The Last Black Unicorn

I needed this.

After the last two books I read left me disappointed, I needed something that I knew for sure I would like. Enter, the hilarious Tiffany Haddish.

I read the nearly 300 pages of this book in a matter of hours and got so much more out of it than I expected. I knew it would be funny and irreverent, but didn't expect much more than that. I didn't expect to read so much about the darkness of Haddish's upbringing, which shed a lot of light on her comedy.

Haddish was the daughter of an absent father and a mother who became mentally ill and abuse after a car crash. Haddish became a foster child, beaten and left and feeling uncared for. Her grandmother eventually took her in, but the scars of that childhood are still just below the surface. It almost feels like classic comic cliche; the sad clown, hiding tears behind laughter. She doesn't make apologies for it - she rolls with it, acknowledging it's there, but not using any of it as an excuse.

Beyond her childhood, this woman has simply been through some shit. From a bunch of jackass boyfriends to an abusive husband to promoters who expected her to put out if she wanted to get on stage. This book takes you along for the journey in an honest, often hilarious way. It feels real and raw and really honest. It's probably even better if you listen to the audio book so you can hear it in her voice.

Case in point: the chapter in which she takes Will and Jada Smith on a swamp tour. It's funny as hell in the book, but it's even funnier to hear her tell it. If you like this, you'll like the book. It's that simple.

Wonder Valley

This book started off strong, full of promise. More specifically, it starts with a naked man running down the freeway in L.A. morning traffic. Bizarre enough, made even more strange by a man who puts his car in park and chases after him. You know, at some point, their stories will intertwine. You hope it's worth the wait.

Then, it's really not.

This is a tricky one for me, as I was interested enough in this book to get through it in just a couple of days. I wanted to see how all these stories came together. But, as the pages wore on, I had a feeling I would be disappointed. 

Wonder Valley jumps from character to character, from one time frame to another. It's easy to follow and the writing is good. The storylines are interesting enough: a rich white girl who screws up and leaves her life, only to end up in a cult-ish compound in the desert; a young black man, recently released from jail, who came west to LA to find his mom; a pair of wandering criminals who only have each other; that naked guy, who is the son of the man who leads that desert cult; and, the guy who runs after him in traffic, trying to escape the mundane day-to-day that is his life.

They're all connected - loosely. They all have pasts from which they can't escape. They're all running away from something and to something. But, it takes too long to make those connections. And, their backstories - more interested than their present, in my opinion - are too quickly glossed over to give the characters any depth.

It feels like there's a good story in here in each of the characters, but combining them did a disservice to them all.

You know what it reminds me of? Those Garry Marshall movies that have come out in recent years, Valentine's Day and Mother's Day. Because he's Garry freaking Marshall, he gets these amazing superstars to be in his movies, then he jumbles them all together into a blockbuster movie. The actors are fantastic, but the movies fall flat. No offense to Garry Marshall. 

Like those movies, I still made it through this book. But, I don't see it as the "classic LA novel" it's made out to be.

Maybe it needed more naked guy.

Manhattan Beach

This is less of a book review and more of a cautionary tale. It's a tale of what happens when you break your own rules and live with the consequences. I broke my rule and lost a week of my life because of it.

That's a little dramatic, I grant you.

But, I made a rule years ago not to finish a book I don't like. I'm not in college anymore, I don't have to finish the books that I start. No one is grading me on this. It's a good rule. I have a full-time job and a husband and kids and shit to do. Why waste any of my "free" time doing something that doesn't make me happy? Well, I broke the rule with this book and I'm really mad at myself for it.

I was so excited to read this book, as I loved Egan's Visit From the Goon Squad years ago. I got the notice from the library that it was available less than 24 hours before getting on a flight. Kismet, I thought. And, on that short flight to Vegas, I didn't even pay for the in-flight Wifi. I burned through 125 pages thinking good things were ahead. Still, I had no idea where it was going. When I closed the book after the final page (400+), I still didn't know what it was about. I felt less than "meh." 

The book tells the story of a family during the World War II. Through the eyes of a young woman determined to prove herself (kinda), you read of life in NYC during that desperate time. Her father vanishes, her crippled sister yearns for life... Christ, I can't even fake this. This book meandered to nowhere and you should only read it if you're content wandering down the street with nowhere to go and nothing interesting to look at.

Harsh? Maybe. But, this book is too long and written by too talented of a writer to leave me so dissatisfied. 

Oh, and I'm also about 5 episodes into a podcast that's going nowhere, so if you know where I can find a little inspiration, hit me up.

Finishing what you started is overrated anyway.

The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley

"We are the sum total of the choices we have made." - Eleanor Roosevelt

If what old Eleanor says is true, what does that mean for all of us? Does every choice we make lead to some inevitable conclusion? Are there no mistakes that can be erased? Can we truly not outrun our past?

Those questions - the last one in particular - are the cornerstone of Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley. That's the plot. But the heart of the book is the relationship between a single dad and his daughter. It's a rough story at times - at others, it's sweet. And, it moved fast enough to read in a weekend.

The story flashes from present day to the dark corners of Hawley's life. We know from the beginning he's a man of scars, both literal and figurative. The flashback chapters each tell the story of one of the bullets Hawley's taken, slowly revealing the past he can never quite escape.

We learn of a two-person family who lives life on the run. It's a man trying to keep his daughter safe and a child who doesn't quite understand what's putting them in danger. It's about what happens when a man with a past tries to build a future and the wounds that never quite heal.

Nothing blew me away about this book. The writing was good, but wasn't trying too hard to feel philosophical. The characters were well drawn out. The journey it takes is compelling enough that you want to read it quickly to see where it ends. And, clearly, it was interesting enough to burn through in a matter of a holiday weekend. The ending felt a little tidy to me, compared to the chaos that preceded it.

Bottom line: I liked it. I'm glad I read it. But, it wasn't among the best I've read in recent months.