Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns) by Mindy Kaling

Dear Mindy,

Can we be BFF's? We can have sleepovers and watch television reruns all night. We can not go for runs together. We'll gossip about boys all night. It will be glorious.

Love,
Brie

Ok, but seriously, Mindy is one of those famous people I would actually want to be best friends with in real life. I watched Mindy as Kelly Kapoor on the office for years, looking forward to every time she appeared in an episode (damn you Mindy, for being such a great writer for the show that you eventually had to stop acting in it altogether). Then I found out she was writing a book and I was pretty excited for it's release. AND THEN, I found out she had her very own show coming out. Needless to say, I've watched every episode of The Mindy Project since it began airing last fall and I love it. I am a HUGE Mindy fan. Obviously.

But let's back up. I hate to draw attention to how far behind I am in blogging about the books I read, but I actually listened to Mindy's book on audio back in August. I needed a new audiobook (this one was only my third one ever) and I had decided to go the comedy route thinking it would be easier to pay attention while driving in my car. And it's true: it's much easier to follow along with a book that really has no plot and is just a book of rambling musings of ones life, albeit, hilarious ramblings. That's not to say I didn't love this book. I did. It was light, funny, although not really laugh-out-loud-funny, more nodding-your-head-in-agreement-funny, and I feel like I got to know more about the girl in the television screen.

 Side note: how do publishers/bookstores decide when to market a comedian's book as humour or as memoir when the content is funny, but also biographical at the same time? (Mindy's book, in Canada anyway, is shelved in the humour section, whereas, Let's Pretend This Never Happened by Jenny Lawson, aka The Bloggess, is shelved in the biography section.)

Having listened to Mindy's book shortly before her new TV show began has made me appreciate her show so much more. I feel like it's so "Mindy". So many of her personality quirks and tendencies that ooze out of her book seem to be portrayed in her character on the The Mindy Project. She may be acting to film the show, but her character on The Mindy Project is relatable, honest, sarcastically hilarious and just trying to find love when it seems like the search is hopeless.  Which, really, isn't too far off from the Mindy in her book.  Plus, her name in the show is also Mindy, so there's that.

The problem with audiobooks is there's really no way to write down or mark your favourite quotes, short of pulling over in mid-traffic to whip out your pen and paper. Maybe this is a good thing, otherwise I'd be inclined to post a whole whack of quotes to get you to want to read this book (or listen to it). Or maybe the problem is I shouldn't wait 6+ months to blog about a book and I might just remember a favourite line or two. But probably not, because my brain does not work that way. ANYWAY...obviously, if you know who Mindy Kaling is and you aren't really a fan of her stuff, then you probably won't enjoy this book. And I promise I will try not to take it personally.

Audio Books: Round 2

The Confession, by John Grisham

 

After I read Defending Jacob, my manager at the bookstore asked me if it was similar to any of John Grisham's books. I told her I couldn't answer that because I've never actually read anything by John Grisham before. His books have always seemed more like crime solving fluff to me. I swear, I'm not a book snob, and I won't judge you if you like his books, but that's just how I've always thought of them as being - you've read one, you've read them all type of books. But then I got thinking that maybe, for the sake of my bookstore customers, that I should read at least one Grisham novel. Because what if I try to sell someone Defending Jacob and they ask me if it's like John Grisham, who they just love? I can stretch the truth when talking about books to my customers, but I cannot flat out lie.

So, and I promise this is going somewhere, then one weekend shortly after I had the above conversation with my manager, I was heading out to Red Deer and decided I was ready to give another audio book a shot. (My first audio book experience was a total fail, but I am determined to find a place for audio books in my life.) I didn't have my library card yet, so I went to the nearest Chapters on the hunt for the cheapest audio book I could find, but that was also something I actually wanted to listen to. Well you know who's audio books are some of the most inexpensive? Yup, Mr. Grisham's. So, I decided on The Confession. Cheap audio book plus "work related research" equalled win, win.

Looking back, this really was a great choice for my second audio book. The plot was easy to follow and kept my attention. Did my mind still wander? Of course, but not nearly as often as during my first audio book. Audio books are hard! You really have to pay attention, and I naturally have a wandering mind. The Confession took me about 3 weeks to listen to (I only listened to it when I was in my car), and this was a HUGE improvement over the SIX MONTHS the first one took me!

In The Confession, the crime has already been committed, and the young man, Donté, who has been charged with murder is on death row, only four days away from his execution. Keith, a young minister, receives a visit from Travis Boyette who confesses to the murder that Donté has wrongfully been accused of. Travis claims he is dying of an inoperable brain tumour and has for once in his sorry life decided that he wants to do the "right thing" by confessing to the murder. The catch is, Travis doesn't want to go to the police because while he wants to do the "right thing", he also doesn't want to spend his last few living months in jail. (*eye roll*). For whatever reason, Travis has decided to trust in Keith in getting the truth to the right people. 

I have no sympathy for a murderer trying to do the "right thing".

So we have your whole "race against time" story. Is Travis too late? I mean, 4 days isn't much time to prove his confession and get Donté exonerated. Can we even trust Travis to follow through with his confession? Will Donté's fate be changed? Is the death penalty a fool-proof system? Hmmm, aren't you just dying to know all these answers?! 

I noticed after I was done listening to this book that I had purchased the abridged version! At first I was pissed because WELL WHAT DID I MISS? But then once I calmed down, I realized, for a book like this, it probably didn't make a difference in the overall experience of listening to a book like this.

Stupid unabridged books. Who reads you?!

Now, would I ever listen to or read another novel of Grisham's? Meh, Probably not. Or at least not anytime in the near future. Oh wait, that's a lie! I *might* read Skipping Christmas next month because I own it and I want to read something Christmassy this year. But that's it. I'm sorry you had to listen to me babble on, really about nothing, and not even get a recommendation out of this. Except! If crime thrillers (and I use that term veerrrry loosely for this book, because it wasn't really high on the thriller end), are your thing, then I totally do recommend Defending Jacob. I really quite enjoyed that one.

I'm an Information Ninja

I did it you guys. I went to the library the other week and I got myself a library card. Who am I?! I never use the library. I have nothing against people who use the library - in fact, I think they are quite genius in doing so, seeing as how books from the library are FREE. BUT...I just like to own my books. And I don't like to have to wait my turn for a certain book. And I definitely don't like to have time constraints placed on when I read said book. "Oh, it's my turn to read this book now? But I have to pick it up tomorrow and I have to read it before three weeks is over?"  What if I'm in the middle of a really good book? How do you library-goers prioritize your book reading then? And what if it's a really good book that you want to own - do you purchase your own copy afterwards?

But I digress. I got myself a library card. And it is the coolest library card I have ever seen. Check it out:

I'm an Information Ninja. I freakin' love it.

Of course, I didn't check anything out that day. Let's not get crazy now. Baby steps for this library-virgin. So, why then, did I even get a library card? The short answer: audiobooks. The long answer: I've been trying to listen to audiobooks when I'm driving around in the car - which some days, is a lot. My first audiobook experience was pretty much a fail and took me almost 6 months to complete. But, I'm determined to develop a love for audiobooks. The thing is though, audiobooks are crazy expensive, and I don't listen to enough audiobooks to make it worthwhile to get an account on audible. I knew you could take out audiobooks from the library, but I never realized how great their selection actually is. So, for once, it finally made sense for me to get a library card.

Last week, I even went back to the library and actually checked something out:

  Tell me: Are you a library-lover or a library-virgin? 

The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox, by Maggie O'Farrell (Audio Review)

Esme Lennox has been locked up in a mental hospital for the past 61 years. Her great-niece, Iris, who has no idea of Esme’s existence, receives a call one day that Esme is being released and arrangements need to be made to pick her up. Even though Iris never even knew Esme existed before she received this call, something urges her to go to Cauldstone Hospital and consider taking Esme home with her until further arrangements can be made.  Iris’s parents are both gone, and her aunt Kitty - Esme’s sister - is suffering from Alzheimer’s.  While Esme is deemed harmless, what sorts of secrets does she harbour that could possibly turn Iris’s world upside down?  What unfolds in The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox is the story of Esme’s and Kitty’s childhood and the harrowing events leading up to Esme’s admission to Cauldstone.

This was my very first audio book ever. I’ve listened to comedians in the car many times, but never an actual book.  I had an epiphany back in January, that I should start listening to audio books on the 3-hour round trip drives I frequently take to visit my sister-in-law and nephews.   What a great idea – another way to get through more books in a year! I went into Chapters one day specifically on the hunt for a *cheap* audio book (sheesh – audio books are EXPENSIVE!) and came across a copy of The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox. Which was kind of “a sign” as this very book had just been recommended to me on Twitter, followed with the information that it’s hard to find a copy of it nowadays. So, naturally, I had to buy it. But the best part? It cost me less than five bucks! 

So I excitedly left the next morning on my “road trip”, eager to start listening to it. Here’s what I learnt right away. Listening to an audio book is hard. My mind wandered constantly and every few minutes I would zone back in and think, “whoa whoa whoa, what is going on – rewind!” I blame a lot of this on the fact that I found the narrator’s voice very annoying (she kind of reminded me of Daphne from Frasier – not that Daphne is annoying, but just so you have a picture of what the voice sounded like).  Secondly, after a bit of research on goodreads, I figured out that this book in the written form reads quite choppily and a lot of the sentences “just end” as a lot of it is the character’s thoughts. I did not feel this translated well onto audio. I had a difficult time realizing when the narrator had switched characters. Having different narrators for each character might have been helpful. 

My biggest issue with the story-line though was I didn’t understand why Esme had been kept in the mental hospital her ENTIRE life. If she was deemed sane enough to be allowed to live with a complete stranger when the hospital was closing, why hadn’t she been discharged earlier? Was she ever given the chance or an opportunity to leave the hospital as an adult and live her own life? It just made me so frustrated and downright mad that Esme had spent her whole life locked up for pretty much no reason at all! I know things were different “back in the day”, but still. And how could her own parent’s just leave her there forever?!  I started this audio book in January and this still bothers me when I think about the book. I just wanted more answers or at least some discussion about this.

I’m disappointed that my first audio book experience was a flop and I’m also disappointed that I didn’t like this story. I truly wanted to like it. I honestly feel like I owe this book a second chance and vow to re-read it if I ever come across a hard-copy of it. If you’ve read this book, I’d love to know what you thought of it and why. And, if you have any good    audio book recommendations, don’t hold out on me!