Winning Balance: What I've Learned So Far about Love, Faith, and Living Your Dreams by Shawn JohnsonI love Shawn Johnson. She's so cute and sweet and she lives in West Des Moines, which is where I live. I listened to the audio book, which she read herself, and it was nice to hear it in her own voice. It's like she was dishing all about the Olympics and Dancing With the Stars just for me. Also, she really does dish - all about crushes and boyfriends and, man, that was brave. There is no way I would want my sixteen-year-old self on record talking about that stuff.
How to Be a Woman by Caitlin MoranI went into this expecting a humorous autobiography, Bloggess-style. I found it lecture-y and rather screechy. Also...boring. My expectations played into this a lot, so maybe if you have a better grasp of what the book is about (mainly feminism) you'll like it more than I did. I rather like Caitlin Moran now, enough to consider reading her next book, I just didn't like this book. It was not the fluffy vacation book I was expecting, but it was great for putting me to sleep at night. I mean that literally and I'm SORRY it's such a cliche, but I seriously read a few pages before bed each night for the express purpose of putting me right to sleep.
This is basically a depressing take on human nature. No one is happy. Nothing will ever change (except maybe to get worse). It was almost ridiculous in it's negativity, but the awful part is it all rang true. There are three-year-olds living terribly neglected with their junkie mothers. Fathers hit sons. Teenagers are horribly cruel.
It was basically the opposite of a Harry Potter book that gives you that "the world is magical and good can always defeat evil" feeling.
After finally slogging through the Casual Vacancy I went on a 'comfort books' tear. My comfort books are mystery/suspense, sometimes formulaic, hopefully engrossing stories. Some of them were good, some not. But it was nice not to have to think, you know? I tried to make it so if you click on any of the covers it would take you to my Goodreads review, but blogger is being difficult today. They're all at the top of the recent updates list on my Goodreads page at the moment if you want to see what I thought of any of them. (Hint: I still like Mary Higgins Clark's old stuff, Julie Hyzy is cheesy, and I'm now caught up on Sookie Stackhouse.)
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