My Reading Frenzy

Overdressed by Elizabeth Cline

The full title of this work of non-fiction is Overdressed: The Shockingly High Cost of Cheap Fashion.  Elizabeth Cline takes the reader on a tour through fashion history, emphasizing the current state of shopping.  Cline did extensive research, travelling all over the country and world to investigate the clothing stream that flows into American retail stores. 

One of the most striking points she makes is about how currently Americans spend a much lower percentage of their income on clothing than ever before in history.  Because textiles are so readily available, so cheaply, clothes have become disposable.  For that reason, the quality is significantly lower than ever before.  This is a vicious circle because as people grow used to inexpensive, and cheaply made clothing they avoid clothing that is more expensive even if it is well made of high quality fabrics.  Therefore companies that are trying to make a nice product must lower standards in order to meet the pricing demands of consumers. 

Cline also spends some time talking about overseas manufacturing, though she does not dwell on the sweatshop concept because that is not really what this book is about.  Especially interesting is the chapter about thrift stores and donation markets where all this poorly made clothing is taken and what happens when it is not wanted there either.  It is shocking how much of our clothing is ending up as rags or in landfills. 

Anyone who loves a good mark-down sale or just loves to shop for clothing but finds themselves facing a stuffed closet and nothing to wear should really read this book.  It was a shock to me.

A Conspiracy of Friends - Alexander McCall Smith

A Conspiracy of Friends is the most recent installment in Alexander McCall Smith's Courduroy Mansions series.  Once again it is told in vignettes that move from character to character.  Freddie de lay Hay, the Pimlico terrier is wonderfully sweet and highly engaging.  The human characters are interesting as well, but this book does not seem to cover as much ground as the others.  I suppose what it lacks in action it makes up for in internal progress.  Barbara Ragg has some revelations about her fiancee Hugh, William has a realization about Marcia, his son Eddie seems however to be treading water.  Caroline, her friend James, Terrence Moongrove and his sister Berneatha, Basil Wickramsinghe, and Oedipus Snark all appear as well.  I enjoyed the novel, and it was a quick read, and I will certainly read the next one, but I will describe this as a quiet novel.  I guess in thinking about it, it is really a book that captures day to day activity which is not terribly exciting in most lives, but these characters do have enough for a charming book.  

The Shoes Book

This reminds me of the moment in You've Got Mail when Meg Ryan pipes up in the children's section of a big box book store to help the sales person who has not heard of the "Shoe Books" by Noel Streatfeild (which are fabulous in case you are looking for a good recommendation for the avid, pre-teen, female reader in your life).  Women from the Ankle Down by Rachelle Bergstein is not one of these books, but instead a look at the cultural significance of women's shoes. 

When I put the book on hold at the library it was because it looked interesting and because I have been reading quite a few petite fashion blogs recently on which there is an emphasis on shoes of which I was unaware.  Most of the bloggers are regular people with regular jobs, who feature primarily reasonably price clothes that are not from big name designers, but many, many of them also feature shoes from what I would consider "designers" (ie Christian Louboutin, Mahnolo Blanik, Prada, and others.), shoes I can neither afford nor walk it, but that I will admit are sometimes lovely. 

This book is not what I expected, not from anything misleading in the blurb, but because I just had an idea about what it would be about, and it wasn't.  The book is organized chronologically but does not make any attempt to be a "history of women's shoes."  Instead it focuses on various events, trends, and cultural anomalies that have impacted shoe design.  She starts with the career of Salvatore Ferragamo covering 1900-1938 in the first chapter.  In the second she moves back slightly to Dorothy and her ruby slippers in 1939.  From here we are treated to chapters about boots (thanks to Nancy Sinatra), platforms (thanks to John Travolta and Dr. Frank N. Furter), Vans, Chucks, and Docs (thanks to a wide variety of non-mainstream groups), and ends right where I started with high-end designer shoes brought to the attention of "most of us" by Carrie Bradshaw. 

While I did not get what I was expecting, I read the book quickly and enjoyed Bergstein's exploration of "which came first, the shoe or the phenomena" in each chapter. 

 

Sarah Dessen Thoughts

I have now read 5 novels by Sarah Dessen. 

1.  Just Listen

2.  What Happened to Good-Bye

3.  Along for the Ride

4.  Lock and Key

5.  The Truth About Forever

I read the first because the girls at my school were clamoring for me to buy some Dessen books.  I knew nothing about them to help make any sort of decision so I decided to read one.  The next I read because of a committee I serve on.  After that I just kind of got hooked.  I will not probably go any further back in publication dates that I have with 2004.  I will probably keep up with new books though. 

Reasons I like the books:

A.  Realistic female protagonists

B.  Something different for the kids who are not into the futuristic, dystopia, fantasy novels that are so prevalent now

C. No violence

D.  No sex

E.  Real, but not hugely heavy problems.  By this I mean these are characters and issues many "normal" kids can relate to: divorce, high parental expectations, shallow peers, death in the family, step- families.  There is no doubt in my mind there is a place for YA literature that addresses the heavy issues.  Laurie Halse Anderson does this supremely well.  (ie Speak, Wintergirls)  But I also think kids who are not facing these types of issues need books with characters who deal with what they understand. Dessen's books fill this niche. 

 

Issues I have with the books:

1.  All the high school age teenagers in the books seem to drink and there are never any repercussions or ever even any comments made about this.  While I am not naive enough to think this does not go on, I do wish she would occasionally throw in a character who speaks out against underage drinking.  This is one problem that makes it difficult for me to put these books in my middle school library. (This is not a flaw in the books per se, they are not meant for a middle school audience, but the desire to hear someone comment negatively on the drinking is still valid.)

2.  The story lines are somewhat predictable.  This does not seem to be a problem with teens.  In fact I know from my own youthful reading of many, many Nancy Drew mysteries, that young readers either do not notice, do not mind, or find comfort in predictable, repetitive plot elements.  As a more savvy adult reader this does bug me some.  This will probably not stop me from reading future publications.  

3.  Despite different names and issues, the heroines begin to blend together.  They just do not stick out as being unique. 

 

 Overall:

I think the pros outweigh the cons as far as overall quality of the books.  The story lines are engaging, the characters are believeable, and teen readers (primarily females) can see a lot of themselves and their friends in the characters. 

Pure by Andrew Miller

I heard about this book a few months ago.  Somewhere in one of the many e-letters I receive about books, this one was reviewed.  It sounded so interesting that I added it to my wish list.  Then a bit later I took it off the list as it seemed like it was going to be an obscure book and maybe not all that great after-all, but then it kept cropping up again so-o-o-o I added it back to the list and finally it came out in paperback and my local library had it listed as "On Order."  To shorten up this long story, I just finished it.

I have not read anything else by Andrew Miller, nor had I heard of him before this.  But he is not new and won the James Tate Memorial Prize for Fiction for his first novel, Ingenious Pain.  And his novel Oxygen was a finalist for both the Whitbread Award and the Booker Prize in 2001.  Pretty impressive, which makes me ashamed I had not heard of him. 

In this novel, Jean-Baptiste Baratte is hired, ostensibly by the king of France, the doomed Louis XVI, to clean out the cemetery of Les Innocents and bring down the church as well.  Jean-Baptiste is an engineer more used to building than dismantling and the overwhelming stench of the cemetery that has taken over the neighborhood makes the work even more unpleasant.  Between the sexton and his granddaughter Jeanne, Jean-Baptiste learns the history of Les Innocents and decides where to begin digging.  As with any award winning book (this one won the Costa Best Novel Award for 2011) there are layers of meaning just as there are layers of dead to be excavated. The workers who are brought in to do the digging as well as the friends Jean makes populate the story and make one wonder if what they are doing is ironically a purging of the land before the greater purge of the Revolution.  The people of the city simmer along in the background of the story biding their time.  It seems not haphazard that Jean's time at Les Innocents ends with a conflagration.  

It is an added boon that the book is one of those solid, lovely Europa editions that reminds a reader of all the qualities e-books lack.