Speed-Reading Book Nerd Reviews

I Want To Be Where The Normal People Are

By Rachel Bloom.

This is a loosely-written autobiography of sorts, mostly themed about childhood issues. I absolutely love the 80's Sweet Valley High-ish cover. If you are into Rachel's personality in general, you will probably be into this. If you're reading it for hot dish on Crazy Ex-Girlfriend you shall mostly be disappointed, as she doesn't talk about it much even though she says she could write a book on it. (Sadly, the most involved chapter about it involves her need for bathroom breaks.) Mostly it's about being a bullied theater kid that couldn't fake normal for shit, then eventually becoming somewhat more accepted-ish, going through some jerk dudes and bad jobs, and eventually deciding fuck normal, I'm gonna do me. 

Overall the theme is "normal," as in the chapter titles having names like "Normal People Don't Get Bullied." Rachel had the same kind of "fake popular boyfriend as method of shaming/harassing you" thing that I did. Whee, glad to hear that shit still continues among the young. She talks about being a theater kid and what that's like and transitioning into television and still getting bullied there too. I felt better when she said she never made it onto an improv team either. She can be brutally honest, sometimes gross, and sometimes just goes into fantasies of talking to her younger self, having her dog recount her winning a Golden Globe, etc. 

She mentions having her awful social status improve slightly in college, thanks to drama, better clothes, contacts and boobs. "And that was it. Those five things represented the line between misery and acceptance. Which was fucking ridiculous. This is what had kept me from social acceptance for years? Some surface-y shit? I was an abnormal person who could now 'pass" as normal and I felt like a spy. I observed those around me, taking notes to send back to my mother country of Freakadonia...." 

Later in the chapter called "Normal People Saw This Twist Coming," she talks about how the most vulnerable songs she wrote for Crazy Ex-Girlfriend such as "Stupid Bitch" and "A Diagnosis" were the ones that people connected with the most. "So the big twist of this book...is you. By supporting me, you have inadvertently changed my life and made the title of this book irrelevant. Because maybe there are people out there who are "normal." But I don't need to be one of them. Not anymore." 

There's a final chapter written after the book was originally due, about giving birth in the pandemic and then her songwriting partner Adam Schlesinger died. I'm still sad about that one, that guy was fucking brilliant. 

Oh yeah, and she's written a musical within the book, which is on her website. Which I would normally link to (rachel does stuff com) except that my review isn't totally four stars and I feel bad. I'm not sure what the heck to rate this? I'll be honest: would have liked a bit more Crazy Ex stories in it. But, otherwise good for the Rachel Bloom Experience. I think I'm gonna say 3.5 or so (Rachel, please don't hate me.) 

Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life: A Sortabiography

By Eric Idle.

The start of the book: "Life has a very simple plot. First you're here And then you're not." Profound, dude.

Eric Idle claims that "on the advice of my lawyer I am leaving out the shameful bits, and on the advice of my wife the filthy bits, but as usual in my career, I will leave you wanting less. If this isn't exactly what went down, it's certainly how it should have happened." Allrighty then, I guess?

Eric grew up with a dead dad (who died on Christmas, so he's got a song called "Fuck Christmas"), went to a shitty boarding school, eventually got to college and discovered comedy, met the rest of the future Pythons, and has had a very good time working and making friends with celebrities ever since. He cheated on his first wife, shaped up, and has been happily together with his second wife ever since, and has cleaned up his act in general. He doesn't say a super lot about it, but their instalove sounds really cute. Overall, it's a fun read. 

Fun one-off stories: the time when Norman Lear has his assistant (or whoever) tell George Harrison to stop disturbing him while playing guitar; the time when he heard a story about thieves making off with Charlie Chaplin's course and asking his wife for two million for the body and she said, "Keep it!" and they returned it; how Leslie Nielsen liked to fart conspicuously; the time when Billy Idol was in one of his shows and they argued about whose name was on the poster; how people online wouldn't believe he was him until he told them to fuck off.

He's also got some lovely tribute chapters to George Harrison (I had no idea he had a break-in at his house and how fucking awful it was and how his wife had to keep beating the intruder over the head and he just would not go down) and Robin Williams--see Quote Corner for that one. 

There's also the one page journal that Eric claims he decided to start keeping once he noticed that they had become legends. Which goes from "Got up. Was a legend. Had breakfast. Went back to bed." to "Wife said you're not a legend, you're just a lazy old bastard." to "Have decided to stop writing a diary about being a legend, as I'm becoming the sort of person I would normally try and avoid." 

Eric is clearly writing this as a farewell book just in case he dies, but at least it sounds like he had a rollicking good time. Four stars. 

Quote Corner:

• "It's October 1978 and I'm being crucified."
• "There's something a little chilling about turning up for work and finding a cross with your name on it."
• "By an odd coincidence, I was born on my birthday."
• "I think all the Pythons are nuts in some way, and together we make one completely insane person."
• "Men are jerks until quite late in life." 
• "I met a lot of very interesting people. I didn't seek them out. They found me. What am I supposed to say? "Fuck off, Keith Richards, I am not coming upstairs with you to sign till dawn in Rome?" "No, Mick Jagger, I will not come with you to the Monte Carlo Grand Prix?" "Bugger off, Bowie, who wants to join you on a yacht in the Caribbean?" 
• "I have met many people in my life and, sadly, many of them were not famous. I agree it's not their fault, though they might have tried harder."
• "I believe it is wrong to be prejudiced against people just because they are not well known."
• "Anyway, I have always tried not to hold fame against those who suffer from it. It's really not their fault that just because they possess some talent in a popular performing art, people look up to them, worship them, stalk them, hunt them down, and kill them."
• "In any case, it is only after you have achieved fame that you realize that it is a piece of shit." 
• On his dog, Bagel the beagle, and teaching him how to sing: "He sang to Beatles, he sang to Stones, to Eagles, and of course, to many comedians. That dog sang to the uncrowned heads of Europe." 
• From George Harrison's eulogy: "...had the ability to say the wrong thing at the right time, which is what we call humor." 
• "I hadn't realized I would be trapped onstage to meet Prince Charles while still dressed in a tutu. If you want to be really laughed at by people, try wearing a tutu to a Royal cocktail party." 
• Prince Charles to Eric: "Eric, why don't you become my jester?" Eric: "Why would I want a fucking awful job like that?" Prince Charles "laughed his head off." 
• After working with Stephen Hawking and Professor Brian Cox, Brian said, "We just spent a whole day filming with one of the most extraordinary minds on the planet, and all we did was a silly gag." Eric's response to Hawking later was, "I think you, me, and Professor Cox have a great future in comedy." 
• On Robin Williams: "It's as if Einstein suddenly decided, "Fuck it, I'll do stand-up." and "In conversation, he was so fast you could barely get a thought out before he would seize it, gloss it, show you the opposite, turn it upside down, show you the left and right of it, run multiple variations on it, and then, properly examined, hand it back to you."
• After Sir Billy Connolly got knighted, Eric wrote him a congratulatory note and Billy wrote back saying, "I have decided that I will no longer squander my good time by hanging out with scruff like you. So you can fuck off." 
• I absolutely love watching sign language interpreters in general, but especially if you go to something like The Book Of Mormon and then they have to sign something dirty. Likewise, Eric enjoyed seeing someone sign "Isn't it awfully nice to have a penis?" and trying not to crack up "as she found more and more elaborate hand gestures for that particular part of the male anatomy." 
• On Trump: "And really, laughter is the only sane response to pathological lying."
• "So what have I learned over my long and weird life? Well, firstly that there are two kinds of people, and I don't much care for either of them. Secondly, when forced with a difficult choice, either way is often best. Thirdly, always leave a party when people begin to play the bongos."

 

The Art of Asking, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Let People Help

By Amanda Palmer.

I was conflicted about reading this. I don't know much about Amanda Palmer. I respect that she lets her weird hang out there and does what she wants, but I've never been super into her work. I am interested in that she managed to land Neil Gaiman (and vice versa), who I'm more into. And I personally Have Issues with asking people things, because most of the time it makes me crazeballs and I don't want to.

Well, Amanda really explains her philosophy on the art of asking, which is based on how it's worked for her performing career. Once she realized that posing as a bride on a street corner working for donations made more than crappy food service jobs (really?!? damn), she's mostly embraced the whole concept, though even she had issues with say, asking her new millionaire husband for money in a bad situation. Depending on the support, donations, and pre-AirBnB'ing with her fans has made her life and career work, and even though she's gotten some backlash about it in the last few years since her big Kickstarter (plus, I assume, marriage) making everyone think she's too rich to ask people to work for free, overall she's still in favor of the idea.

This is also an autobiography of sorts, and you find out the trajectory of her career, dealing with her record label and getting out of contract with them, getting together with and marrying Neil, and the awesome support of her best friend Anthony, an older therapist she's known since she was a kid living next door to him. When Anthony gets ill, you feel for the poor guy. (Yes, he's died since the book came out.) And I did enjoy the bits here and there about how she and Neil slowly got together.

For example, after having told Neil about her bride-dressup days, she's going to get together with him on his birthday and is absolutely stumped as to what do you get this guy ("A fossil of a Tyrannosaurus rex tooth? A map of a black hole?"), and finally elects to actually dress up as The Bride and show him what it was like. Even though it's awkward at first (he's an hour late, shows up with his agent, she only made eight dollars and insists on paying for coffee...which is eleven dollars), he declares it the nicest thing anyone's ever done for him, and announces that he's decided he's not going anywhere? Huh? He won't leave her, is what he means. Wow. Then she's all, well, he's 16 years older, he's famous, awkward, British, he'd hate my life and my friends...but he's so kind... I like how she puts it all out there about her angst about marrying someone so different from her ("he can't dance," "he doesn't go to bars," "why did I marry this guy?"). While talking it out with Anthony, he helps her realize that she loves him because he sees her, and vice versa. 

She also makes it clear that she's made a lot of cool friends by asking, by crashing with people, and through Twitter (though yeah, she gets as burned by that as anyone else does these days too).. She mentions one fan that she met and hung out with, and then found out was suicidal and made sure that they got in contact. Then there's the time she got attacked on social media after the Boston marathon and Neil books her a massage for her birthday...and finds out that the massage therapist has been talking shit about her online. The therapist confesses what she did, offers to let her cancel, Amanda doesn't, and by the end of it, they're on good terms and Amanda even gets the girl's CD. Wow. 

Four stars. It's honest and beautiful. 

Quote Corner:

• "we edged towards each other, day by day, like two cautious but wounded animals, and started to poke experimentally at each other's hearts, opening up little doors one at a time."
• "I bear in mind that I may be the only full-time musician they've encountered who's ever directly said: Yes. You're allowed to go do that. Go ahead." 
• On discovering that nobody ever asked Neil how he was doing: "Maybe you just weren't ready to be asked, I said. Or maybe, he said, I found the person I could answer." 
• Anthony: "You can't ever give people what you want. But you can give them something else. You can give them empathy. You can give them understanding."
• Amanda, trying to figure out how to deal with the age difference with Neil, has a conversation with her gay/partnered friend Luke and how he deals with the age difference with his boyfriend. Then she finds out the boyfriend is HIV positive and was when they met. It wasn't a dealbreaker? Amanda asks. Luke's response: "It wasn't a question of deal-breaking. I was in love with him." 
• "This is the essence of crowdfunding. It's about finding your people, your listeners, your readers, and making art for and with them. Not for the masses, not for the critics, but for your ever-widening circle of friends."
• Anthony: "If you love people enough, they'll give you everything." 

The Anatomy of a Calling: A Doctor's Journey from the Head to the Heart and a Prescription for Finding Your Life's Purpose

By Lissa Rankin, MD.

Hooooooo boy, is this a complicated book. The author likens her career journey to the Hero's Journey and warns you that you may experience the same. Because this may be her own specific story, but it also fits the trials that you might have when dealing with a calling.

Lissa always knew she wanted to be a doctor from when she was trying to save baby squirrels. However, actually working in the medical profession was incredibly draining and exhausting. She starts out by telling you about a particularly horrible night in which four babies died--and then a doctor screamed at her for having feelings about it, while midwives were shielding her in the locker room. Lissa tried different types of medical jobs, she tried blogging (which she still does), she tried writing books, she tried all sorts of things trying to do something related to healing without having to go back to the hell of working in medicine. At times she straight up did not want to be a doctor at all--but she couldn't get away from it. 

"I can swing my Fendi bag and hit a life coach. What I need--what we need--is for you to be an effin' doctor."

I wanted to scream.

Wasn't it okay that I used to be a doctor but I didn't want to be one any more? Can't a girl be free to switch careers without being forever burdened by her previous job? Was I going to be saddled with the straitjacket of that white coat for the rest of my life?" 

By the end of the book, she's figured out a career and finally made some money (she's frequently broke in this story), but has also tried a ton of different things. It's exhausting, but sounds like she's finally found where she wanted to go.

Lissa starts out the book by saying, "I want you to understand that even though this book may be about me and my calling, it is really about you and your calling." By telling her various struggles and spiritual experiences and things she's tried, she offers guideposts as to where you are on the journey and how to deal with, say, being told to quit your job, and how the universe will give you some lead time before forcing the issue. And while I certainly never had any interest in working in medicine, I'd say it's a good overall guideline. Even though I am ah...not really feeling called to any particular job myself these days so I am not going through this stuff, the book does make you feel like you'll come out the other side even if it's going to be hard as fuck at times and only easy some of the time.

Four stars. 

Quote Corner:

• “Many heroes are often asked to demonstrate blind faith. You’ll be tempted to build your safety net before you leap, but often your attempts to do so will be thwarted. You’re likely to find that the net doesn’t appear until you leap into trust. But it’s safe to trust when you’re leaping into your calling. When you align with one of the Universe’s holy ideas in service to Something Larger than yourself, it’s as if unseen forces roll out the red carpet, and suddenly, miracles happen because you said yes, even when you had no evidence that it was safe to do so.”

• “You’ll also notice magical things starting to happen, things you might write off as coincidences, only they’re too perfect, too exactly what you need in that particular moment, too much like miracles to call accidents. The synchronicities will fill you with a sense of wonder, because they’re proof positive that you’re being guided, that you’re not in this alone, that Someone is moving mountains to ensure that your mission is a success.”

• “Doors you longed to walk through will slam shut. If you take the wrong fork in the road of your hero’s journey, your path will be littered with barbed wire and mustard gas and dragons and sharp knives.”

• “The guidepost you can trust is a sense of movement towards ease.”

•  

  “Darling, they’re about to break you. You have to quit your job.”
  “You don’t have to do it now, sweetheart. But the time is coming for you to quit your job, so get ready. And don’t worry. Everything will be okay, and you will not be alone.”
  “You don’t have to do anything yet. Just make peace with the truth.”

•  

  “Maybe you’re still slogging through the Ordinary World like I was, reassuring yourself that things could be so much worse and that you should just feel grateful for what you have.”

• “If you’re on the fence and the answer is uncertain, it’s perfectly okay to stay put. You can trust that you will know when the space between stories is over. Your next inspired steps will call you forth.”

•  

  “When you’re first learning to interpret the signs, this guidance may show up in subtle ways, like a thought or an idea that feels a little crazy. You might read something that feels like it was meant just for you, something that reinforces a crazy idea. Three people might give you the same book within a month. You might have a dream full of strangely specific instructions. You might have a premonition or an inner knowing about something on the horizon.”

• “That’s how guidance tends to show up. If you don’t pay attention to the first whisperings of guidance, then the signs from the Universe tend to get more obvious. You may get physical symptoms because you’re not listening to the whispers. Things may start happening to shove you out of your comfort zone. 

• But the signs from the Universe aren’t always painful. Sometimes they’re quite magical. You’re worried about how to fund a dream, and then an unexpected check arrives in the mail. ... You let go of searching for your soul mate and then meet the love of your life at the DMV. You’re trying to make a difficult decision, and after asking the Universe for help, a license plate gives you just the answer you needed in a way that feels like more than coincidence. My friend SARK walks onto the streets of San Francisco and says, “Miracle, find me now!” Once, five $100 bills literally flew into her hands.
  These are the kinds of things that tend to happen when you’re receiving and interpreting clear guidance. But what if you don’t like the instructions you’re being given? You’ll often be given a lot of leeway when you first become aware of something you’re being called to do. You’ll likely be given a grace period (like I was, when the voice of my Inner Pilot Light told me I would one day quit my job), a Divine time-out, during which you have the opportunity to make peace with what is being asked of you. It’s as if the Universe gives you a break and understands why you’re not doing what you know you must, so there are no immediate consequences to failing to heed the guidance. The Universe understands that you’re only human and you need time to make peace with what you must do.

• Then one day, the grace period is over, and what you’re being called to do becomes urgent. The signs from the Universe start coming fast and furious. The Universe is not going to let you off the hook any longer. At this point, you still have a choice. You have free will. But if you don’t act on what is being asked of you once your grace period is over, things may start being reorganized for you, and you may feel like you no longer have a choice. It’s not that your free will is being taken from you; it’s that your soul is grabbing the wheel from your Small Self and orchestrating your life in order to facilitate your hero’s journey. So don’t resist! Just let go and trust that it’s all purposeful, even if it feels terrifying in the moment.

• When your grace period is over, you may get fired from that job you’ve known you were supposed to quit. The relationship you’ve been thinking about ending will end without your choice. Your life will start realigning in order to make this thing that must happen inevitable, until you’re laughing or crying at how obvious it is that you’re just not listening to what you’re being guided to do.

• That’s when you’ll be tempted to do one of two things. Either you’ll turn your back, seeking comfort in what can never comfort you--dysfunctional relationships, Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, booze, drugs, too much work, gambling, casual sex, or some other favorite vice. Or you’ll quit numbing, stop running away, and finally face up to what you must do: surrender. If you’re like most of us, you’ll probably opt for door number 1, because letting go when you’re terrified is almost impossibly hard, especially when you have no evidence that it’s safe to release your vice grip on life. But somewhere inside, if you listen up, you’ll hear that quite voice of your Inner Pilot Light that says, “Everything is okay.” You’ll feel the butterflies, that roller coaster feeling in your belly, and you’ll strap on your seatbelt because you know that things are about to start moving at warp speed and the road won’t always be smooth.

• If you’ve received guidance that your space between stories is over but you haven’t acted on what you’re being called to do, it’s time to take a close look at where you might be self-sabotaging. What resistance is showing up? How are you ignoring the guidance that pushes you to do what you must? Are you in denial about what’s true for yourself? Are you compromising the integrity of your soul?
  If you’re in this phase of your journey, chances are good that you already know what you’re being called to do, that on some cosmic level, you’ve already made a choice, but you’re avoiding doing what you know you must. As psychologist and author Harriet Lerner says in her book The Dance of Fear, “It is not fear that stops you from doing the brave and true thing in your daily life. Rather, the problem is avoidance. You want to feel comfortable, so you avoid doing or saying the thing that will evoke fear and other difficult emotions. Avoidance will make you feel less vulnerable in the short run, but it will never make you less afraid.” If you stay in denial, avoiding what you must do, waiting until you don’t feel afraid, you’ll never fulfill this mission you’re on. The fear is inevitable as long as you’re seeking security and comfort. But when you open yourself to the mystery and make peace with uncertainty, you’ll find within you the courage you need in order to leap."

Cheaters Always Win: The Story of America

By J.M. Fenster.

This is a delightful book all about the natures of cheaters, how rampant it is, and how our society encourages us to just sit back and take it without complaint. Yay America!

Chapter topics include why it's so hard to confront cheaters, people who don't cheat, cheating as punishment or symbol of superiority, how to respond to getting cheated and accommodation of cheating, who cheats and who they cheat on, when they prosper, when they cheat other cheaters, will they ever stop doing it, and how cheaters always win. 

In the introductory chapter, the author notes that some people found the subject matter embarrassing, and then some folks claim that dogs don't cheat--something she agreed with until she caught her dog cheating. In our culture, we shame anyone who whistleblows and have very nasty names for them. Why is that? 

The "people who don't cheat" chapter is interesting for its focus on old quiz shows and how contestants were "coincidentally" given answers over lunch when certain topics were dropped into conversation "randomly." People also were encouraged to become "experts" on unlikely subjects, which is how Dr. Joyce Brothers originally got famous--for being an boxing "expert" who categorically did not cheat on television. Even when producers wanted to get rid of her by giving her a hard question--a typical tactic--she prevailed. 

There's some fun stories about whether or not it hurts anyone to know the truth, such as a story about a famous Russian baker who was supposed to abstain from using butter and eggs during Lent. When people heard he had a substitute recipe that tasted the same and didn't involve butter and eggs, people were thrilled. What's his secret?...using butter and eggs. Another story involved a Jewish banker putting on a wedding who found out that extra steaks were needed, there wasn't any way to get last minute kosher steaks, and therefore some of the steaks were not kosher. He admitted the truth, and everyone felt too guilty to eat steak after that. 

The author is really excited about the story of "Cheating Cheaters," a play about cheaters (obviously). However, when one of the collaborators died SUSPICIOUSLY by falling out a window after the play was halfway written, the other one stole the work. His widow fought back and eventually lost. Sigh. 

Then there's Itchy Novak, a guy who cheated throughout college and was forced to actually get a straight A (not even an A-!) on his final exam, and the exam was gong to be heavily proctored. In the end, Novak (who hadn't been to class all semester) showed up, said he was a proctor, and walked around reading what others wrote in their exam books, leaving his own in with the rest when they were collected. 

I really enjoyed hearing about an English professor who decided to sell term papers to a paper mill, such as a study of Romeo and Juliet, focusing on the character of Banquo....BWHAHAHAHAH. "The professor's closest friends were dismayed. One of them, however....soon realized that her colleague's  cottage industry was actually a form of what she termed "guerrilla warfare," noting that the prof "included just enough errors that a teacher would be 'alerted.'" I love this.

There's also the guy who was selling law licenses for $1000, reasonably assuming that someone who tried to buy one wouldn't be able to legally prosecute this fraud. Well, one guy actually did go complain to the district attorney and it went to trial....and the charges were dismissed, with the judge saying that the law was intended to protect innocent victims, not people who got cheated by cheaters. 

Can you get anyone to stop cheating? Even George Washington couldn't. The best you might be able to do is to stop letting cheaters get away with it. But good luck with that...

Four stars. A quick and fun read. 

The Path Made Clear: Discovering Your Life's Direction and Purpose

By Oprah Winfrey.

This is a beautifully illustrated coffee table book with lots of lovely pictures of nature. Each page has a brief to medium brief quote from some famous or famous-ish person who I guess Oprah interviewed or something (where the source quotes come from is unclear) at some point? It might have helped to have been told the backstories of how these quotable people got to where they are, because I haven't the faintest who a good chunk of them are or what their life advice is based off of. Only a few have any brief explanation. Oprah starts out each chapter with a couple of pages about her personal experiences.

It's a bunch of vague inspirational quotes that, in the end, sound pretty, but after I read it, did I feel motivated to do anything? Um, not really, no. I still have no clue as to what to do with my life as I did when I opened the book. Which is what I suspected was going to happen. Self-help washout.

Two stars. 

Help Me! One Woman's Quest to Find Out if Self-Help Really Can Change Your Life

By Marianne Power.

"Why did I always think that happiness had to be somewhere else, with me being someone else?" 

"I had been blocking a lot of things for a long time. It felt safer that way. Better not to dream at all than to dream and be disappointed." 

I've recently taken up listening to the podcast By The Book, in which two ladies decide to live by the tenets of a self-help book for two weeks at a time. I haven't listened to all episodes yet, but in general it's a fun, cheerful podcast. This book, in which an English freelance writer decided to live by one self-help book per month for over a year, is Quite A Different Story. 

"Don't they all say the same thing?,' asked Sarah. ":Be positive. Get out of your comfort zone? I don't get why they need 200 pages to say something that's summed up in a paragraph on the back."

"Sometimes the message needs to be repeated for it to sink in," I replied. 

I was proof of the argument that if self-help really worked you'd just need to read one and you'd be sorted. As it was I was buying at least one a month--and yet here I was, hungover, depressed, neurotic, alone... 

So why did I read self-help if it didn't, well, help?

Like eating chocolate cake or watching old episodes of Friends, I read self-help for comfort. These books acknowledged the insecurities and anxieties I felt but was always too ashamed to talk about. They made my personal angst seem like a normal part of being human. Reading them made me feel less alone. 

Then there was the fantasy element. Every night I'd devour their rags-to-riches promises and imagine what life would be like if I was more confident and more efficient, if I didn't worry about anything and jumped out of bed to meditate at 5 a.m....There was just one problem. Every morning I'd wake up (not at 5 a.m.) and go back to life as normal. Nothing changed because I didn't do anything the books told me to do. I didn't do the 'journaling,' I didn't say any affirmations...." 

This absolutely sums up the entirety of being a self-help reader, doesn't it? It feels good to read, but do you EVER do the journalling? The last time I tried that was at the beginning of the month and I flaked out after two days when enough bad shit happened that made it hard for me to project positivity. Does anyone actually do what the books say? 

Marianne's single, her freelancing seems kind of iffy at times, and she's a complete mess financially. Feeling all angsty and unhappy with her life, she decides to live "by the book" herself. Except in this girl's life, there were drastically different consequences than well, any episode of "By The Book" seems to have. She falls in love with certain works and becomes obsessed. She gets so traumatized by finding out what a financial waste she is in February that she immediately takes up reading The Secret so she can feel better and magically get money. 

"I once read an article that argued that all self-help books promise to tell you one of three things: how to get laid, how to get rich, or how to lose twenty pounds. A book that could combine all of those--well, it was guaranteed to be a bestseller. Cue The Secret." 

I have to say that "The Secret" chapter has a lot of deep thoughts on the nature of the whole thing and why it's a hit, such as "it gives us permission to daydream about our futures in a way most of us don't do after the age of five...It stops us from making excuses and hiding behind so-called "reality." Btw, I cracked up at the paragraph about "I wrote a list of everything I wanted in a man...the guy I'm going out with now is everything I listed except one thing--he doesn't dive! But he can learn.' Why did everyone have a story like this?" Literally me and one friend of mine are the only ones that hasn't worked for as yet. Even MY MOM has had this work for her. (Though in my case...well, someone has potential and is close. So we'll see. But anyway.) 

Marianne takes up Rejection Therapy, which actually is an interesting experience, especially when she doesn't get rejected or minds less when she does. Though when a relative of hers dies and she misses auditioning for X-Factor due to the funeral, someone says to her, "Was your life so bad that you had to do all that?" But it leads her to approaching a cute guy she calls "The Greek," and even though due to long-distance the relationship doesn't seem to go beyond friendship, it definitely has an effect on her. "I had been failing by default, rejecting myself by default. And that had to stop." 

Marianne really, really gets into "Fuck It," even going on a retreat and meeting a cute guy who doesn't really give much of a toss about her. Fuck It seems to relate to The Secret in the "if you just relax, things will come to you" sort of way. She starts buying into Tony Robbins, who seems to have similar ideas. 

"This was why I read self-help books--this was what I wanted. I didn't want an ordinary life; I wanted an extraordinary life!"

Then things don't go so well. She drives away a friend of hers through her new behavior, as Sarah has a hard time buying into what "The Secret" is selling ("Everyone in Syria asked to be in a war zone, did they? Those people in concentration camps just weren't thinking positively enough?") and has other moments like that until Sarah hits her limit, declaring that "it's making you self-obsessed." 

She has a drastic comedown and crash after spending tons on a retreat and Tony Robbins and realizes how truly broke she is. She has to get back to work, and gets told, "I think that's what you were meant to learn from all this. That your life was pretty good the way it was." She tries to drag herself back to the self-help project and feels quite disgusted by getting into all of Doreen Virtue's angel stuff--"Sell the same thing forty different ways and you'll find someone to buy it. Including me, which was infuriating me." I about cracked up at the "automatic writing" bit because lord knows I've tried it and had similar "conversations" when I did. Nine months into the project, has anything gotten better for her? It has not. 

Marianne has a conversation with a cab driver in which he points out that "What you're doing is kamikaze, love. You've been poking around in your head and that's dangerous stuff." He tells her she's "touching the void" and she needs to step back. And Marianne realizes in turn that she just wanted freedom from feeling bad about herself. Her life has changed...but it doesn't feel like good change. 

Finally, Marianne goes to a therapist, who says she's been conducting experiments on herself and "you have been your own guinea pig and you've had no supervision." The therapist recommends a book--"The Power of Now," which Marianne dubs The Book, the one that told her the best of times would come from the worst. She highlights it, she writes in it, she draws stars in there. Tolle talks about the voice in your head that hates you and the only way to find joy is to live in the now. If she can just figure out how to shut up the voice...This does appear to be The Book that she manages to live by, realizing that she is attached to her problems and that her negative thoughts are who she thinks she is..and what are you without them? 

Even though after experiencing "The Power Of Now," she still has a few books to go through, such as "Get The Guy." I do agree with the assessment that online dating doesn't work because we find people attractive in person and you can't see that stuff online, though. She takes up reading Brene Brown, which relates to her favorite book and makes her realize she can't do it alone and needs to make up with Sarah. 

Just for fun, I'm going to quote Sarah on meeting her husband: "When I met Steve I was scared shitless. Falling in love with him felt like throwing myself off a cliff. I made up all these reasons why he wasn't right for me...he was too short, too skinny, his voice was too high...I was just scared. I  could see that he was real and he liked me and I was trying to find a way out. But he kept calling. He wouldn't let me run away." Sarah tells her to give The Greek a chance and "just let it be what it's going to be. It doesn't have to be anything more than it is." I kind of kvelled when I read about Marianne's then going home to message the Greek: "From the first time we met he had been nothing but open and honest. He'd kept in touch with me even when I tried to shake him off. He didn't hide that he liked me or pretend that his life was perfect. He'd shown me his real self all along. I had been the one who was playing games." 

In the end, even though nothing's really changed in her life, she's still okay. Her body works, her mom loves her, she has friends, she has joy, she has it all. While she's still broke and single and the year was a disaster, she learned that she's fine as she is. 

Four stars. In other news, I will be curious to read the By The Book ladies's book by comparison. 

Love Lessons: Twelve Real-Life Love Stories

By Lois Smith Brady.

This is a book from 1999, btw. The author writes the "Vows" column for the New York Times and has picked her twelve favorite couples to write about, mixed in with her thoughts about love and how it comes about. I think I was more into her insights about love than I was the actual couples, oddly enough. There's great lines.

Lois starts out with her own sad love life in the introduction, which happily, eventually improved, as did her job when she got the "Vows" column. She says that "once in a while, on the beat, I'll hear a love story that really gives me the goosebumps, one that makes me feel as though I've seen the rare, real thing. In this book, I've collected twelve of these goosebump love stories....All of them explain some aspect of love--how it feels, how it changes you, where it comes from."

The couples are:

• Madeline and Morty: She was divorced and friendly with a fun neighbor couple. Then when the wife died, she ended up taking the husband on walks, and they fell in love quickly. She visited a psychic about the situation and the psychic said the wife picked her out for her husband. 
• Susie and Randy: met online. "Reading their early correspondence, you can watch them falling in love e-mail by e-mail. Their conversations were full of free associations, whimsical digressions, thoughtful confessions, and quick word plays. There was a genuine connection building sentence by sentence, thread by thread, as if they were knitting a sweater. You can see how well they understand each other's jokes, obscure references, insecurities, philosophies, worries, and worldviews. Reading their letters, it seems that one explanation of love is simply that it's a great conversation."
• Lois and Bill: the author's parents, who are still together after going through rough times. 
• Ellen and Eddy: were friends/fuckbuddies for years before finally going official.
• Richelle and William: Richelle's handicapped after a car accident but that doesn't stop her.
• Alison and Pete: this one seems to stand out because they live in a skier's hippie town where everybody knows you.
• Susan and Rick: she's a single mom of four, he's a bachelor. Surprise, it worked.
• Mel and Chris: got into romance quickly, like to go on adventures.
• Holly and David: met randomly, it took her several years later to track him down, because it was the nineties.
• Linda and Andre: got together as teenagers, got pregnant, broke up for a few decades, then finally got together for good once their daughter was grown.
• Paisley and Karl: love at first sight between a hippie and a jock.
• Clarice and Victor: older love. 

Lessons on Love Quote Corner:

• "I learned that true love has some universal qualities and telltale signs. For one thing, most couples I've interviewed said they felt incredibly lucky, even giddy, after meeting--they had an I-won-the-lottery! feeling. I interviewed a former stewardess once who met her future husband on an airplane. She told me, when you fall in love, you shouldn't have to make a list of pros and cons. You shouldn't have to take the good with the bad. It should be all good news. Whenever anyone asks me about love now, I always say wait for that feeling, wait, wait, wait. Wait with the patience of a Buddhist fly fisherman."
• "I've come to believe that if you're in love, you should honestly be able to describe your partner this way: "Think of the perfect person. Then, think harder."
• "You also know it's love when you can't stop talking to each other. Almost every couple I've ever interviewed has said that on their first and second date, they talked for hours and hours and hours--in some cases, days passed before they stopped talking. For some, falling in love is like walking into a soundproof confession booth, a place where you can tell all. I have heard many people say the first conversation is far more important than the first kiss."
• "After all this time, love is still mostly a mystery to me. The only thing I can confidently say is this: love is as plentiful as oxygen. You don't have to be perfectly thin, naturally blond, supersuccessful, funny, knowledgeable about politics, socially connected, or even particularly charming to find it."
• Lois's advice on finding love comes from someone she interviewed with but didn't get the job: "Work hard and concentrate on what you love to do, writing. If you become good, we will find you. It may take five years. It may take ten. But if your work stands out, we will call you." That's what I tell people looking for love. Don't read articles about how to trap, ensnare, seduce, or hypnotize a mate. Don't worry about your lipstick or your height, because in the end it's not going to matter. Just live your life well, take care of yourself, and don't mope, complain, or shop too much. Love will find you. Eventually it even found me." 
• "The best love stories I've heard are ones where two people have the strangest combination of things in common."
• "I learned you can have the worst luck at your wedding, you can even had bad luck throughout your entire life. You can never get asked to dance as a teenager, you can experience hundreds of painfully awkward blind dates, you can look and feel like a bag lady on your wedding day. And still, love can find you and stay with you." 
• "You fall in love with the person whose stories you love listening to, the one who brings out the best stories in you, the one you could talk to driving across the country and back and never be bored." 
• "I've interviewed so many couples whose relationships at one time or another seemed as impossible as electrical engineering."
• "While writing my column, the best love stories I've heard usually contain that element of the totally unexpected." 
• "In some ways, falling in love can be like getting on the wrong airplane and landing in Paris when you thought you were headed for Newark, New Jersey--or the other way around. It can take you places you never imagined, turn you from a secretary into a scuba diver; an apartment dweller into a person living on a sailboat, a lifelong bachelor like Rick into a stepfather trying to teach four teenagers to appreciate jazz. When people ask me for love advice, I always tell them: Don't look for a certain kind of person...It's possible that you may find them, but not find love. Instead, just look for a feeling."
• Susan: "You can't look for the perfect partner, whatever you think that is. You have to be open to whoever's out there, and they show up in the strangest places most of the time." 
• "Mel taught me an important lesson--when it comes to love, don't chicken out or follow conventional rules." 
• "Often, people fall in love the one time they take a risk like that--an unheard-of leap against reason, parental advice, your own character, rules of etiquette, and traditional dating wisdom."
• "But sometimes finding love is more like coaxing a cat down from a tree--it takes work, determination, persistence, and a willingness to wait and wait and wait....There can be times when you're not at all certain it's love. One of my favorite quotes came from a minister who said, "In a sense, the person we marry is a person about whom we have a magnificent hunch." 
• Jennifer (Linda and Andre's kid): "You really do have to be in a certain place to receive what's out there for you." 
• "I don't think there's an explanation for why some people recognize their soul mate in a total stranger, especially one who's sobbing and soaking wet from the rain. Some of it may be luck or location or chemistry or even desperation. But whatever the explanation, love at first sight is like a campfire, an almost primordial thing. It's an instinct, an inner version of road maps and highway signs pointing out the right way to go." 
• "People tell me over and over again that love for them was like a ghost in the room, something ephemeral but unmistakable. In some ways, love is like seeing a ghost--you don't ask questions."

Random Quote Corner:

• "This book is dedicated to my husband, Tom Van Allen. I knew he was the one when we first traveled on an airplane together. I'm terrified of flying, and he was able to distract me completely by talking about the various virtues of his former girlfriends." boggles
• She recounts talking to Judy Collins about her longtime boyfriend, Louis Nelson, being in the hospital and near death. After she said, "We should get married," he said (while drugged up) "That won't keep me from dying." 
• Lois on meeting her husband: "How did I know it was love? Our first real date lasted nine hours. We couldn't stop talking. When I was with him on airplanes, I was so distracted I forgot to be afraid of turbulence. No matter where we were, I never had to run to the ladies' room to calm myself down or think of something to say. I'd never been able to dance in my life, but I could dance with him, perfectly in step, gliding like lovers do. I learned it's love when you finally stop tripping over your toes. I also knew it was love because we had the strangest things in common."
• "One woman described finding hers this way: "I always felt like a fish out of water, and when I met him, he was the same fish."
• On her readers and what they write in about: "Another inquired about two young advertising executives and how they managed to fall in love again after breaking up, burning each other's love letters, and wearing sunglasses to avoid eye contact whenever they met." 
• On Randy and Susie and how he was slowly breaking up with a girlfriend when they met online: "Then he wrote the kind of sentence that would have sent me up to the rooftop with martinis and my saddest CDs if I were Susie. It read, "If your heart is set on locating a soul mate, why not invest in more promising prospects?"
• Eddy: "That weekend, we broke up and fell in love. I said, "I love you, now what are we going to do?" 
• Jean (a side couple, not getting a full profile): "I tended to really scare men off...Most of the men went screaming into the night, but Ed looked at all of that and said, "Cool." 
• "Love, like hiking in grizzly bear territory, sometimes requires much, much more guts than you think you have." 
• "It's hazardous NOT to take the risk," the pilot told me. "In love and flying, you sometimes have to do the opposite of what's easy." 
• "That's the thing about love--sometimes, it has the endurance of the "black box" on an airplane." 
• "Whenever I hear a love-at-first-sight story these days, I think of those golf balls, which I used to save. Sometimes, love just drops into your life like that, a bright, accidental, and magical thing." 
• Paisley: "We had so much to talk about. It was like we were almost trying to catch up with each other, like we hadn't seen each other in a long time. It was like, Here's my life, here's who I am. I wanted to go fast-forward." 
• Paisley: "One of my ex-boyfriends is studying and trying to find Bigfoot. Then there was Aaron, who thinks he's an alien." 
• Paisley: "When I met Karl, all the voices were silenced. Everything was at peace. I wasn't having internal arguments. I wasn't worrying about how I looked. I was just happy all the way through, right down to the core.  That's the 'I know' feeling."

I don't know into the couples I was, but the overall tone and lessons of this are what I really loved. So, four stars. 

 

Dreaming The Beatles: The Love Story of One Band and the Whole World

By Rob Sheffield.

I bought this book for a friend who loves the Beatles and liked Turn Around, Bright Eyes. I ended up reading it first before gifting it because I could not resist (or find my own copy IRL since I bought the last one out of town). Uh, hope he doesn't mind that if he ever finds out...

 

Anyway: this covers individual Beatles, interpersonal dynamics of the Beatles, their history off and on, certain songs, the romances, the feuds, etc. in a skipping around, yet intriguing sort of way. It's not that linear, but it's always entertaining. I really do like this author and how he writes about music, as it turns out. It always feels fresh and I like his insights and the personal feelings covered, mixed with the history. I feel like most of the focus here is on the impact of the Beatles on everyone else, including themselves. It wasn't planned, it wasn't expected, it was stormy, it was exhausting, and in the end, they lasted longer in everyone else's minds than the band actually has done themselves. They whammied everybody.

 

I love how the opening chapter ("Thanks, Mo") sets a scene so well: it's the last recording on the final album, everyone's fed the hell up with each other, and what the heck does that reference mean, anyway? The interpersonal dynamics--the push/pull of John and Paul, George being on the sidelines, Ringo being Ringo doing Ringo, the romances, the affairs-all get covered. There's histories as to how things came about, there's psychoanalysis of the guys and how others felt about them (oh, the Paul chapter....), and how they felt about each other. There's an entire chapter about "songs about the Beatles" (covers by other artists, tribute songs) and "Beatles or Stones?" (self-explanatory). There's a lot to cover and it's all mixed together kind of randomly like salad, and I really enjoyed that style, I have to say.

 

And now, Quote Corner, which sums things up better than I can, really:

• "The world keeps dreaming the Beatles, long after the Beatles themselves figured the dream was over. Our Beatles have outlasted theirs.
• Even the band's most single-minded partisans never pictured a future like this. Definitely not the Fabs themselves. They never envisioned becoming the world's favorite thing--you can't limit it to "the world's favorite music" because there's no equivalent. There is no Beatles of movies."
• "I'm not looking to solve this riddle--just understand it better. It's one of the central mysteries of my life. I was born the week "We Can Work It Out" hit Number One. I have lived a full and happy life. But being born on the same planet as the Beatles is one of the ten best things that's ever happened to me."
• "Where do your Beatles start? Mine begin with the movie Help!, which isn't where the story is supposed to begin, but everyone's Beatles start somewhere different."
• "The Beatle records were a map of adulthood--okay, here's where you start, as fresh-faced moptop boys, then you get a little older and deeper, then you're men singing about walruses and raccoons and yellow custard mustard mojo and then The End."
• "If you tell people you're writing a book about the Beatles, at first they smile and ask, "Another one? What's left to say?" (then he mentions overlooked songs, and then everyone else jumps in with their favorite overlooked songs....) "Within thirty seconds they're assigning me a new chapter I must write. And telling me a story to go with it. Every few days, I get into a Beatles argument I've never had before, while continuing other arguments that have been raging since my childhood. And though I've spent my whole life devouring every scrap of information about them, I'm constantly learning. I guarantee the day this book comes out, I will find out something new. Things like that used to pain me. But that's what it means to love the Beatles--you never run out of surprises."
• "There's your public Beatles--you will probably encounter their music somewhere in the next week, the supermarket or the laundromat or the car radio or a stranger's T-shirt. There's also your private Beatles--the song you love that isn't a hit, the classic you hate, the B-side nobody appreciates the way you do. People get fiercely protective about their personal Beatles. How can we keep hearing our own secrets in these songs? How can they be the world's most passionately beloved band, yet still weirdly underrated? And how is there so much life in this music--oh, untimely life?"
• "They were sick to death of the band. They begged the world to get the fuck over it and let them get on with their lives, the least they could ask after everything they've given. The world smiled politely and said, "I think I disagree." The Beatles are what they are because they are the most beloved humans of their lifetimes and mine. They had a unique talent for being loved, though they found it a strain and a puzzle and a trap and something they completely failed to understand and desperately wished to escape."
• "The John/Paul bond is one of the central mysteries of this book, because it's one of the central mysteries of my life and probably yours. In any of your relationships, you know whether you're the John or the Paul. You do not have to think about it. Listening to the music means vicariously sharing in the communion between John and Paul, which was a mystery to them as well."
• "Girls gave them something to talk about. They preferred to sing their hearts rather than speak their minds. That's where the John/Paul connection came from, and that connection followed them around the rest of their lives, as they kept collaborating, battling, breaking up, trashing each other in public, writing new songs plumbing their friendship."
• "Paul is the most Beatlesque of the Beatles. If you dislike the Beatles, it's because you dislike Paul. If you love them despite their flaws, you mean Paul's flaws. If they're overrated, it's because Paul is overrated. Whatever problem you have with the Beatles, it's Paul's fault. That's fine--it's the essence of Paul-ness, and nobody's trying to change that, not even me. But it's a huge reason I'm obsessed with him. You can't really love Paul without facing the question of why people have such toxic feelings about him. Paul is the only Beatle anyone bothers to hate. He's the one to bring up if you're looking to start an argument. He's the most mysterious and disturbing figure in the story. Tell me your Paul McCartney and I will tell you who you are. He was the Beatle who worked harder, got to the studio earlier, nagged them into writing their songs. He was the boss bitch who flogged three other men to live out the Beatle fantasy, after it stopped meaning that much to them. He was the only one who never quit, right up until 1970. And then, of course, he was the one who had to quit in a big hissy fit, whereas the others exited so discreetly that nobody found out until he coaxed them back. He never found it a drag to be a Beatle, never seemed to notice that for the others, he was the drag."
• "Paul has a compulsive need to feed his enemies all the ammunition they could want. The software of "don't take the bait" was never installed into his system. No celebrity has been easier to goad into gaffes. I love that. He's still settling scores against Stu Sutcliffe, who died in 1962."
• "Because I share most of McCartney's flaws, and barely any of his virtues, I find him a threatening figure."
• "And complaining about Paul is what the rest of us do. That's his role in our lives. We prosecute Paul for the flaws we despise in ourselves."
• "Something about Paul will always make people suspicious. In his twenties, he faced a menu of infinite choices for how he could spend the rest of his life; it was the free-love boom, a boom he'd done quite a bit to create. What he chose to do was marry Linda, raise some kids, and stay uncomplicatedly in love with her throughout the entire Players Only Love You When They're Playing era. They never spent a night apart until the week he went to jail. Paul selected a life, closed the menu, and then lived the fuck out of that life without worrying his pretty little head about the other adventures he could be chasing. That's not just rare, it's insane. It is not what you or I would have done."
• "I got obsessed with Season of Glass in my first couple years of being a widower, in my thirties, when this album meant more to me than it did before or ever would again. Yoko speaks to widows, in ways difficult to describe to nonwidows, but she had to grieve in public while knowing most people resented her being part of his story at all."
• "That's the realm these songs are in. There's no sense they belong to the past, because they don't. The Beatles sell a million albums per year... When my friends have kids, they inevitably initiate the "it freaks me out how much my toddler loves the Beatles" conversation...."
• "I wrote Dreaming the Beatles because I wanted to celebrate them not as some distant magical event that happened in the 1960s but something that just goes right on happening."
• "When you write a book about the Beatles, you accept the fact that you could keep rewriting and adding more chapters forever, since the story will keep taking new twists and turns."
• "This isn't a future anyone intended to happen, least of all the four guys who actually played in the band. But the music they made together followed them around forever."
• "They could never get away from each other."
• "The Beatles story keeps taking new turns on the personal level as well as the public one, like when a song you've put aside for a while comes back to you."
• (on Hey Jude) "It's one of the few Beatles songs speaking man to man, though what Paul counsels this guy about is holding onto a woman. (Because what other topic would interest Paul for seven minutes?")

Four stars. I highly recommend if you're into Beatles, or Rob Sheffield.

 

---

Carrie Fisher: A Life On The Edge

By Sheila Weller.

I don't know what the heck is going on with regards to how this author wrote a biography of Carrie Fisher without consulting with her family. God knows she's interviewed literally everybody else for this one, from celebrity friends to completely random folks she met once. I have heard that the family has disavowed the book for that reason. The author claims she tried to contact them but won't argue with what they said...I don't know what to think there.  But otherwise, I have to disagree with Bryan Lourd saying that all you need to read are Carrie's books, because this one is very comprehensive and fills in the gaps that say, Carrie or Debbie or Todd or Joely never said about Carrie's life. I did not find it objectionable at all. I really enjoyed reading it and getting every bit of information I could there. The author paints portraits of what was going on at the time that clarify what Carrie was living through as well. She also mentions details like an ectopic pregnancy, the stories she couldn't bear to tell in "Wishful Drinking" and the mental state she was in during the run of that show, particularly in the Berkeley Rep run that I saw (oy), that she got sued when someone she used to help died....But it's not vindictive or anything. Carrie's less than stellar moments are mentioned when they come up, but overall you get that she was beloved, an interesting and loyal friend who had troubles going on, and she kept things lively. It's written with love. 

Details I bookmarked:

• Yes, Eddie Fisher did straight up come on to Carrie at times, including saying "You have a great ass. You should be marrying me." Her response was "Thank you."
• "Here were these three straight Muslim guys, our guides, and Carrie, being Carrie, she had all these little fairy outfits with glitter on them for us to wear in King Cheops's tomb while taking acid." 
• Carrie on money and power: "Money and power don't change you. They reveal you."
• Carrie had a lot of instant connections and best friendships with people. One lady she had a half hour meeting with about a TV show Carrie didn't want to do (I said the author interviewed a lot of people) said that she was affected deeply and permanently by that half hour even though she never saw her again, and it felt like an instant connection. Wow. 
• Carrie on script doctoring: "Make the women smarter-- and the love scenes better." 
• Carrie on love advice: "It's not how you feel about someone; it's how they make you feel better about yourself when you're with them." 
• Carrie's "Wishful Drinking" director: "You had to take the good with the bad when you worked with Carrie," such as her having memory loss from ECT while doing her one woman show. However, she didn't miss a show, even though one day she tried to go home between shows and had to hire a pedicab to get to the theater on time! 
• Sharon Horgan didn't want to be dragged to dinner with Salman Rushdie, saying she wasn't feeling smart enough to talk to him. Carrie said, "Are you kidding? He's just gonna talk about girls!" 
• I love the quote from Vulture:" We'll just cut right to the chase: Carrie Fisher is a goddess, we miss Carrie Fisher every damn day, and Carrie Fisher was one of the most hilarious humans to ever walk this dysfunctional planet." Amen.

Four stars. It's very well done. I'm sorry the family isn't okay with this, but I just had to read it and it was a delight. It brought her back, you know?