a fortunate age. joanna smith rakoff. (300)

i picked up a fortunate age after reading smith-rakoff's blurb on the back of emma forrest's your voice in my head.  it sounded like a book i would be interested, twentysomething trying to make life happen in nyc.  in fact, i was shocked that the work didn't make it onto flavorpill's list of books to fill your the 'girls'-shaped hole in your life.  it seemed like it was girls but in the nineties.  however, after reading the book, i discovered why it was probably off of the list, this work is simply mary mccartney's the group (which was on the list) but with the characters' names changed and set in the nineties.  it was such total plagiarism that i had to give it a one star on goodreads and wrote this review:

Rakoff more like ripoff!  I had deja vu the entire time I read this novel, I felt like I had read it before and in fact, I had.  Instead of reading this, you should just read Mary McCarthy's "The Group".  This book is an "homage" to it but really, she just took McCarthy's novel and changed the character's names and the decade to the 90's.  The whole time I was reading, I kept wondering how this book was ever published, I mean it should be illegal to copy another author's like Smith Rakoff did.

i mean i get that authors will allude to other works or do retellings, even fan-fiction is fine since you are simply taking character's names but writing your own work, but what smith rakoff was just plain copying.  i mean how did her publisher and editor let this book see the light of day?  were they just banking on the fact that the group is kind of dated and current readers have never read it?  i mean i will say that most of the goodreads reviews either didn't mention the group, or admitted to never reading it.  but still, i can't believe that this book was allowed to be published.

in addition to that, i can't help now but i think of smith rakoff has a coattail writer.  last year, she came out with a book about your time with j.d. salinger, which i was tempted to read, but didn't since he was a recluse.  but it seemed like she used his name to sell her book, i mean it was called my salinger year.  and after reading this, i can't help but accuse her of stealing from mccarthy.

but seriously just read the group, instead of this.  i hate to waste so much time on this novel, but have to call out this copycat.

lily and tuck were kay and harald.  both kay and lily's wedding opened the book, as their deaths closed it.  just like kay, lily became the breadwinner, and just like harald, tuck, was a horrible husband.  tuck cheated on caitlin, a character that was exactly like norine, the girl that harald cheated with.  i even think caitlin's justifications for tuck's cheating were the same ones that norine used.  just like harald, tuck had kay committed must like lily, and both claimed their wives were hysteric.  the only difference was that kay may have committed suicide while lily died from the flu.  however, both husbands were  unwelcome guest at the funerals.  i also have to add both husbands were arrested after involvement in a protest that took place in a hotel.

beth was dottie.  both had a sex adventure at the  beginning of their story.  where as dottie lost her virginity, beth just had some weird sex.  though beth ended up marrying the person she had sex with, just like dottie, she had second thoughts about her marriage.  both women worried about still being in love with her first love (for dottie this was the man she lost her virginity too.) both women had close relationships with their mother and got advice from their moms on this matter.

emily was polly, both were the poor ones of the group and have a family history of mental illness.  they both have affairs with married men who are separated from their wives.  however, these men's wives still have power over them, in original gus' wife had him see a psychoanalyst while curtis' wife made him join AA, in the end, both men return to their wives.  just like polly's dad who suffered from mental illness went to live with polly, emily's sister who suffered from mental illness went to live with emily.  everything is fine and dandy when they move in, i even think polly's dad, like emily's sister help make improvements around their apartment.  both become socialist/communist, and started to be a financial drain.  however, emily and polly both end up marrying doctor's they meet due to this drain on money, polly married the doctor she met donating blood, emily married a doctor that helped her when she got injured as her second job (this doctor she had met previously when trying to get help for her sister.)

sadie was a blend of priss and helena.  she was helena because both discovered about their best friend's affair.  she was priss, because she struggled with motherhood, though while priss struggled to get her baby to breastfeed, sadie couldn't get her son to stop.

and caitlin is norine, both had affairs with married men and then justified it with politics.  they also both end up divorcing their husbands then remarrying rich jews.  both show up and make a sense at the funerals of the women whose husbands they slept with.

tal was lakey.  the one that everyone was in love with, and just like lakey spent most of the novel, aboard.  i kept on expecting tal to come out in the end just like lakey did, showing up at the funeral with her lesbian lover.  but i guess smith rakoff figure to cut back on some of the copying.

don't know who dave was, but i mean smith rakoff needed to have one character of her own.

ps i also didn't like how lightly she treated 9/11.  i mean the fact that she mentioned it in emily's storyline explaining that her sister came in two days after that seemed odd to me.  i also wonder if travel to nyc was stopped due to 9/11 and if so, then she should have had emily's sister come in a different time.  

supermutant magic academy. jillian tamaki. (299)

supermutant magic academy had been on a handful of instagram and facebook posts and since i loved tamaki's illustrations in one last summer, i decided to check it out.

i had assumed that the supermutanta magic academy was cohesive narrative but once i started reading it, i realized it was a collection of comics.  the comics featured the same characters and they related but there wasn't a direct storyline that connected them all.  though i was expecting a graphic novel, i did enjoy the comics.  my favorite character was frances, i loved her art and her smart-ass remarks.  i also loved wendy and marsha's comics, with marsha's cute crush on wendy.

here were my favorite comics:

love food humor!

love frances!!

this margaret mitchell quote is amazing!

time is never time at all.

there is no wrong way to interpret art,

i fear for kids today.

read books!

ps this is the second book i have read that mentioned ulysses (i didn't share that comment.) i really need to read it!

fun home: a family tragicomic. alison bechdel (298)

so i messed up!  when i went to nyc in may, there was buzz about a new broadway show called fun home.  i didn't research it, but from what i had seen, it seemed like a show about a family, and it didn't seem like something i would be into, so i didn't go.  however, after watching the fun home performance at the tony's, i realized that i made a huge mistake.

i, later, discovered after reading an article about a girl that was trying to get this work plus persepolis banned from her college course (talk about ignorance), that the broadway musical i missed out, was based on a graphic novel/memoir!  double regret.  so i decided to check out the novel, and hopefully catch fun home on my next nyc trip.

so from the tony's performance, i discovered that fun home was about a woman that discovered her father was gay after she came out to her parents.  i have to admit i was very excited when i got to the part of the book that tony's was based on.  it performance stayed trued to the memoir, and really wish i had seen it on broadway.

the story of alison's sexuality was complicated, because after sharing she was a lesbian with her parents, her mother told her the truth about her father.  in addition to this, her father's response was awkward and soon after he died when struck by a car.  alison believed that it may have been a suicide based on what had occurred with her.  i have to add that with no disrespect to alison, i didn't think her father committed suicide.  yes, he was reading that camus work at the time, which made a convincing case.  however, i felt that instead of wanting to commit suicide, he would have sought a new life, as a openly gay man.  kind of like hannah's dad on season 4 of girls.  he had lived so long with his secret, though he did get caught of it a handful of times, and his wife was fully aware that to suddenly end his life didn't make sense.  i feel that if that accident hadn't happened, he would have came out, he did express to alison that now was different for gays and lesbian now, that they were able to experience a freedom, he could not.  i feel he would have been hopeful about being there for his daughter versus wanting to end it all.  he did give her colette, which helped her realized she was a lesbian.  he wanted to help his daughter.  i think the reason why he was so distant initially, was to allow her to understand her sexuality in her own terms versus being forced upon by her dad.  being a gay father, he didn't want people to think that perhaps she made him gay.  again i feel bad for typing this, because alison seemed to think it was a suicide.  but i mean life is horrible and sometimes bad things just happen.

overall, i really enjoyed this memoir.  for those of you curious, the title fun home, came from alison's family for the funeral home that they ran.  speaking of the fun home, i, like the kids, loved the story of their grandmother about their father wandering out of into a field.  i also delighted in their delight of the oven part!  but that being said, i want to revisit this work, after i read the literary works that alison referenced.  i have never read ulysses so that went over my head.  i also need to read the importance of being earnest.  

on the topic of literary works, i absolutely loved alison's dad's love of the fitzgeralds.  just like him, after reading both of their works, i became obsessed with them.  there is something so glamorous about their wild times.  i need to read this side of paradise, but loved that we had both loved nancy milford's zelda biography.  i will also look into reading some colette.

this was an interesting read and i look forward to reading it after i visit the above works, to hopefully get a different take on the memoir.

china rich girlfriend. kevin kwan. (297)

i absolutely loved kevin kwan's crazy rich asians, and when i discovered that the sequel, china rich girlfriend, came out, i had to check it out.    

it has been a year since i read crazy rich asians, and i never blogged about it. (i always have a tough time blogging when i love a book, because all i want to do is gush.  but i will try to get that post up.)  so i was little rusty on what happen.  thanks to google, i was able to piece things together and of course, also as i read, things came to me. i will say that to start i did get arminata and astrid confused, but i got that sorted out.

so again, astrid was my favorite character.  i really hope that she is the focus of the next book.  i read that this a trilogy, but i would be okay if kwan decided to make books.  back to astrid, i just love that she is just so flawlessly and effortlessly chic.  i loved how the gossip columnist dismissed her, but it was only because her jewelry was so valuable that the columnist had no idea what it is.  i absolutely love how understated her outfits are yet, if you have money, you know that the girl's clothing and accessories are crazy expensive or belong in a museum.  though i love astrid, i hated reading about her good for nothing husband!  it was frustrating to read about how abusive, he was, but she did nothing.  i am glad that she left him in the end, and hope that the third book is all about her getting back with charlie wu!

so the focus of the story is nicholas and rachel.  nicholas and his family are still not on speaking terms after his mom hired that pi to dig up dirt on rachel.  they are planning their wedding, however, rachel is still searching for her father.  i would give more, but really you need just to read this book for yourself.

some random thoughts before i close:

-loved reading all about art auction!
-the return of kitty pong!  that story was outrageous and it was crazy to see how bernard ended up.  i could totally see him as one of those eco-friendly, vegan, gender-neutral kind of dads.
-i loved reading about all of the restaurants.  i want to check them out when i am abroad.  

here is what was named checked:  *mandarian kitchen for lobster noodles *four seasons for roasted duck

*royal china for dim sum
*dai pai dong for wonton noodles

*gerard mulot
*din tai fung (i'm excited cos i can do this in LA!)
-i wish i was crazy rich!!!

spoiler alert:  regardless of what her assistant said, colette was behind of it!!! psycho crazy china girlfriend!

oh and i have to add i still love kwan for his wit and his footnotes are the best.  the fire island was my favorite!! lol

read this book and i hope you love it as much as i did.

the odd woman and the city. (296)

i picked up vivian gornick's the odd woman and the city because it was on flavorpill's list of must read for may.  they wrote:

A wonderful and clear-eyed memoir of Gornick’s time in New York City that doubles as an appreciation of friendship — which more and more avails itself as the most important theme of our time.

i had never read anything else by gornick, but i liked the title and a memoir about nyc sounded interesting.  i must add that now i do want to read her other works, esp the feminist one.  she also inspired me to check out charles reznikoff's poetry after reading his poems in this work.  i might also check out the george gissing novel that inspired the title.

so even with being unfamiliar with her work, i found this work to be a delight.  it's a memoir but more like a journal.  we get tidbits about her life, friendships, and what i loved most vignettes from her life in new york city.

i must admit that it made me wish i loved in nyc.  as i read about the streets of new york, i regretted that my images were from memories from visits and not from living there.  none the less, the little scenes i read made me fall in love with nyc.

i loved the story of the man and the woman on the subway discussing the christian's hatred of jews.  the woman sharing, "after all, it the romans who killed him.  why don't they blame the italians."  the story of the boy and his father signing on the subway made me smile.  the boy deformed and as gornick at first surprised by his look later saw his beauty.  i also felt her frustration about the man on the bus talking too loudly on his phone.  i think good bus ettiquette is a lost art and am always silently angry at people who play music or talk loudly on a bus.  and the end, i loved the evasdropping she shared with us, esp these two conversations:

"when i was young, men were the main course, now they're the condiment."

and 

"i didn't realize you were such good friends.  what did she give you, that you miss her so?" "it wasn't what she gave me . . . it was what she didn't take away."

so many delightful and insightful things one hears.  i also learned that i shouldn't judge my friend markley, for all the evasdropping he does in nyc.

the work also focused on friendship.  she shared different friendships of hers, especially her friend leonard.  she examined why she was friends with particular people. n she also shared a handful of stories of authors and their friendships, looking at what draws people to each other. but in the end, the work is really about loneliness, as flavorpill noted.  it's actually more about finding solitude versus loneliness.

as she discussed, she discovered whole reading edmund gosse's memoir, father and son, that "one is lonely for the absent idealized other self, but in useful solitude i am there, keeping myself imaginative company, breaking life into silence,

filling the room with proof of my own sentient being."  

and this i feel is the heart of the memoir.  in solitude and keeping herself company, gornick wandered around and enjoyed new york city.

the work also had some beautiful life lessons that i didn't pay attention too because it became too wordy for me.  however, one day when i am older, i will revisit this work but for not will take the lessons that i saw best for me.  

lumberjanes: vol. 1. noelle stevenson, grace ellis, brooke a. allen. (295)

i read about lumberjanes on book riot.  a comic book for girls, how could the feminist in me resist?!?!

i wasn't sure what to expect, and i have to add that i was thrown off my the sci-fi element of it.  the girls fight off three-eyed foxes that warn them of a kitten holy.  i had anticipated a more realistic comic, but regardless this comic was great.

the comic was about five girls: jo, april, mal, molly, and ripley, they always find themselves in crazy situations at lumberjane camp.  the girls are a motley crew.  different but they get along and have their own special talent.  also two of them are lesbian (well it was hinted at) so nice to see some diversity.  oh i should add their camp director was named rosie and was very rosie the riveter-esque.

each chapter started off with a description of a lumberjane badge that relates to the adventure they find themselves in.  my favorite badge was the puncheon master badge which is given for great puns:  

cute, huh?

as i mentioned before, at camp the girls find themselves in crazy situations.  they have to fight off a river monster, crazy foxes, statues and brain-washed boy scouts (but not the official boy scouts.) they fought off everyone, because these girls got muscle! for example, april won a arm-wrestling match with a statute and then quoted kelis, when she was asked to show the girls how she did it:  

but these girls have brains too!! jo used the fibonacci sequence to help them get across a pit!  and april solved anagrams to get them out of the cave!  it was great to see them being super smart too!

since this was volume 1, i don't know how the story ends.  all i know so far is:

-they need to be aware of the kitten holy.

-they keep on being attacked by three-eyed creatures.

-they found a sacred bow and arrow.

-and the boy scouts are weird crazy cult.

i look forward to reading the next one to find out how all of this ends.

amy falls down. jincy willet. (294)

i saw amy falls down on lena dunham's instagram.  i figured since she was reading it, i should check it out.

i have to admit that after the premise, an author, amy, has an falls down in her backyard which then started a series of events that resulted in her career getting its second wind.  in all honesty, i was kind of iffy once i actually read the premise, and figured i would not enjoy it. it seemed like something that an actual writer (which lena is) would love, but the layman like me, would be bored.

however, i was surprised by how much i enjoyed this book.  it didn't change my life, but it was enjoyable.  

as the title explained, amy gallup, fell down one day in her backyard and hit her head on her birdbath.  instead of calling for help or going to the hospital, she decided to instead stay home and be interviewed by a local paper since she had it scheduled.

quick digression, there was a delightful explanation about how amy once didn't call for help while drowning as a child because she was so concern about her word choice.  i appreciated her need to best express herself even during an emergency.  

another time word choice was brought up was about how reviews are written and words like compelling are meaningless.  she also mentioned how difficult it is to review a book that you like, which i totally agree with, books i hate are always easier to write about.  

so the interview, amy remembered nothing about it but she came off as eccentric and had bunch of great quotes.  my favorite was "feelings are not news" which spun by the other reporter was true.  i always had an issue with oprah because i once watched when she had a family with a schizophrenic daughter that had been diagnosed at a young age, "how does it feel to deal with the disease?" i always saw it as insensitive of her and this book made me realized that its because it demonstrated how she was unable to empathize with them.  when we read the news, we need just facts, anyone should be able to understand how that person felt during the crisis or disaster.

i have to add that this book is filled with little gems like this about the book industry, writing, even why we read.  as demonstrated in amy's first panel, amy demonstrated the silliness in people wanting to know the writing rituals of. authors.  i attend a lot of author readings and this question always comes up and always bores me, i mean because it's usually the same kind of answer or super specific to the author.  also i loved how she addressed the whole, "how do authors' ideas come to them" at the convention.  i recently attended a judy blume talk and she had this question asked in various forms and each time, she was like i don't know, they just come to me.  

back to the interview, so it created a lot of buzz about amy going out which thankfully got her living and writing again.  as we learn throughout the novel, she married her best friend, max, who was gay, to stop him from being drafted.  they were happy, but he died from AIDS.  after a bad and rushed second marriage and divorce, amy became a recluse and stopped writing.  so this accident was a blessing because it got her to live again.regrettably, she wasted a lot of years but thankfully found herself again. 

an enjoyable novel, and if you are an avid reader or a writer, a work you should definitely check out.  i have to add that    i also loved reading about her stories and wish i could really read them.