Jonathan Tropper makes me wish I was a dude. Or, at least, he makes me wish I could, sometimes, write like one.

The Book of Joe is actually my second Tropper book of the year, the first being This Is Where I Leave You, which made me fall a little bit in love with him. The Book of Joe confirmed, if it's not love, it's at least a pretty serious crush.

This was actually an earlier book, and it felt like it. He has my propensity for sometimes being just this much too clever with his turns of phrase. For using eighteen words where six might work, as it were. But, the thing is, he is clever. He writes some really funny, really biting, occasionally unexpected stuff.

Quick synopsis (by request, since apparently I rarely ever actually say much about what the book is about, and some of you would like the elevator pitch): Joe is a guy in his mid-thirties who has recently hit the big time with his debut novel. He's rolling in money, driving a great car, and sort of a little bit miserable. When his father falls ill, he heads out of New York and back to the small New England town he's not returned to in nearly seventeen years. Because, teensy weensy detail, the book he wrote was about said small New England town, and most of the people in it, and it was ... let's say, unflattering. Chaos inevitably ensues. There you have it.

Every once in a while throughout his novel Tropper sounds a little bit like a guy trying not to write a guys' book, and gives in to a sort of sappy tone of predictability. Still, it's nice to hear a guy writing about a guy and not being afraid to include some fear, some serious self-doubt, and some true, childhood love that has (almost) nothing to do with sex. I don't know what the male equivalent of chick lit is called, but this is a shining example of it.

Continuing in my summer long style of reading some really beautiful, and sometimes somewhat slow, narratives, I stepped up to the big leagues with Elizabeth Strout's Pulitzer Prize-winning novelistic collection of short stories, Olive Kitteridge.

At last month's Antioch Writers' Workshop, Strout's name hung in the air; she'd been one of the guests in attendance two years ago -- the same year she published Olive Kitteridge -- and people seemed to speak her name in rather reverent, hushed tones. People say my name loudly and often as the butt of a joke, so I was intrigued.

Olive is a quiet book, centering around -- wait for it -- an aging small town retired teacher named Olive Kitteridge. Some of the stories are about Olive and her family -- her kind husband and her troubled only child son -- and in others, she's merely a background player for the folks who come and go in and out of her little world.

I have a tremendous respect for the art of the short story; it's a deceptively difficult thing to create an entire, complex story in a limited number of pages. Strout handles it beautifully, weaving together a really lovely tale from a lot of different lives and stories. I just love Strout's approach to voice and language -- it's something I've been concentrating on a lot lately ... since all my characters sound suspiciously just like me.

Perhaps the only negative I might assign to Strout's book is, well, just that -- it's a little negative, for a complete lack of a more interesting or inspired word. I feel a little about Olive the way I would about Angela Lansbury -- my mom used to watch Murder She Wrote and, without fail, would comment that if she ever saw that woman ambling into town, she'd hightail it out -- you can be pretty certain that once she shows up, something bad is going to happen. Within the hour. I just wish Ms. Strout had given us a little more of the positive side of the Kitteridges and their neighbors -- I don't think the nostalgic, almost melancholy tone would have been lost.

Second round with little Lisbeth and her cohorts.

I do have to say that I enjoyed this one more than the last one, which I did enjoy, and I do have to say that I have no good explanation as to why. A few theories: while the first of Larsson's trilogy revolved mostly around Kalle Blomkvist, which I cannot pronounce and therefore call him, simply, 'Mike,' Fire is a lot more Lisbeth, and she's a cool character. (Side note: you know how sometimes you get something stuck in your head, even when it's ridiculous? Somehow, my tiny blonde -- and so maybe sort of Swedish-looking? -- friend is the only human being I know over the age of eleven who is as tiny and as spunky as Lisbeth is described to be. And once I thought of that, now I can't picture anyone else in the movie in my head that plays as I read. Kim is neither apparently autistic, tattooed, or known to have killed anyone, so... yeah. Moving on.) Also, this one just felt more active to me. Not that Dragon Tattoo didn't keep things plowing forward, but this felt more like a thriller to me. More of a page turner. I hope it's a trend that continues through the Hornet's Nest and, if it should come to pass, the fourth book.

What I didn't love so much. The book begins with some interesting characters and happenings that go... absolutely nowhere. I don't like getting to the end of a book only to find out that the first third of it was filler. I don't think books should start with filler. That doesn't make much sense, now does it. The circumstances don't advance the plot at all, and they don't give us any information or insight into Lisbeth's personality that we haven't already been privy to from the first book. (Another side note: some people will tell you that you don't need to read the first one in order to enjoy the second. That may be true, but it is my opinion that you absolutely need the first one to really have any clear idea what or who you're reading about in the second. And also I don't really understand people who would read the second book in a trilogy without reading the first. Those people make me uneasy.)

I take some small issue with Larsson repeatedly handing his characters the tools -- skills, knowledge, and sometimes actual, literal tools -- they need to get out of the situations he puts them in. I sort of think if they can't get out of them themselves, maybe the writer has no business putting them there in the first place. But this is nitpicky, and probably unavoidable, and is why I don't write thrillers.

But, after some of the slower stories I've been reading lately -- some good, some eh -- this is a great way to get back to movement. He'll keep you up at night with the "one more chapter" syndrome, and that is, I would have to say, probably the best thing a writer can do.

(A final side note: Just Netflixed the Swedish film version of the first novel, which is supposed to be amazing. I'm a little freaked out, not completely sure I want to see some of those things played out in front of me, but I'll let you know if I recommend it! Anyone seen it yet who wants to weigh in before I watch?)

I am famous in small circles and my own mind for my interesting choices of mates. I have no "type," I've always said, at least not physically anyway. I can get just as giddy over a preppy green eyed blond as I can over a dark and spiky haired artist. I don't much care for ugly, because it's not pretty, but I do have a soft spot for the nerds. The cute dorks. Always have. It's the four-eyed bookworm in me. It's intangible, as it probably is for a lot of people, but I like what I like and I know it when I see it and I can't imagine ever giving someone the chance to "grow" on me. Like algae. Or fungus. (Huh. Are algae and fungus the same thing?) Either way, ew.

The one thing I always thought bound a good number of my beloveds together was the complete and utter totality of their commitment issues. I get into a relationship and then stubbornly stay there, come hell or high water, even when, as one ex put it, we seem sort of doomed to be together. Together... but not married. Together ... but ... not really. Not so much. Like magnets, my clinginess and their complete lack thereof simultaneously attract and repel each other. It may not be going anywhere, or even particularly healthy, but I can count on it. It's just the nature of my type.

Now imagine the size of the hole blown into this theory last weekend, when not one but two of my exes got engaged. Neither of them to me.

I can't lie; that'll make you stop hard in your tracks. Particularly when "you" is "me" and "me" is way over this side of 30, childless, and whining on an endless loop to friends, God love 'em, who have long since stopped listening to me bitch about being old and childless.  I always assumed I wasn't married to these particular guys because they had "issues committing." But if they're engaged ...

Oh my God.

Maybe it's me. Maybe I'm the commitmentphobe.

And maybe I'm just whining about it because I feel like I'm supposed to? I like guys. (Seriously. It was one kiss, drunk in a bar, so don't even go down that path.) And I like kids. I do. I don't like the idea of not being able to have them. But, even at this advanced age, I can't quite hear my biological clock. Maybe mine's on vibrate? I'm sure it's ticking, it must be, but it's not prompting me to action.  I'm just sitting here, still single. Still old and childless.

But really, what's that action supposed to be? Am I to go after guys now like a heat seeking missile, just tracking down someone with a decent head of hair, a controlled beer paunch and some spare sperm? Am I to lower my standards, giving that sort of creepy guy who leers at me every time I go into CVS a chance? (Mind you, he doesn't work there. He's just always there. And he doesn't have a decent head of hair or any control over that gut.) And a chance at what, exactly? Oy.

It's been a retrospective week. A sort of sad one, even. Not because I was supposed to marry either of these guys, because apparently I wasn't. While it's hard not to feel just a little left behind, I trust -- I hope, anyway -- that they have found just the right person for them. I would love for them to be happy and content and have lots of little exes.*

It's just that ... if it's me, I think I'm sort of screwed. I think I can fix anything else but that.


*This is not a completely accurate statement. In fact, it's an outright lie. I tried to be PC but I feel badly about being dishonest. This should read something more along the lines of: I believe completely that one of them has found the right person, and I couldn't be happier for him. He's my friend. One of my best. Our relationship has changed dramatically and continuously in the seven or so years since we met, but I think it's grown and shifted into what it was meant to be. A really great friendship. He's still a shit sometimes and doesn't call me when he's supposed to (you were supposed to call me last week) but he cares about me. He cares to know me and stay in my life and I truly, deeply hope his beautiful young wife-to-be will as well. The other one ... the other one. Not so much. That's all I have to say about the other one.

I have a healthy sense of irony, I think. I get that saying anything even remotely critical of a girl who writes about every trite and trivial thing happening in her life may make your eyebrows go up. I get it. So if I sound critical, just realize it's really nothing more than envy.

That's what Sloane Crosley does in her second book of personal essays, How Did You Get This Number -- she writes about every trite and trivial thing. Only what is trite and trivial in her life would land in the "five coolest things ever to happen to me" column in my life. Her first collection, I Was Told There'd Be Cake, came out a few years ago and had much the same impact on me as this one: insane jealousy that people live much cooler lives than me and therefore have more, and wackier, stories to tell.

I will compare her to David Sedaris, which is truly the highest compliment I can pay to an essayist. Indeed, every night after bathtime when it's time to say my prayers, He (God, not David) hears something from me along the lines of, "Dear God, please oh please oh please let someone compare me someday to David Sedaris." Sometimes it comes before my plea for a rich, gorgeous husband and a new pair of Louboutins and sometimes it comes after, but it's usually tucked comfortably in the middle.

The only times I got annoyed with Ms. Crosley were the moments she seemed to be veering down one path and then, ooh ... something shiny ... and she was off in another direction. I would rather read (and write, I guess, is probably really what I'm saying) a million short, tight stories than a rambling one that could probably be really funny except that you completely lost me and I have no idea what you're talking about so instead of laughing at/with/potAYto/potAHto you I'm just annoyed with you for talking too much. Again, ironic, I know. I know.

I do have to concede, though, this would have made a much better beach book than a heartwarming, beautifully executed tale about child sexual abuse. You can pick it up, put it down, read it quickly, skim, all attributes of a book destined to be resort reading. Not much meat, and that's okay, because who wants meat on the beach?

Actually, I'm going to tell you all to go get it, and read it, and then report back to me what you liked and what you didn't, so that when I start writing my own book I'll know what you want. Okay, go.

It took me a long time to read this book, because I knew I would have to write a review.

It's not that I shied away from the subject matter or that I'd heard anything less than praise for the novel. It's that I pinky-promised myself last January I would review every single book I read, even the embarrassing ones. No skipping, no matter what -- if it got read, it got reviewed. 

It just never crossed my mind that I would read a book by someone I know. In this case, it's not even just someone I know, but a former English teacher and current writing mentor. How the hell do you do a book review on your writing mentor? I can't even bring myself to call her anything other than Miss Kittle and she hasn't been my teacher since like 1991. We're practically the same age. And still, there is reverence given where there is reverence due.

That being said, I feel a need to reassure you that it's an honest review. She can't grade me anymore. If I hadn't liked the book, a lot or a little, I would have told you. It is an exceptionally well-crafted story, and I'm so relieved.

Imagine the darkest thing you can that could happen to a child. Now, take it one shade deeper into blackness -- into the unimaginable, really -- and that's what we're asked to deal with in Katrina Kittle's The Kindness of Strangers. The name and the book jacket are lighthearted and lovely. The life of its youngest main character is anything but.

In turn, fortunately, Kittle's telling of his story is anything but bleak. It's impossible, I would have to believe, to write about crimes against children in an honest and raw way without making your readers very, very uncomfortable. I choose to write about things like bikini waxes gone bad and ill-behaved house pets, so clearly she has a level of maturity I've not yet found. But she tackles the issue head on, without ever tiptoeing around it or doing a disservice to her characters by not making us, as readers here by choice, go through the same crises they must face.

She leaves you guessing, nearly to the end, who you can root for and who you should spit on. Much in the same way middle-schooler Jordan wants so much to believe in the best in people, even in really, really bad people, Kittle makes us want that too. She sweeps us up in his adolescent need for normalcy and family, and reminds us those are needs we never outgrow. 

It's a beautiful telling of an ugly truth. 

Side note: Because I frequently make inexplicable and suspect choices, I read this book on vacation. While I highly recommend reading the book, I equally highly recommend not reading it on a beach.  It just feels weird.

Ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner. Favorite book of the year (so far) goes to the hauntingly beautiful writing of Kathleen Kent in The Heretic's Daughter. Recommended to me by my writing partner (and I use that term loosely, since in between our brief flashes of brilliance we spend most of our time gossiping and talking about her charmingly frustrating four year old), it is the first book in a long time that's kept me up way past my bedtime, because I just had to have one more chapter in me before I closed my eyes.

First, the backstory. Ms. Kent, as many of us do, grew up with stories of her ancestors. One in particular was Martha Carrier, who would have been her grandmother nine times back or something like that. One of the most prominent figures in the infamous Salem witch trials of the late 1600s, Martha was hung for being outspoken, critical of the judiciary process she was held slave to, and for generally not being well-liked by her neighbors. That's pretty much all it took in those days, in that town. The author was so fascinated by the stories that she spent a significant amount of time researching both the trials themselves and her own family's involvement. She dug through historical research, myriad archives and transcripts, and her family's memories. The result is her debut novel, and I think it is really lovely.

Told from the fictional perspective of Martha's young daughter (the daughter was real, just the storytelling was imagined), Kent brings to life an absolutely beautiful and devastatingly harsh time. Fear of Indian attacks ran rampant. Smallpox swept unceremoniously through households and towns and killed in indiscriminant multitudes. The Puritanical life was barren. But, as Kent gently reminds us, families were close to and dependent upon one another, and kids were, as they will always be, kids. Sarah, our narrator, is equal parts stubborn -- like her mother -- and sarcastically observant of the iniquities of the time. She witnesses, and experiences first hand, some of the worst atrocities our country has been responsible for committing against our own. It was terrifying, and Kent does justice to the enormity of the situation, without ever once being flowery or overly stylistic. She stays true to the voice and nature of her characters, and since they wouldn't be melodramatic in the telling of their tale, neither is Kent.

She writes poetically, effortlessly. It's a distinctive style and specific to the era, but she never forces anything on her readers. It flows, and she paints. They say that an actor has to respect whomever it is that they are portraying, even if the audience sees an evil tyrant or a selfish drunk ... both of whom appear in The Heretic's Daughter. Somehow, though, all of Kent's characters are beloved and heartwarming ... well, okay, maybe not all of them, but the main ones, anyway -- even the most fatally flawed of the bunch.

It's a slow unfolding, so if you're looking for action, action, action you should probably put this one on hold for now. But if you decide to pick it up, and I hope, hope, hope you will, have a computer close by -- I found myself repeatedly needing to Wikipedia the people and circumstances she was describing, because it was so unbelievable to me that this stuff really happened. It really did.

First of all, I love -- and I mean passionately LOVE -- that we live in a country where there can be buzz and hype and controversy surrounding a book, of all things. That a tiny little square of paper and ink can spark debate and invoke emotion and make people think. That we're educated enough to appreciate things others write, whether or not we agree. You will nearly never hear me talk about politics, or religion, or things of that ilk -- the former because I couldn't give two hoots and the latter because I hoot very deeply -- but I will go on record as saying that I feel blessed and proud to live in a place where any old person can read any old thing they want to. It's a gift we take for granted, and if you ever question whether or not our military is fighting for things that matter, please try to imagine a little girl somewhere who can't fathom being able or allowed to read anything at all, let alone something controversial or question-inspiring.

And, as soon as I climb down off of this here unexpectedly high horse, I'll get back to the business of book reviews. Giddy up.

I know I'm a little behind the times on this one. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is the first in a trilogy by Stieg Larsson, and the third book has just been released in hardback. So, I've got some catching up to do, but I wanted to start at the beginning. Surprisingly, while I've heard tons of buzz about the series, I knew nearly nothing about the book itself. Which caught me a bit off guard, and I'm still trying to decide if that's a bad thing or a very good one.

The back cover of the book talks about a murder mystery (ooh...), love story (ahh...), and financial intrigue (o... a... wtf?) White collar crime is hardly the stuff of legendary drama, I thought to myself, but maybe there will be enough murder and enough love to make up for it. There was.

Larsson started off a bit slowly, honestly, and I was a little concerned that I was in for another dud. (I've learned, the hard way that a lot of buzz around a book does not necessarily indicate a good book. Just a buzzed about one.) It picked up though, fairly quickly and in a big way. The title character -- who, interestingly enough, is a key player but not actually the main character, at least in this one -- is a tiny little punk girl who finds herself helping out a disgraced journalist on a case he's been hired to write about. The characters are well-developed and believable, even with their eccentricities and outlandishness, the relationships are fantastic, the pace is great, and I'm looking quite forward to the next one. Word of warning, though, and perhaps a bit of a spoiler: the book goes to some dark places, much darker than you would expect a book about "financial intrigue" to go. I'm not sure how I hadn't heard that at all and so it was really jarring, but again -- good or bad? I wouldn't have wanted any details -- and I won't give you any -- but I think I might have liked a little heads up. So there's yours.

Hoping to read the second book over the Fourth of July holiday -- nothing says love your country like tales of murder and woe!

Interesting little aside: Author Stieg Larsson, Swedish himself, as are the characters and most of the settings of his book, led a very interesting life, most of which was not as a writer but an activist. He lived for several decades with a woman with whom he protested and did activisty type things. He died, very suddenly of a heart attack, having written his trilogy but not published it. The success of the three books came after his death, but because he had no will, under Swedish law his profits and estate have gone to his next of kin -- in this case his father and brother. To date, his life partner of over thirty years has been given absolutely nothing from them. But ... she has Larsson's laptop ... which contains the fourth script in this insanely popular and profitable series. Now that's an intriguing story, my friends.

I'm in a pickle, people. I know I'm going to get a good chunk of you all riled up about this one, and I'm bracing myself for the pickle-throwing storm. That may well be the most bizarre thing I've ever written, but you know what I mean.

I have long since claimed to be open-minded about the books I read. I will happily say I read trash, and I revel in it; I soak it up just as thoroughly as I can absorb my favorite Austen or genius Fitzgerald or any one of those loveable Bronte girls. Just like with film, there's a place for everything. I just watched Rachel Getting Married (Brilliant. Brilliant.) and then Pineapple Express. (Brilliant. What?) I can watch anything, read anything... As Long As It's Well Done.

How, then, do I deal with a blah book, that people happen to love? And there's no doubt that this guy is feeling the love, hard core. By the tens of millions, as women flock to the shelves to line his pockets with more money than God and the Queen combined. (I say with near certainty that no man has ever read a Nicholas Sparks book. Not even the gay ones.)

I picked up Dear John at my sister's house. (I won't say which sister, so I'm not technically outing her.) It violated my first rules of literature, which is to never read a book with movie stars on the cover. If the movie version of a book that I want to read has already come out, I will scour the back of the bookstore until I find the original book cover. But, being the literary non-snob that I am, I thought I'd give it a go. It's summer, and it seemed like a nice, summery romance.

Here's where I will give him credit. The story takes place in Wilmington, North Carolina, and I absolutely love Wilmington, North Carolina. I've been in love there, and had my heart broken there. So far, I'm on board.

That might be kind of it. The rest is ... tepid. I can't say bad, I guess. I've read some books -- not many, but some -- that I fully blame for the dumbing down of America. This wasn't that. It was just a moderately readable story, with mildly interesting characters. I had a really hard time buying into the love story that the book revolves around, not because it was relatively unfeasible (which it was) but because I just don't think he worked hard enough to make me buy it. Two young people fall in love in just a matter of days, and that's it. Now, I am hopelessly, happily romantic enough to want to believe that. But I'm world-weary enough to need some proof that, after a mere matter of hours, two people can find a love that will sustain distance and conflict and, in this case, a national tragedy and a handful of personal ones. It just wasn't there. Sparks was lazy and, I think, a little arrogant in assuming that his readers would just go along with whatever he told them, and however little he told them, without putting in the work to create an engaging, believable, heart-wrenching love. And, clearly, he was right in assuming that, since he's sold roughly a bazillion copies of this book. And the film rights.

I just can't get over the notion that it's simply not that well written. And I'm glad I didn't spend money on either one.

I'm sure I've ignited some sparks with this one -- and yes, my pun was intentional -- so I'd love, truly, to hear from some of you guys that read him a lot.

What am I missing?