Talking to Girls About Duran Duran

Have you seen that meme going around on Facebook this week that says the #1 song on your 14th birthday is the one that defines your life? It turned into an interesting discussion in our newsroom - which mainly served to show most of us how old we are. But, it also reminded us that the songs of our adolescence live forever, deep in the recesses of our hearts. They're the songs that bring you instantly back to a time and place - and, a feeling. There are songs from my teen years that I still can't listen to because they bring back memories of first heartbreak (The Tony Rich Project's Nobody Knows will bring me to my knees every time.) There are songs from college that remind me of late night house parties in dingy basements (Next "Too Close") and songs that remind me of childhood road trips with my family, every summer from Montana to Wisconsin (Kenny Rogers and Anne Murray's Greatest Hits are my mom's go-to JAMS.)

THAT is what Rob Sheffield's book is all about. Our adolescent years, those songs and how they help define who we are.

This is the 3rd of Sheffield's books that I've read and each one is amazing for totally different reasons. One was about music and the sudden loss of his wife. One was about music and his life after that tragedy (my review of that book is here.) This one is about music and life before all of that. Specifically, it's about the music that defined the 80's. The book - like Sheffield - is cool as hell. But, it's also touching and evokes memories in me about things I never lived through. He even dedicates a chapter to the glory that is the cassingle. Look, youngters, you'll never know the pure joy of buying a tape for $1.99 that had one song on each side (especially when those cassingles are TLC's Creep and Nate Dogg and Warren G's Regulate and you just got your license and your first car and FREEDOM.) 

This book is for anyone who lived through the 80s. Truth be told, I'm a tad young for a lot of this, so the David Bowie stuff and even most of Duran Duran is lost on me. But, we get there right around the time he titles a chapter "Funky Cold Medina" - and, his takes on Debbie Gibson transported me back to 4th grade when I had "Foolish Beat" on repeat (and, by "on repeat" I mean "rewinding over and over until my pink boom box finally ate the tape for good.)

I love Rob Sheffield's writing and I love the way he makes me feel about music. ALL of his books are beautiful and evocative and will have you reaching for music you haven't thought about in years, all to chase that feeling. This book had me listening to Kenny Rogers for an entire day, with "Love Will Turn You Around" transporting me back to hot summers in the back seat, somewhere near Bismark, North Dakota.

So, read Rob's books. All of them. And keep your boom box handy relive those sweet, sweet jams.

((Oh, and for the record, the #1 song on my 14th birthday? The one that's supposed to define me? Baby Got Back. Don't you say another word.)) 

The Music Shop

I didn't intend to read two books this weekend. But, as soon as I got one page into Rachel Joyce's The Music Shop, I knew I couldn't stop until it was over.

This is one of those books that crawled into my heart and will reside forever. I finished this book last night and I miss these people. I want to know what they're doing now and what they will do next. I will worry about some of them. That's writing. Oh, and did I mention this book has its own Spotify playlist?

I didn't know anything about this book, but I found it on a list of books to read this summer. My small neighborhood library happened to have it in stock. Once I cracked it open, it was like the book had been waiting on that shelf my whole life, just waiting for me to pick it up.

Did I mention I adore this book?

The Music Shop takes place in a literal music shop in England in 1988. It sits on a ramshackle street, full of misfit shops and shopkeepers. They're a dysfunctional group that you begin rooting for from page one. Frank owns the music shop and refuses to sell CDs. He's vinyl before vinyl became cool again and that dedication is about to become his undoing. But, he has an extraordinary gift for finding you the music you need to listen to, even if you have no idea that you need it. The guy that only likes Chopin and is nursing a broken heart? Frank introduces him to Aretha. He describes classical music like a prize fight. One after another, customers come into the shop and leave enlightened.

Their worlds all turn upside down when a mysterious woman faints outside the shop. Her entrance into their lives is at once sweet and bewildering and we watch from the sidelines, fully invested, as Frank tries to make sense of his feelings for her. Can music bring them together? Can music save Frank? Can optimism save them all?

I feel like I can't say anymore because it's too precious and sweet and I don't want to ruin it. Just read it. Open your heart to these misfits. Keep your phone handy because you have to hear some of these songs the way Frank describes them. And, prepare to be smitten and engaged and frustrated and sad and uplifted.

House of Broken Angels

Big Angel is ready to die.

But first... First, he has to bury his mother, hold a massive birthday celebration, repent for his sins and reunite his family.

Seems daunting, right?

It's also a hell of a plot for a book.

I picked up House of Broken Angels after reading that one of my favorite authors (the amazing Jess Walter) was reading it. Now, I can't find where I read that and I might have confused it with someone else. Either way, I checked it out from the library with zero expectations. I was so pleasantly surprised.

While I loved the writing and the larger-than-life characters (from Big Angel to his younger half-brother Little Angel - the names are another story altogether), this book started a bit slow for me. I kept getting the characters confused and it just wasn't picking up for me in the beginning. Then, I found out it was due back at the library, so I knew I needed to buckle down and get into it. Once I did, the pages flew.

Ultimately, it's a story about family and culture and, especially, the mixed cultures in America now that have some generations feeling as though they're straddling two entirely different worlds. In this case, Big Angel is also straddling the world of the living and the world of the dead. He knows he's about to die and welcomes it at times; then, he sees his family swirling around him and desperately wants to hold on.

The characters are rich, the setting is vibrant and I found myself grinning those final few pages. The writing here is beautiful, too.

It's a fantastic read with a cleavage-escaping parrot at the end that you have to read about to believe. This book reads like a movie in all the best ways.

The Leavers

How do you know who you are if you have no idea where you came from? Especially as you find yourself half-formed, trap between two identities, two families and two entirely different worlds? 

Those are the questions Deming faces, first as a child whose Chinese mom goes to work and never comes home, then again as a grown man named Daniel Wilkerson, the product of white parents in upstate New York.

The Leavers began for me as a slow burn. I knew I liked it and it kept me interested, but it didn't seem to be going anywhere fast. Still, the story of this young boy and his broken, uncertain childhood kept me engaged. When it picked up, it picked up and carried me through to a purely satisfying end.

When Deming mom heads to work and doesn't return, it was easy for me to hate her - to chastise her for her extreme selfishness. Then, I ached for his adoptive mom, who clearly tries everything she can to be a mother to someone not willing to give up the woman who left him behind. I ached for Deming/Daniel as he struggled at every turn to find his way in the world. Then, I was mad at him for giving up too easily.

That's what life is, right? No easy path, no clear direction, often more mess than masterpiece. And, as Deming finds his mom and begins to understand the story of why she left, the book picked up in pace, intertwining all those feelings at once.

This book is about family and culture and identity - and, what happens when the lines between all of those things blur. It's also a story deeply relevant today about the indiscriminate way some immigrants are snatched away from all they've ever known without a chance to say goodbye.

The Leavers is beautiful and simple and heart-wrenching and honest. If it takes a bit to grab your interest, stay with it. What it reveals is worth the wait.

Educated

Tara Westover went from living in a junkyard in southern Idaho to a Harvard-educated PhD. That's incredible in its own right; but, it's the story of Westover's abusive, troubling childhood that fills the pages of Educated. I've heard and read about this book for weeks, not quite sure if it would live up to the hype. What I found was a book I devoured in a flight across the country and even more questions about the childhood that should have swallowed her whole.

To call Tara Westover's parents eccentric doesn't do justice to the wild behaviors that dominated her chaotic childhood. She describes her dad as a violent, manipulative prepper who shields his children from the world - and, makes them work in a dangerous scrap heap to support the family. There are accidents everywhere, from near-deadly falls to one son, engulfed in flames. He berates them with theories about the end times and forbids them from attending school. Tara's mother, while not outwardly abusive, is no better, as she repeatedly fails to protect and advocate for her children. Add to the mix a horrible abusive brother and you wonder, page after page, how in the world anyone could make it out alive.

Yet, somehow, Tara escapes. Physically at first, in the form of dance classes. Then, she ends up teaching herself how to do complicated math so that she can pass the ACT and get out of the family's home forever. Yet it's when she enrolls in college that she realizes how trapped she really is by the past and the family that shaped her existence. You watch as Tara climbs out then falls back over and over and over. I found myself horribly frustrated that she can't get out of this cycle, only to be reminded that this horrific abuse and control is the only existence she's ever known.

There are other books like this - Glass Castle, the most famous. Still, Educated keeps you enthralled as you try to understand how families can treat each other this way. And as hard as you root for Tara, you realize that escaping such a past is not a linear process. 

Highly readable, Educated will open your eyes, no matter how badly you want to shut them at times. And, you'll cheer for the outside world to help Tara overcome what seems to be ingrained in her DNA. 

Exit West

Some writers pull you in from the very first sentence - and, not just because of urgent action in the opening paragraphs. Sometimes, you can just tell you're going to love a book by the sentence structure.

This is one of those books.

I somehow hadn't heard of Exit West, despite it being on quite  a few "best of" lists last year. It was one of Barack Obama's favorite books, or so my independent bookstore tells me. For whatever reason, I missed it. I'm glad the cover caught my eye.

Exit West is about leaving your home land and rebuilding in a strange world. That changes not only those who migrate, but also the world they leave and the world they enter. In this story, a young couple leaves a war torn homeland, hoping to find safety and security in the unknown. There's no real urgent action here at all; it simply follows their journey and watches how it changes them.

Exit West offers a bit of science fiction as well, as magical doors allow migrants to go from one location to another. But, don't let that turn you off. It's really a minor part of the larger story. The story itself is about change and its impact not only on our own lives but on the world around us. 

The book is a quick read, it's simple, it's timely and it's powerful. Quietly powerful. The writing is beautiful. Barack Obama was onto something.

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.