Mandatory for vacation: some reading material

My vacation helped me reach my goal of reading 10 new books this year. Before I took a week off in August I wanted to make sure I had some good books to read. I'll admit I'm kind of a nerd for going to the library the Saturday before my boyfriend and I headed for a few days on the Central Coast to make sure I was well prepared.

I wanted a mix of books so that if one turned out to be a dud, I'd have some others for back up. I picked a few books that looked like light reading such as one about a chef who works for a morning show and a senior citizen who turns back the clock to the age of 29 for one day. I also got a few more that seemed a little hardier, such as one about a single mom raising her daughters and a young girl growing up in the South during the 1980s.

When we were packing my boyfriend asked which books I'd be bringing with me, to which I replied that I would be bringing them all. I knew I wouldn't read them all, but I wanted to have a few options. The first night when we stayed at a hotel in Cambria that had an oceanfront view, I started reading "Bitter in the Mouth" by Monique Truong. The book was not light reading, but it was well-written and kept me interested all the way through. In the book, Linda is a lawyer who looks back on her life in a small Southern town. She loves her great uncle and her father, but she clashes with her mother and her grandmother. Linda has the strange ability - or curse - that when she hears certain words she has a strong taste of something in her mouth. The sensation seems almost science fiction, until later in the book the author has her main character discover a brain disorder called synesthesia, in which the senses get mixed up. The book has a lot of dark moments in it, but it written in a way that really brought Linda to life. I read the book all through vacation, finishing it on our last night in San Simeon.

When I got home I still had a stack of books left so I started another one that wasn't nearly as well written. "Romantically Challenged" by Beth Orsoff had some funny moments but I mostly found the main character irritating. She is a single 30-something lawyer who doesn't want to end up alone, but she nitpicks at every person with whom she goes on a date. She finds something wrong with every single guy and is whiny about it without acknowledging her own short comings.

The next book had something of the same attitude. Ellie is a senior who is turning 75, but she is unhappy about getting older even though she still has her own apartment, all her capacities, her best friend lives upstairs and her grandaughter visits often. Ellie wishes to be young again on her birthday - and she wakes up the next morning to find herself 29 again. Written by Adena Halpern, the secondary characters are not very well developed. The writing is rough and the dialogue is awkward.

From there I moved on to "Last Bite" by Nancy Verde Barr. The book is about a chef who works on a morning show, preparing the cooking segments. It is written by a woman who worked with Julia Child so its no surprise that one of the main characters seems to be based on Child. The key character, however, is the 30-something chef whose dentist boyfriend has just broken up with her. She is unlucky in love and when a troublesome agent comes into the life of the TV chef personality, her job also comes into jeopardy. She quickly finds another love interest in an Irish chef who has opened a restaurant in New York and does a guest appearance on the show. She is skeptical about him, though, and assumes he is a player. The storyline is unbelievable, but a fun read. The only thing I didn't like about the book was that instead of developing some of the side characters, such as the prep chef's parents, they became caricatures of the typical Irish or Italian family.

The last book I read, to complete the 10, was "Juno's Daughters" by Lise Saffran. This book was back into the serious realm with its topic. It is about a single mother raising her two teenagers on a secluded island off the coast of Washington State. The central premise of the story is that two island residents put on a professional production of a Shakespeare play every summer, inviting professional actors to try out for it. The islanders get bit parts in the play and help out behind the scenes. The main character has often helped with the costumes and set pieces but she has never been in the cast. This year to appease her 17-year-old daughter she signs on to play Juno from the play "The Tempest." Her daughters have the roles of other spirits in the play. The main conflict in the book is that the oldest daughter happens to be interested in the same 40-something actor as her mother. The youngest daughter is dealing with abandonment issues as her best friend moves away, and then her sister departs for college. The book had the good skeleton of an idea - an abused mother leaves her husband to raise her two children alone and now is struggling with them becoming independent - but Saffran glosses over the impact that the early abuse had on her and the girls. More than that, her interactions with the two girls ring false.

Before I read this batch of books I'd also read "The Help" by Kathryn Stockett, which I enjoyed even though I felt the movie version released in August fell short. I also read another book I checked out of the library whose title and author elude me now. I do remember it was about a woman who lost a bunch of weight, opened a store to sell healthy home-cooked meals and whose husband left her for a much fatter woman. This was another book whose main character came across as whiny and whose secondary characters where more caricatures than realistic people.

For now, it's back to the New Yorker magazine, which I've been neglecting since July.