and Luke end up being a true-blue couple?

Egad, who cares? I sure don’t. While reading Bookworm, I couldn’t give damn about Victoria and her predicament. I’m all for flawed characters, but Victoria is such a drip. She’s not the kind of protagonist you can root for. Victoria has all the depth of a kiddie pool and is very bitchy and judgmental towards others when it came to their looks. I got rather peeved of Victoria making rude observations about uni-boobs, dandruff in people’s hair, pilled clothing, and if I read about Eric’s puffy nipples one more time, I was going to projectile vomit.

Speaking of Eric, when it comes to him and Victoria, these two people didn’t even seem to like each other let alone love each other. Marriages often hit rocky moments and some are better off ending, but Victoria and Eric should have never made a pit stop at the Chapel of Love.

As for Victoria’s new love with Luke? I’m sure Victoria would have grown bored of him, find him riddled with too many faults, and would have pondered his demise.

Bookworm just couldn’t make up its mind if it was chick lit, a dark comedy, or a combo platter of the two. No matter what, it’s just not well written enough for me to give a shit. Unfortunately, Bookworm is more worm than book.