Review: The Memory Palace by Mira Bartok

Title The Memory Palace by Mira Bartok
Publisher: Free Press
Published: August 9, 2011
ISBN: 9781439183328
Pages: 336                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              The Memory Palace is Mira Bartok's haunting memoir of the profound affect her mother's schizophrenia had on her life.  The title refers to a mnemonic device of creating a palace and populating it with facts and events one wishes to remember.  Ms. Bartok uses this method to reinforce her memory after sustaining a head injury that lead to cognitive deficits in her memory, language processing, and other executive functions of the brain.  In the book, she lays the foundation for her palace and builds several rooms using her mother's diaries to supplement information about her mother.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        As she sifts through memories, she begins to understand her mother's plight - frustrated by the limits of society in a time of rigid standards of proper behavior and struggling with her disease in a time of relatively primitive methods of treating the mentally ill.  Her mother muses in her diaries of what could have been if she didn't have schizophrenia.                                                                                                                             How best to manage a parent with severe mental illness who due to the very nature of her disease is unable to seek assistance herself  After surviving her childhood and her mother's increasingly paranoid and aggressive schizophrenia, Mira thinks by moving to another city she can simply rid herself of her mother.  When plans to get guardianship of their mother fails, both she and her sister resort to changing their names.  Mira keeps a special Post Office box to keep in contact with her mother.  Finally the sisters can find some peace of mind after years of impromptu visits and  police visits due to their mother's paranoia.  For a long time Mira struggles with her choice to essentially abandon her mother but feels its the only way to maintain her artistic life and her own sanity.  Vacillating between avoidance of her mother and worry over her mother's state, Mira eventually realizes that there is only so much she can do.    Sharing her mother's last days and interacting with the women from the shelter, reaffirm to her that her mother despite the schizophrenia was loving, kind, and still capable of bringing light into others lives.                                                                                                                                    A memoir of schizophrenia, this book could have become a jumbled mess but Ms. Bartok's writing is fluid enough to keep one from getting overwhelmed.   She weaves a tale using fragments of her memory and excerpts from her mother's diaries finding several parallels between her urge to be an artist and her mother's abbreviated artistic life.  This book is beautifully illustrated to match the theme of every chapter.  All in all the book is a difficult read but well worth it. *This book was provided by the publisher Free Press in exchange for my honest opinion.*

Waiting on Wednesday

Waiting on Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted by Jill @ Breaking the Spine.  We post about all the books we are waiting to be published.

My pick this week is Nerd Do Well: A Small Boy's Journey to Becoming a Big Kid by Simon Pegg.  I think Simon Pegg is crazy funny.  Everything I've seen from him is really hilarious; add Nick Frost and the laughs never stop.



From the publisher, Penguin's site:

Zombies in North London, death cults in the West Country, the engineering deck of the Enterprise: actor, comedian, writer and self-proclaimed supergeek Simon Pegg has been ploughing some bizarre furrows in recent times. Having landed on the U.S. movie scene in the surprise cult hit Shaun of the Dead, his enduring appeal and rise to movie star with a dedicated following has been mercurial, meteoric, megatronic, but mostly just plain great.
From his childhood (and subsequently adult) obsession with science fiction, his enduring friendship with Nick Frost, and his forays into stand-up comedy which began with his regular Monday morning slot in front of his twelve-year-old classmates, Simon has always had a severe and dangerous case of the funnies.
Whether recounting his experience working as a lifeguard at the city pool, going to Comic-Con for the first time and confessing to Carrie Fisher that he used to kiss her picture every night before he went to sleep, or meeting and working with heroes that include Peter Jackson, Kevin Smith, and Quentin Tarantino, Pegg offers a hilarious look at the journey to becoming an international superstar, dotted with a cast of memorable characters, and you're rooting for him all the way.

Out this Friday.

Review: I Wore the Ocean in the Shape of a Girl: A Memoir by Kelle Groom

Title: I Wore the Ocean in the Shape of a Girl: A Memoir by Kelle Groom
Publisher: Free Press
Published: June 7, 2011
ISBN: 9781451616682
Pages: 256

I Wore the Ocean in the Shape of a Girl is Kelle Groom's harrowing account of the despair of her struggle with alcoholism and the emotional aftershocks of the birth, adoption and death of her only child.  Alternating between past and present, Groom details her journey to sobriety and her journey to come to terms with her son's brief life.

From the onset, I Wore the Ocean is a very difficult book to get through.  There are multiple accounts of violence towards herself, the birth of her son, her self loathing, accounts of anonymous sex and rape, and the many blackouts that she suffered.  To see the depths she put herself and her loved ones through, saddens one and at times causes her to be a very difficult person to like.  Luckily, her willingness to tell the whole story, even the parts that make her seem deplorable, makes her story compelling.  You want her to win her battle with alcoholism and are glad when she starts making concrete steps to sobriety.  The hardest part of the book is knowing she is intelligent enough to do better but seeing her addiction pulls her to rock bottom.

Groom is devastated by the death of her son that she gave up for adoption.  She knows intellectually that she cannot care for him as a full blown alcoholic.  Yet, she is unable to stop thinking about him.  Hearing about his death, just drives her further into alcoholism.  It isn't until she is emerging from alcoholism that she is able to think about who he was and might have been.  Over two decades, after his death she is able to talk openly about him and ask the relatives who adopted him about his life.  Groom is relieved to be able to share in his life

Groom's book is full of ocean and water imagery.  Her nickname as a child is "ocean girl".  When she is away from the coast, she feels unsettled and out of place.  Someone who saw me reading the book pondered whether  title is an allusion to the way the ocean wears away all in its path to sand.  Groom's accounts can be like a current - calm at times, violent and stormy in others, buoying one in lighter moments or brutally battering.

I received this book from the publisher Free Press in exchange for my honest opinion.

Waiting on Wednesday

Waiting on Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted by Jill @ Breaking the Spine.  We post about all the books we are waiting to be published.

My pick this weeks is Is Everybody Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns) by Mindy Kaling.

 

Per Amazon:

Comedy's fastest-rising star takes to the page in a book of essays, personal anecdotes, and impassioned pleas.

Multi-hyphenate Mindy Kaling is an Emmy-nominated writer, the actress famous for playing the beloved Kelly Kapoor on The Office, and the author of one of Twitter's most popular and quoted feeds.  She is a keen and witty observer of life, romance, and pop culture, whom the New York Times recently called "an entirely original and of-the-moment" performer and Entertainment Weekly deemed “one of the ten funniest actresses in Hollywood.”

In Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?, Mindy shares her observations, fears, and opinions about a wide-ranging list of the topics she thinks about the most: from her favorite types of guys (including Sherlock Holmes, NBA players, Aaron Sorkin characters, and 19th-century fictional hunks) to life in the Office writers' room to her leisure pursuit of dieting (“I don’t travel, speak other languages, do crafts, or enjoy sports, but I love reading about new diets”) and how much she loves romantic comedies.  Loaded with personal stories and laugh-out-loud philosophies, Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? is a must-read by one of the most original comedic voices working today.

I follow Mindy on Twitter and love her work.  I can't wait. Luckily, there's a 27 page excerpt on her publisher's website.

Book Beginnings on Friday

This meme is hosted by Katy of  A Few More Pages.

How to participate: Share the first line (or two) of the book you are currently reading on your blog or in the comments. Include the title and the author so we know what you're reading. Then, if you would like, let us know what your first impressions were based on that first line, and let us know if you liked or did not like the sentence. The link-up will be at A Few More Pages every Friday and will be open for the entire week.

This week, I am reading Government Girl by Stacy Parker Aab.

The door to the President's suite stood straight ahead and marked the end of my path.  Few staffers had business being inside the President's suite.  I did.

Knowing which White House (Clinton)Stacy worked for, I wondered if there was going to be some salacious tidbit. Nope, not really.  Although so far, the book is great. It's interesting to see how someone so young and essentially a Washington outsider operates and climbs the ladder.

What books are you reading?

Review: In Stitches by Anthony Youn, M.D.

Title: In Stitches by Anthony Youn, M.D.
Publisher: Gallery Books
Published: April 26, 2011
ISBN: 9781451608441
Pages: 288

    Growing up Anthony Youn was one of two Asian kids in his small Michigan town.  He struggles to fit in and be one of the cool kids -- a mission not made any easier by his immigrant father's commands for him to study to be a doctor (surgeon, not family practitioner), to practice tennis, and to do the yard work.  Even brief periods of coolness by association can't help Anthony in his mission to be a "cool" kid.  He buckles down and works hard to follow his father's directions or at least appear to.  Then, in high school, it happens.  His underbite becomes more and more massive as his jaw refuses to stop growing.  He undergoes surgery to correct his jaw problem and a spark for his eventual career is born.
    Youn goes to college convinced that he will become a doctor and that he will finally get a girl.  He aces his classes and makes friends, but still has trouble meeting girls.  No matter what advice his friends give; he always seems to strike out.  After four years of college, he's ready for medical school but his social life is in an even worse condition.  Not until medical school does Youn finally starts to see being a doctor as a career and not a job where he can make money.  He begins to have more success with the ladies, not without hilarious incidents along the way.  Eventually, he meets his eventual wife.  During his pediatric rotation, he answers a call of a baby that was mauled by its mothers pet raccoon (yeah I know).  Seeing the plastic surgeon planning how to piece the baby's face back together and remembering his own jaw surgery, he feels called to become a reconstructive plastic surgeon.  He begins a mad scramble to become accepted into a plastic surgery program.  He is accepted to his first choice and is on his way to being a plastic surgeon.

In Stitches is a reference both to Dr. Youn's career as a plastic surgeon and the humor in the memoir.  He takes us back through his life detailing his victories and his defeats.  He is self-deprecating, especially in his accounts of his failed "relationships" and dates.  We can see the growth in his relationship with his father.  He realizes that his father is trying to instill a work ethic in him.  The same unfailing work ethic is what took his father from being a poor farm boy in Korea to being a Michigan OB/GYN married to a woman from a higher social class.  His father is able to relax and accept him being any type of doctor and his having a white girlfriend.  After being part of a humiliating verbal attack on his gay roommate, Youn also reevaluates his religion and chooses to practice a Christianity that accepts gay people and encourages tolerance to all of mankind.  The biggest change might be that being a doctor becomes his calling rather than a job that pleases daddy.  He realizes the responsibility he owes to his future patients to help them the same way he was helped.

There is cursing, crude humor, and other foul language in the book.  Something that detracted from the book was the fact that every woman he found intimidating was described as manly.  In addition, any woman that weren't "hot" (blond sorority girls, his eventual wife, and a couple of fiery Latinas) seemed to have been treated as wastes of space.  He routinely critiques his friend's dating choices as less than attractive because they didn't fit the Playboy/Penthouse standard.  It's just a very crude, immature point of view and hopefully he grew out of it.

Blog Tour: Dakota: A Work in Progress

Title: Dakota: A Work in Progress by Bill Rosecrans
Publisher: Diversion Press
Published: December 2008
ISBN: 9781935290018
Pages: 192     



    Dakota: A Work in Progress is author Bill Rosecrans book about his rambunctious golden retriever, Dakota.  Starting from the day Dakota was added to the family.  Dakota's distinct personality makes for hilarious stories.  He also details Dakota's antics such as hiding in the bathroom during a thunderstorm, knocking people over affectionately, refusing to play fetch, stealing food and coffee, resisting all attempts to train him, and licking people's feet. Pets, especially larger pets, can have larger than life personalities and character traits.  Part of the fun of having a pet is to see how they change or become more strong minded as they grow.  Despite all the trouble Dakota can cause, he seems to brighten up Bill and his family's life.

      This is a great book for people who love dogs or just need some short stories to cheer their day.  Bill manages to capture Dakota's strong personality. I am not a dog person but I found these stories interesting and quick, fun reading at the end of a long day. 

This review is based on a book provided by the publisher Diversion Press in exchange for my honest opinion.

See my Q&A with the author Bill Rosencrans

3 Cups of Tea or Was It Coffee

So right now, there is a kerfuffle over Greg Mortensen's memoirs, the most famous being Three Cups of Tea.  Jon Krakauer and CBS News show 60 Minutes did some investigating into his charity's records and the school they allegedly build.  Based on their report, it seems like something in the milk isn't clean.  Mortensen did everything to avoid talking to 60 Minutes but they ambushed him at a book signing.  LOL!!!  He has admitted to his local newspaper that the events in the book were compressed.  Now he has previously scheduled heart surgery so he's unavailable. ** Extreme SideEye**  Honestly, he might truly have a heart condition and need surgery, but it looks kind of suspect.

With memoirs, I realize that recollections of the same event vary from person to person.  Thus, I usually take memoirs and autobiographies with a grain of salt.  I'm willing to allow for issues of memory as long as the lapses aren't outrageous.  Don't write a "memoir" about growing up in Marakesh if you grew up in Rhode Island! Don't compress time and blame it on cultural definitions of words.

Why do authors feel the need to embellish or create whole new life stories?  For all the disputes about accuracy, Mortenson has a great story that didn't really need embellishment.  Maybe authors and/or agents/publishing houses/ book people feel that the book won't succeed if marketed as a novel and would generate more profit being sold as a memoir.  Scandalous novels are a dime a dozen, but scandalous or extraordinary life stories not so much.  Maybe an author realizes half way through their memoir that they are really boring and the fiction flows.  James Frey, Margaret B. Jones (nom de plume of Margaret Seltzer), Herman Rosenblat and the list goes on. 

Are the authors taking the chance that no one will call them out or do research about their stories? Let's be honest, most of the people in Three Cups of Tea wouldn't likely be in the reading audience or able to dispute any inconsistencies regarding their representation.  Some of these "stories" could have been great novels; the authors don't lack creativity and were able to get published. Maybe the authors didn't expect to be best-sellers?

 The part that gets my goat is he claims to have been kidnapped and one of the alleged kidnappers is disputing the accusations.  To me, that changes the whole situation.  It's veering into Jolly Earnest Westerner and his thrilling, exotic adventures with the Brown People.   I've  read both books, but was "meh" about them. The whole story is starting to turn my stomach.
As far as the alleged misappropriation of funds, most charities spend their donations on overhead.  Not on book promotion, but I'm sure the excuse will be that promoting the book promotes the charity, yada yada.  Having relatives and acquaintances that have been missionaries or employees of charities, working in a foreign field can be really challenging.  You toe the line between supporting the community and encouraging self-sufficiency.  Sometimes, it is more efficient to fund existing services and clinics than to create new services or clinics just to have it as your brand.

What's your opinion?  "Fact" or "Fictionalized Fact"

Seven-Tenths: Love, Piracy, & Science at Sea

Title: Seven-Tenths: Love, Piracy, & Science at Sea by David Fisichella
Publisher: Leapfrog Press
Published: 4/15/2010
ISBN: 9781935248101
Pages: 232

Seven-tenths, the percentage of the earth covers the earth, is also apparently David Fisichella's magic number.  On the verge of divorce, frustrated with his job, and looking for something new, David Fisichella is confused by how to change his life and move forward. He answers an ad for sight guides for blind sailors and  begins the second chapter of his life.


At a reception for the Carroll Center for the Blind and one of its Outward Bound programs, he meets Amy Bowers, an oceanographer. She has macular degeneration - a disease which is gradually taking her eyesight.  They start a relationship and Amy invites him on a voyage.  After their first voyage, the couple gets married.  As Amy's vision worsens, David gains more knowledge and experience and essentially becomes her eyes.

The first voyage was pretty much by the book.  Nothing eventful happened.  During the second voyage, they cross the equator and are "hazed" into club for those who've crossed the equator.  They also endure a pirate attack that gets pretty scary.  Still reeling from the pirate attack, the entire ship is devastated to hear of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Overall, I loved the fact that David  was willing to take his life in his hands. He disliked the way his life was going and took actions to alter all the things he disliked. He was willing to embrace new challenges and roll with the punches. For me, part of the charm of this book is the fact that he's not a professional writer, but rather a man who has had some extraordinary experiences and wants to share them.  

Minor irritations – He expresses disappointment that Durban, South Africa is more like San Francicso, ie a major cosmopolitan city than a jungle or war zone, which fits his idea of Africa. The safari they take feels like the truer Africa to him. On the second ship, he characterizes the Jamaican mate's accent of the Raven as a “ganja-mon accent.” Really!!!! However, after coming ashore on September 12, 2011 and being confronted by a group of Djiboutian men, he seems to realize the amount of privilege he has as an American.

**This review was based on a reader copy provided by the publisher.**