1: Book Review

I'm sort of stealing this idea from In Search of Squid blogger Heather Rae. I recently subscribed to her blog on my Reader (love it! both reader and squid), found through stratejoy, and now I get notices of all her postings including book reviews. I want to get back into reading again because it's something I've always loved to do and I don't want to lose that so why not continue to practice my writing my incorporating it with reading.




I just finished the infamous, perhaps notorious, A Million Little Pieces by James Frey. You know, the "pseudo memoir" that Oprah defamed after bits of it were found to be fabricated? The story is about James, a recovering alcholoic and drug addict who hit rock bottom so hard in his early twenties that he wrote a detailed and disturbing 448 paged account of it. Most memorable about the book, besides the emotional story and Oprah's upset over it, was the way it was written. The lack of puncuation and page-turning poetic style. Oh, and that the cover featured a hand covered in rainbow sprinkles, I admit, this is what first intrigued me.

(Entire paragraph was accidently deleted here and that makes me want to punch the keyboard so, sorry, don't get to read those words of wisdom)

It was about Intervention and Hoarders and other shows like seen on TLC. I am on the fence about them - good for some, exploitative for others. Don't want to see real issues become reproduced like some sort of trend. Afraid it already has.

Probably deleted for the best. Back to the review.

I am no addict and so cannot possibly truly connect to the story empathetically. But I was able to understand it in a human to human kind of way. It was an important read if for nothing else but to portray a different life than my own. We all occasionally need that reminder.

When I heard about that whole Oprah -Frey incident, I was more than a little annoyed. I personally rate books based on how I connect with them as well as how entertained I was while reading them. As a reader, I do not feel personally betrayed when I find that a book, a piece of art, has been creatively enhanced. Because that's how I see it, creatively enhanced to make it about more, to add drama, to add effect and to force the reader into a different perspective. Oprah felt betrayed by the fact that it was referred to as a memoir, which she defined as more of an autobiography. Freys exaggerated time spent in jail or his blurred memory about a dentist visit does not make him any less of an author, a best-selling author at that. Oprah made a boo boo.

Next book: The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin. Back to the positive thing!