Category Archives: book reviews

The Monday Book – I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy

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Guest review by Janelle Bailey, avid reader/ever-an-educator/lifelong learner…and also now 7th grade teacher and part-time bookseller

I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy

First: my personal opinion is that this is an absolutely horrible title for a book, no matter how many different angles I consider. The connotation, merely, and then its wave of suggestion, when indicating one has picked up a book with this title feels icky, most especially when one’s own mom is very much alive and one has no wish to lose her at all, let alone soon.

Beyond that opinion, this is still a difficult book to read. Think Tara Westover’s Educated in the challenge of reading about a mother who does not seem to have her children–or at least this daughter’s–best interests in mind in all she does with or for –even to–her. And yet, while it was all happening, that mom might possibly have believed she was doing a “good job.”

You may not recognize Jennette McCurdy by name at all, but the character she played on iCarly, Sam Puckett, is certainly recognizable to many. Many, many–especially young women who watched and/or their moms and others who watched with them and/or were aware–will recognize Sam. And at least as she conveys in this book, McCurdy rarely responds to people who call out to her with that identification, but does when known by her given name.

And that is because her successful career playing Sam Puckett is all tied up in why McCurdy maybe is–maybe is not–glad that her mom did die, troublingly complex as that all was, and even for her, given their difficult relationship McCurdy’s entire life. It’s truly all tragic in hindsight and from this observational perspective. McCurdy’s mom treated her much more like a “pet,” it seems, more as someone she could control and dictate a life and diet and more for, than as a daughter–a child, a human.

I’m Glad My Mom Died is a memoir.

It is sincerely hard to read. Maybe that is one of the reasons I opted to listen.

This mom of five daughters certainly considered, while reading, numbers of my own flaws and errors in parenting–and years in hindsight–as they are all now young adults. Having faced and probably daily (and for 30 years!) complex challenges of only ever wanting to be the “best” mom, wishing to raise each to be strong, independent, respectful, kind, smart, productive, sweet, thoughtful, resilient, caring, empathetic–really just successful in their own daily pursuits and lesson learning–young women…and: they are!

I also acknowledge from my own childhood into adult experiences with just one sibling, and one sister at that, that these young women of mine are very much five individuals, every single one of them. They are not, nor have ever been to me, in competition for anything with or against each other, but are each/all valuable members of a team, instead, and I have only ever wanted for each of them to be pleased and proud and “glad” that I was–am–their mom, despite my “best” not always matching their own wishes for who/how I’d be. I certainly want them–hope they!–feel differently about me than McCurdy shares she feels about hers. But moms and daughters (five…remember) are–whew–at best a living experiment; I continue to do my best each and every day, fully acknowledging and breathing deeply my own very slow discovery that I cannot be all the hoped for things for every single one of them, no matter how hard I try. I am only one me…and I continue to do my best each day. I grant them that grace: to grow and learn and gain wisdom every day, becoming always their own new selves, and I hope they grant that to me as well.

I am not sorry to have “read” this book, for learning so much more about Jennette McCurdy and how difficult the life of a tv star–and all that it entailed in her individual situation–was. And for all of the thinking I did about my own “daughtering” and “mothering/ parenting.” For McCurdy, the author, a brand new life and career are just taking off and finally with her own discretion as to how she lives it. As popular as this book is–so hopefully not solely for its title–and as long as I waited for my turn, even from the library, she is off to a very successful start. People will now truly know her name.

The Monday Book – No Two Persons by Erica Bauermeister

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Guest review by Janelle Bailey, avid reader/ever-an-educator/lifelong learner

No Two Persons by Erica Bauermeister

Quite honestly, everything Erica Bauermeister has ever written/published I have devoured and enjoyed, but for maybe liking just one of her books a little less than I have loved every other. I must simply say that her writing, her stories, her characters, her themes, well…they truly tend to push all of the right buttons for my avidly reading always heart and soul. Bauermeister “gets me” like very few other authors so consistently have, and this is simply one more piece of evidence.

There were numerous times during my reading of No Two Persons when Bauermeister began an idea and was articulating something that I have, myself, thought…and gosh, if I couldn’t have–and so many times–finished the paragraph for her, as she wrote exactly what I was already thinking…but articulately, poetically, beautifully and all the while constructing this gorgeous novel. Maybe that strikes you as odd, but in no way am I saying that she writes a predictable book or anything like that; this reality did not do even an iota of deterring me from loving the entire book. I am trying to say that we can, apparently, finish each others’ sentences, or so closely share similar thoughts, that while that may sound creepy, it is not, and just makes me feel like we are, well…on the same page.

Bauermeister told this entire story in such a way that she made me feel like I was right there with her all the while, that she understands some big and small ideas exactly as I do. Therefore, a gorgeous irony contained within is the entire point of the book’s title and a central idea, that, according to Madame Swetchine, a well-educated Russian woman–fairly unknown and often not quoted for writing this when Edmund Wilson often is–“No two persons ever read the same book, or saw the same picture.” But man, am I eager to discuss this book with others to see how they felt.

In this beautifully written, heart-deep and heady novel, there are many, many characters. Some readers will not like, let alone appreciate so deeply as I do, this fact. How can you write a book called No Two Persons and addressing Swetchine’s comment without including numerous persons? The onus–honor of meeting them, I say–is on the reader to follow the thread, and oh, boy is it ever a sweet and silvery metallic one, one that will absolutely beautify “the read” and make of the experience a fabulous tapestry, richly woven with all of these characters who have met or read Alice’s book and its main character. I will always remember only its title and how valuable that character is, that everyone needs to meet him but likely no two persons grab the exact same experience in reading. Yet everyone gets exactly what they need.

Not long before reading this book–and truthfully, a friend walked into a bookstore with me on my birthday, and said–as we talked about those we knew and those we did not as we encountered them: “I’d like you to pick out a book for me to buy you for your birthday.” Oh. My. Goodness. The GIFT of this statement. I did not have to waffle much, having this title already on hold at the library, as to which I would choose, though I certainly enjoyed the anticipation and looked at many, many others first. That was some of the joy of this gift!

But it wasn’t only that.

I was having a discussion with a dear and near neighbor who reads nearly as much and as lovingly as I do…and just a month ago. We could talk for hours about good books and what we are reading and what we want to read and what we have previously read for HOURS…and easily do. So when our paths cross, we often do not get started–LOL–but try to just share what we’re reading right now, and yet then we’ve started. Right?

After coming home from my birthday with this new book in hand, we ran into each other, and found ourselves sharing that we’ve each read every one of Bauermeister’s books (I for sure have, but I think she had, too). We shared how much we’d been struck by the earliest ones, compelling us to be so eager to and then read the rest. And then, no lie: the next day, when I–and I don’t always–looked at my Facebook memories, I found a memory from ten years ago that indicated that The School of Essential Ingredients was the 15th book I had read/reviewed that year–2013 (This was my 67th book this year, and I’m so pleased with my improvement!)–and then reads: “The School of Essential Ingredients by Erica Bauermeister. Wow. This is MY kind of romance, S__ C__ (a friend who had, I believe, recommended it)…beautifully written, twining together story and food, experiences and dreams. Fifty Shades of Gray has NOTHING on this. Find me a guy who “gets” this story and all of its ingredients, please.” I took a screenshot of the FB memory (she’s not on FB) and it and send it to my neighbor, as she and I had JUST had this conversation, and we both indicated we should share the book with our husbands.

That’s just a bit more of the craziness, because ten years ago TODAY (exactly one month and two days after posting that on Facebook in 2013), I met in person for the first time a guy I’d met on match.com. We met in the middle and enjoyed getting to know each other over a first date that included a couple of beers and some frozen pizza prepared for us by the bartender in a pretty sticky-floored bar with pretty clean bathrooms. Two days later we went on our second date, and that lasted a record thirteen hours, including a farmer’s market, an al fresco brunch/lunch, nine holes of golf (my concession at his wish/request), sushi all the way through the green tea ice cream (his trade off/adventure), and finished with me telling him in one more location nearby (the sushi place had no room for us to stay) one of my favorite life stories (which, of course, is all about a book!). And then, just two weeks more than eight years ago…I married him.

And MAYBE if he knows that the neighbor is reading the book, too, he’ll somehow be game to read this one. It’s not the murder-mystery like he most enjoys, but man: if we could, in this case, read the same book and discuss how similarly and differently our two persons feel about the book…well, that would be pretty darned neat.