I’ve loved Erin Loechner for quite some time. She’s behind Design for Mankind, which one of the few blogs that I make time to visit again and again. Her writing is great and her perspective is genuine. I had her new book on my reading list ever since I found out she was publishing one, but I got lucky and got my hands on an advanced copy. This was in December. I know that we’re after slow here, but I’m sure Erin and her publicist would have preferred that this blog post go live months ago. I’m now on the side of failed blogger rather than frustrated book publicist. Sorry Erin.

Regardless, this book just wasn’t one that I could pour over and read hastily each night. It’s an easy enough read, I just needed time to let her words soak in. Her wisdom needed to marinate for me. I had to put it down and come back to it, ready for more. I’m a bit of a book purist, but I plan to read it again with a highlighter in hand so that I can mark up all the nuggets of knowledge that permeate each page.

“But the thing about apples is that we’re always biting off more than we can chew. It is hard to see which bites night nourish and which might cause us to choke.”

Chasing Slow is the perfect look behind the blog. It’s a charming and real story about a real person, which is easy to forget when we only see the best of the best squares of someone’s life. This book is counter-culture. It asks you to stop glorifying busy and it asks you to look around your life for areas where you can create margin. I feel like authenticity is a term we keep hearing and is something we’re after in a curated world of perfection, but I love the way that Erin walks this fine line between choosing a career that demands you to offer beautiful aesthetics while also maintaining the reality that things aren’t always as they seem.  She gives us glimpses into her story, how she got started, how she failed, and how she’s still trying. She doesn’t try to offer you a picture of someone who has figured it all out, but rather someone who has learned a few things and wants to share. She owns her contradictions.

“I used to think that the opposite of control is chaos, but it’s not. The opposite of control is surrender.”

This book reads more like a stylized journal from a friend or mentor with pieces of advice that either help  you organize your closet or force you to self-reflect, but you’re grateful for them none the less. She isn’t shy about including her faith, which was a plus for me, but I could understand how others might be surprised or off-put as it wasn’t originally marketed as a Christian memoir.

“Without grace, minimalism is another metric for perfection.”

This book is a great read for anyone who is trying to manage the chase of slowing down, taking a deep breath, and living in the truth that less is most often more.

This book was just eh for me. I don’t typically go for beach reads, but the great illustrations on the cover and the glowing reviews had me hoping for something more. I did want to try something a bit lighter and lighter was exactly what I got. The book took me months to finish, definitely not a page-turner.

The story centers on friends and former college band mates Elizabeth, Andrew, and Zoe. They’ve watched one another marry, buy real estate, start businesses and grow families, all while trying to hold on to their youth. Back in the 80’s, the members of Kitty’s Mustache were much cooler. Elizabeth put on a snarl over her Midwestern smile, Andrew let his unwashed hair grow past his chin, and Zoe was the lesbian all the straight women wanted to sleep with. Now nearing fifty, they all live within shouting distance in the same neighborhood deep in gentrified Brooklyn, and the trappings of the adult world seem to have arrived with ease. But the summer that their children reach maturity (and start sleeping together), the fabric of the adult lives suddenly begins to unravel, and the secrets and revelations that are finally revealed—about themselves, and about the famous fourth band member who soared and fell without them.

I’m a big fan of fiction that mirrors real life. I think that nuanced relationships and highlights of the human condition make some of the most gripping stories, but this story of middle-aged has beens was just kind of well… boring.

It seemed all very realistic I suppose, each character dealing with the perils of their age. Marriages that are fizzling out, mid-life crises that led to secrets, teenaged rebellion and sexual exploration. Everything made sense, but none of it made me want to care. All of the characters problems seemed so trivial and the book lacked a real character arch of any kind. The conflicts were riddled with clichés. There was little evidence of evolution or discovery. It seemed more like a journal of six different characters’ point of view, which left me feeling like I couldn’t really get connected to any of them. I think diving into one and exploring the depth of that person would have been a better choice, instead the book felt choppy and hard to follow. That mixed with a slow plot, made it a snooze.

This book broke me. It made me cringe and it made me uncomfortable, but it also made me think. It made my heart sink at the sudden onset of the vulnerability and angst of adolescence.

Loosely based off the Manson murders of the 1960’s, The Girls offers us a fictional look at the painful manipulation of young, impressionable girls, which uses their obsessive sensibilities, lack of insightful judgment, and rebellious tendencies to lure them into the edge of darkness where they can no longer distinguish right from wrong and are disillusioned enough to leave the hollow outside world for seclusion and manipulation disguised as freedom. It capitalizes on their insecurities to create an isolated world where patriarchy abounds and you’re willing to do anything for some coveted attention.

Evie Boyd is in her 60’s now and a chance happening upon a friend’s obnoxious son and his complicated, desperate girlfriend sends her into a fierce observation and retelling of her youth and how she was briefly drawn into a murderous cult that reshaped her entire life, but left her longingly on the outside.

The novel goes back and forth between Evie’s current static life including her interaction with the reckless teenagers and the summer of 1969 when she was 14 in northern California. Evie is the wealthy granddaughter of a celebrity and the daughter of two parents who are desperately trying to redefine themselves post divorce. Evie falls through the cracks and finds herself amidst all the same failed trappings of all young girls on the verge of growing up. Cline so perfectly writes through the eyes of a young girl in transition to adulthood, making muddled and yet precise observations, while still somehow remaining completely oblivious to the dangers around her. She’s acutely aware that her newly developing body affords her a certain level of power, but with that comes the dangerous rhetoric of female value that hinges upon sexual attention from men. Desperation for love and validation mixed with self-loathing and vulnerability make these girls perfect targets and while it’s easy to peg them as naïve and young, we all know that deep down, we’ve been them, we’ve thought those thoughts, and we’ve believed the lies that the world tells us about being women. The feminist undertones make the sort of observations that all women know all too well, but might not have been able to articulate, until now.

“That was part of being a girl—you were resigned to whatever feedback you’d get. If you got mad, you were crazy, and if you didn’t react, you were a bitch. The only thing you could do was smile from the corner they’d backed you into. Implicate yourself in the joke even if the joke was always on you.”

“I waited to be told what was good about me. I wondered later if this was why there were so many more women than men at the ranch. All that time I had spent readying myself, the articles that taught me life was really just a waiting room until someone noticed you—the boys had spent that time becoming themselves.”

“I’d enacted some pattern, been defined, neatly, as a girl, providing a known value. There was something almost comforting about it, the clarity of purpose, even as it shamed me. I didn’t understand that you could hope for more.”

When her best (and only friend) separates herself from Evie, she flounders into emotional desperation latching onto Suzanne (who she describes as “tragic and separate, like royalty in exile”), an older girl that she has admired from afar. Soon enough Evie finds herself inseparable to life on the ranch with various characters with questionable moral standards and bizarre life choices including a group of young impressionable girls and their charismatic leader who all become an integral part of her story.

Cline has a way with words that just gets me. They’re sharp, lyrical, and sometimes nonsensical, often relying on over-written metaphors that make unique comparisons. Some people aren’t into it, but I like her style.

“She seemed as strange and raw as those flowers that bloom in lurid explosion once every five years, the gaudy prickling tease that was almost the same thing as beauty.” 

This quote from Ron Charles of The Washington Post perfectly captures how I feel.

“The most remarkable quality of this novel is Cline’s ability to articulate the anxieties of adolescence in language that’s gorgeously poetic without mangling the authenticity of a teenager’s consciousness. The adult’s melancholy reflection and the girl’s swelling impetuousness are flawlessly braided together.” 

I only have one major criticisms of the novel as I deeply enjoyed it. I wish that the political undertones of the 60’s were more prevalent. While I understand that the free-spirited hippie refusal of popular culture might not have been in the wheelhouse of a 14 year old girl, I think that it deeply influenced the culture behind the ranch and without it, this story could essentially be told in any era and setting. The time of the story had a huge impact on each of the characters and I would have appreciated understanding the philosophy and worldview behind the formulation of the ranch in a bit more obvious way.

What could have been a cheap exploitation of a famous cult and murder was anything but that. It stood on it’s own, but more than anything it made me happy to no longer be a teenaged girl.

My gem of a husband bought me this book for Mother’s Day. He walked into our local bookstore and while browsing was offered this book as a suggestion by one of their helpful staff members. It was a staff top pick so he decided to go for it because it had an interesting cover and he’s become invested in helping me with my book review and book cover painting project. I think this is one of my favorite things about our relationship, art. The pursuit of art, the analysis of art, the creation of art, the criticism of art, and of course the shared passion for art.

It helps that Tuesday Nights in 1980 is all about art. Well… kind of.

Art is the premise, but this book is about more than that. The story follows James Bennett, a synesthetic art critic for The New York Times whose unlikely condition enables him to describe art in profound, magical ways, Raul Engales, an exiled Argentinian painter running from his past and the Dirty War that has enveloped his country and Lucy Olliason—a small town beauty who leaves her home of Idaho behind to find her way in the big city.

It’s 1980 in pre-gentrification SOHO where artists are occupying abandoned factory buildings and are struggling to pay for heat, but are still offended by the consumerism of art buyers whom they’re dependent on. Bohemians run the dirty streets and glitzy lights. There’s a buzzing art scene and New York is the manifestation of big promises meeting harsh realities. The city is a character in and of itself, evolving and affecting those around it all within the confines of just a year. “It’s a city of pure poetry, I’m telling you kids.”

I think that’s rare to find an author who can write about a particular group of people such as artists in a way that feels inclusive rather than ostracizing and pretentious. Prentiss offers a view into the art world from several different angles; the writer and collector, those who are drawn to the artists hoping for an escape and self-importance, those who must sacrifice their own dreams so that art can live, as well as the artists themselves. She manages to give us real experiences without insulting the reader. She assumes you belong here, rather than an outsider looking in.

“He loved the flaws; they were invariably the most interesting parts of people’s faces and bodies, the parts that held the straightest lines, the most beautiful shadows. Wounds and deformities and cracks and boils and stomachs: this was the stuff that moved Engales. Usually while he detailed the broken nose or sketched a lumpy body he felt as if he was zeroing in on what it meant to be alive.”

The clashing of these unlikely characters gives the reader several spaces to observe and interact with the human experience. Perhaps best said in this review by Casey Varecka on The Master’s Review:

“Prentiss draws deeply flawed, imperfect, real characters. James’s highest moments of inspiration and expressions of art and love are made all the more real by his avoidance of responsibility. Similarly, Lucy inspires the people around her and loves Engales deeply, but she also hurts him in her quest for continual excitement. Engales, at times, seems the most flawed. He’s manipulative, stubborn, and unforgiving, yet he understands the truth of people in the world, living by the saying of his deceased father, “The scratches are what makes a life.” This line could be Molly Prentiss talking directly to the reader. The scratches on her characters are exactly what give them humanity. The flaws in Prentiss’s characters and in their lives make Tuesday Nights in 1980 a book that grips your heart and doesn’t let go.”

Some of my favorite and the most gripping passages are told from the perspective of James Bennett, whose synesthesia allows him to see, hear, smell, feel, and taste the world in ways no one else can. One sense activates another, bringing about a specific taste, smell, or look that is just as real to him as the thing itself. This ability is what allows him to successful write and critique art. “Brice Marden preoccupies me like a shoe that has stepped in gum…” or “The painting tucked under James’ arm, smelled of all the chickens his mother never roasted.” He describes Lucy as “a lime after a shot of strong tequila. She was no sunglasses and no sunscreen when you needed both. She was wet tar where your feet got stuck.”

Prentiss subtly tackles so many issues and controversy that artists wrestle with such as the idea of selling out your work to buyers. She’s also no stranger to irony, titling a large art sale, Selling Out. She offers the perfect commentary on creation versus consumption and allows the reader to make his or her own conclusions. She perfectly captures passion and talent, obsession and mindfulness. She gives us truth in nuanced characters and criticism of the world itself. Everything from large-scale talent to quotes of intimacy scribbled on the inside of matchbooks presented as a project.

“If curiosity would kill him, he would take it.”

Prentiss uses style in a way that I loved. She jumped from perspective to perspective and, in several cases, she gives the reader a look at the same scene through the eyes of several people reveling more truth and insight. She’s sometimes choppy and uses ethereal writing devices and descriptions as if she’s painting a portrait through her writing; mouth, eyes, limbs, stomach, body, nose, hair. I was captured by this style and I think it’s appropriate that a story about art is a bit artistic in and of itself. Her less than linear writing paints a picture and reminds us to see through the eyes of an artist. Known artists such as Chuck Close, Frank Stella, and Andy Warhol make small appearances as well as other oddities that remind us we’re in a world pre-social media and cell phones. Her skill for metaphor and observation had me inspired and intrigued. “November is the color of the outside of an eggplant. It smells like the inside of an old woman’s jewelry box. Get outta bed, you’d want to tell November if you saw it. Do something.”

I tore through this book faster than I have any piece of work in a long time. I was impressed and interested, invested and curious. I haven’t liked a book this much in a long and time and I can’t wait to read more from Molly Prentiss.

If you’re on Goodreads, you can find me here.

My sweet husband knows that gift buying for me is pretty easy when he enters our local bookstore. Somehow, he just so happened to walk in on the day when Elizabeth Gilbert was signing copies of Big Magic and since it was on my ‘to read’ list, he graciously waited in line and picked me up a signed copy for Christmas last year. I’m a little embarrassed that I’m just now getting to this review when this book has been in my hands for so long, but I had a few others to finish off first and I just can’t read more than two books at a time.

I’m excited to share my painting inspired by the book cover. This painting was challenging and I had to keep reminding myself that it doesn’t have to look exactly the same and it’s meant to be a loose interpretation inspired by the cover. The letters are always the most challenging part. We have a projector and they’re still hard to get right. Hand painted letters just aren’t as pristine and it looks a little more red where I wish it were pink, but I’m fairly happy with how this one turned out. So on to the review…

Author of the acclaimed Eat Pray Love, Elizabeth Gilbert brings her unique perspective and wisdom on the subject of creativity and living a creative life. I LOVED the premise of this book and couldn’t wait to dive in. This book is such an easy and fast read, but the thing I appreciated most is that Gilbert is a best-selling author writing about creativity from an author’s perspective. It seems like there is a ton of content out there on creativity from painters and other creative professionals, but I can’t say I’ve ever heard of an author offering her two cents on the subject. Being a writer myself, I loved feeling like I relate to everything she said as it was written.

Gilbert has a way of taking really profound and ethereal concepts and making them accessible. She describes creative ideas as their own entities that are floating around looking for a human host to carry them out. I liked thinking of creativity like this and it stirred up my imagination in a way that made me feel excited to reach up and grab ideas as they came to me.

I appreciated hearing Gilbert’s stories of failure and learning as she shares her own creative journey. I found myself highlighting and underlining key concepts that I found to ring truth to me. This book is exactly what I needed to hear at this time in my own personal creative voyage. Her words of encouragement were just the stepping-stones I needed to make big decisions and giant leaps of faith. I felt like she was giving me permission to move forward when I didn’t even know I was standing still. She seems to have hit all the reasons that people don’t create and completely crushes them. I’m not original enough. I’m not an artist. My art isn’t that important. I don’t have a degree. I’ve already hit my pique of success. Gilbert doesn’t buy any of these excuses. She gives short bursts of wisdom like “done is better than good” and “no one is thinking about you.” She dispels the idea of the suffering artist and encourages us all to take great joy in our art. She even dispels the idea that the only time making art is worth it is if you can make money or do your art full time. I’ve spent an unreasonable amount of time meditating, reading and thinking about that very issue, that I found her words to pierce right through me and give me what I needed to finally believe and accept what I already knew to be true. She offers perspective on failure, fear, and persistence in a way that feels like your cool aunt who is giving you advice on boys while she paints your nails. Conversational and littered with intentional examples to prove that she struggles or has struggled with the same things you’re fighting.

Gilbert explores some concepts that do have to be taken with a grain of salt, but for the most part I wasn’t put off as some other readers were. For me, she successfully takes her own opposing viewpoints into account and seems to thrive in the contradictions. She is an advocate for creativity and believes that everyone has the capacity and right to be creative. I would recommend that every artist, writer, and person who is otherwise interested in exploring his or her creativity pick up this book.

I’d love to know if you read it and what you thought. If you’re on Goodreads, you can find me here.

This is the second edition of my new series where I share my review of a book I just read along with a painting I did inspired by the cover. This one is for The Interestings by Meg Wolitzer.

I was originally drawn to the idea of this book based on the premise alone. The idea of following a group of creative teenagers as they grow up and try and reconcile their longing for art with the rest of their life. This theme seemed familiar to me and was something that I could find myself in.

The Interestings follows a group of teens who meet at an arts summer camp. It shows us their lives as they grow up, go to college, choose professions, start families, and make second starts later in life. We’re made privy to the big defining moments of their lives and get long peeks into the mundane.

This isn’t a novel with a page-turning plot. In fact, it took me a bit longer to read it than how I typically consume pages one over the other. I don’t think it was because I didn’t like it or that I couldn’t get into it as much as it was just written with a slow pace. It seemed to stylistically match the pace of life. Sometimes it was a rush of big moments, but mostly it was day-to-day, year-to-year.

Even if you’re not an artist, if you’ve never felt the longing and the constant urge to be creative and to be recognized for that creativity, there is still truth in this novel for you. The novel is more about growing up than it is about art. It’s more about holding on to the idealistic views of your youth. It’s more about looking back on being young with an unhealthy lens. When we first meet our friends, when we first make affirmations about our identity and the place we want to take up in the world, when we aren’t influenced by realism. If we’re not careful, we can spend our whole lives trying to recreate what we once had only to realize that we’re missing what is in front of us. It’s trying to honor the memory of your youth and recognize that it will never be the same; it will never feel as it felt then. It can’t be forced and it can’t be fabricated. Youth is a fleeting gift, but to chase after it is to abandon the rest of your life.

My biggest criticisms are of the characters themselves, but I really believe that characters should be flawed and dynamic. I don’t feel like I have to like them to like the point that the author is trying to make.

Wolitzer’s most profound observations about her own characters were made mostly in the last part of the novel.

“All Right,” Dennis said. “So it did. It made you feel special. What so I know-maybe it actually made you special. And specialness- everyone wants it. But Jesus, is it the most essential thing there is? Most people aren’t talented. So what are they supposed to do- kill themselves? Is that what I should do?…”

However, some of them surprised me and gave me depth when they did something unexpected or when the author let us see past the same collection of adjectives she’d been using to describe them.

Unfortunately, the one who lacked depth for me was the main POV character Jules, which ideally would have been the one who I’d like to have the most depth. Jules was described at witty, loyal and funny, but I never saw these characteristics come to life in her.

The only people she was loyal to was her friends and there were times when it felt she was forcing herself to choose unnecessarily. I think it’s perfectly possible to have valuable adult friendships while still being loyal and present to your husband and family. Jules obsession and jealousy with Ash and Ethan was distracting at times and made me really dislike her. At 15 her characteristics were annoying, but plausible, at 30 they were inexcusable and at 50, they were damaging and troublesome.

Overall the book was worth the read and it made valuable points about growing up and reconciling the dreams of your youth with the reality of adulthood.

Did you read it? What did you think? If you’re on Goodreads, connect with me here.

I’d like to think of myself as an avid reader. I’ve always been that way and like most things, there are times where I do a ton of it and times I don’t. When I was working with authors on a regular basis, I was mostly dedicated to reading their books and it didn’t leave much time for me to read anything else. Although, I really enjoyed many of my clients’ books, it was really hard to give an objective opinion and review. I was by no means a part of the early stages of development. By the time it made it into my hands, it was to be published as is.

In thinking about how I’d like to share my book reviews, I also thought it would be a fun challenge to my creativity to create paintings inspired by the book covers. I’m by no means a talented painter, but I like the idea of just practicing the art form for my own benefit. This is also my chance to combine some things I want to do more of, read, share, and paint. So, my first book is Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff.

I heard tons of hype around this book and I hate to say that’s why I put it on my to-read list, but if I’m being honest… Also, I joined a local book club and this was the monthly pick, so I went for it.

The book follows the 20 ish year marriage of Lotto and Mathilde Satterwhite. The first half of the book comes from the perspective of Lotto and the second from Mathilde. Lotto is an actor turned successful playwright disillusioned by his whiny need for genius and attention. Mathilde is a shell of a person until the second half when we discover all her background, undertones and true self. Trouble is now that we know her, we wish we didn’t. This novel is complicated both in style and timeline. Nothing is as it seems, especially the characters.

Groff’s style is something that takes some getting used to. Her sentence structure can be choppy and cluttered which left me re-reading passages over just to make sure that I understood the over-written and over-complicated prose. Maybe I’m just not that sophisticated of a writer, or reader for that matter, but the pretentious nature of the novel turned me off at times. The explicit use of the metaphor just came on too strong many times leaving me trying to decipher the code instead of connecting to the story. For example, their pet dog’s name is God. I couldn’t figure out why Groff would choose such a name. It felt as if she was trying to communicate some deeper level of meaning, but I found it distracting and I couldn’t really determine what she was trying to say with her choices. It just cluttered the text for me.

Also, the choppy sequence and bouncing around in a timeline can be a great literary tactic, but in this case it seemed overused, unexpected and sometimes left me more focused on trying to figure out where we were in the timeline rather than focusing on the story.

I also had a really hard time connecting to the characters. I think it might be something to do with the fact that I simply didn’t like them or that they just didn’t seem like real people in real situations to me. There were many times and circumstances where things seemed so unrealistic, that it took me out of the story. This seemed as if the characters were living in some distorted version of reality. Something that lives along side our world and mirrors it, but with strange differences that you can’t quite put your finger on.

Lotto was more of a caricature to me. His innocence and artist nature seemed grotesquely exaggerated and the first half of the book from his perspective had me bored to tears. Especially the sections where we were given the actual script to his plays. In all honesty, I mostly skimmed over those parts. I love Shakespeare and have spent a great deal of time around the theatre and I wasn’t prepared or motivated to pull apart the symbolism and undertones of Greek tragedy that sat in these lines. Maybe they added a layer of understanding for others, but they didn’t do anything for me.

Mathilde was far more interesting and the second half from her perspective developed the story and filled so many holes that the first half left behind. She was plain cruel and many of her character traits and actions were contradictory, which seemed less of an effort to develop a dynamic character and more of a gross inconsistency. However, she made me curious, got my attention and kept me reading.

It was hard to believe that these two were happily married for so long and none of their secrets, flaws, and past came up. Their story felt more like blind infatuation rather than love. There was no intimacy between them, just devastating secrets. It was also hard to believe that after we’re introduced to Mathilde’s utter cruelty and hardness, she would give Lotto years of adoration and self-sacrifice while also intentionally hurting him in the meantime. It seems as Groff was trying to paint a love story so strong that we accept you could and possibly should become someone else only in the presence of our spouse. We don’t lie, we just omit the truth which in the end is meant to protect them.  This is such a Hollywood, washed up version of marriage and I can’t begin to share my distaste for this version of love. Also, there is SO MUCH SEX. Not that that’s a problem in and of itself, but the gross depictions of sexuality and lust left me with all the eye rolls.

Some of my favorite parts of this novel was the backstory of Lotto and Mathilde. I appreciated knowing where they came from as it helped to develop them much farther than the plot alone. I just wonder where the plot would have stood without these sections. I think it would have fallen flat to me. There was nothing to carry it throughout the entire novel and the best parts were when secrets were reveled in the last pages. Makes me wonder why I bothered to read all that prose only to be left with the final explanations which felt rushed and only provided in a need to tie the whole thing up in a nice bow.

The first half felt so dull at times that I was actually paying more attention to the page number rather than what I was reading. I wasn’t sure if I was going to finish it or if I could hold my interest from one page to the next, but I kept going. I’m happy I did though as the second half turned out to be much more of a page-turner and I was surprised at how quickly I moved through it without page counting and making internal reading goals for myself. Overall, I’m glad that I did in fact finish the book. If it wasn’t for the book club, I’m not sure I would have made it.

This book isn’t for everyone, that’s for sure. It certainly isn’t a commercial hit and it took me some time to get into it. We get it, Groff is a remarkable writer, but I’m not really into books that beat you over the head stylistically. However, there were parts of the novel I enjoyed and it certainly made me think about some of the major themes such as love, lust, and infatuation; a parent’s role in the life of their child; life-altering secrets; and of course marriage.

Did you read it? What did you think? Id love to know what you thought and if you think I should give Groff’s other works a try.

You can also connect with me on Goodreads here.