Sleeping Naked is Green has the same concept as Julie & Julia:  a year long challenge and subsequent blogging.  Vanessa Farquharson, after being scared to death by Al Gore, decided to make one green change in her life everyday for a year.  Farquharson has a true gift for writing.  She keeps the reader engaged by continuing story lines throughout her memoir instead of jumping too quickly from one story to the next.  She is witty, a bit quirky, and extremely lovable.   Her stories range from a hilarious interview with Jake Gyllenhaal where she couldn’t stop rambling, to some pretty sweet experiences with love.  This book has something for everyone, even people who aren’t  environmentalists.

Not only does she tell a good story, she is extremely persuasive.  For about three minutes I seriously considered unplugging my fridge like she did in the name of mother nature.  I am still considering making a compost bin.  If she can fit one in her tiny apartment and use the fertilizer for her tiny herbs, then I definitely can put one in my backyard and start up a garden.  We will see what Tom thinks of that…

Farquharson even convinced my friend Callie to consider making some green changes.  I don’t think she will sell her car anytime soon, but may stop drying her hair as often.  Sadly the book isn’t in high demand and Callie had to scavenge the ecology section of the book store to find it.  I didn’t even know there was an ecology section!

If you are looking for a good easy read pick up this book today- be green though and see if you can borrow it or check it out from the library!

Let’s think about memoirs for a bit.  Although all memoirs are different, most follow a common theme:  someone is bored with their life and they try to change it up a bit.  There are other themes- someone gets raped and they try to get over it, childhood trauma, drugs.  But mostly I read the ones about people changing up their lives.  You know what?  I am tired of it!  Of course everyone wants to change up their lives and make it more fun!  Seriously, if I have to read one more book about a boring life I am going to write my own.  I have a boring life too, but I don’t write books about it!

But seriously- Julie Powell should never have written a book.  She jumps around way too much.  Many times it seems as if she starts an important thought and them completely navigates away from it.  The reader is left feeling confused.  I have a feeling her blog worked out much better than her book.  In a blog she could jump from story to story.  However, her book continues to jump all over the place without having a transitory story.

Maybe I will like this book more when I finish it, but I have a feeling it will keep getting worse!  In the meantime- if you are really bored, pick this book up.  If you are used to quality literature- leave this book behind.

Image from Barnesandnoble.com

Ideally, I would like to review new and upcoming books.  But I just couldn’t resist blogging about The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger.  The book was first published in 2003 and became a best seller after an appearance on The Today Show.  With the opening of the movie coming up on August 14, the book is experiencing a well deserved new found fame.

Many of the books that I pick up are ones that are on their way to the silver screen.  I see a preview and as soon as I hear the words, “based on the bestselling book”; I immediately have to have the book.  I have come to the conclusion that if a book is good enough to influence a screenwriter or producer then I will be profoundly influenced as well.  This does not always hold true, but it nevertheless serves as an adventure for me.

An adventure is somewhat of an understatement to describe The Time Traveler’s Wife.  If I had to describe the book in three words I would say it is a neo-classic existentialism experience.  As the title eludes, the main character, Henry DeTamble, is a time traveler.  He spends the latter part of his life visiting the child version of his wife, Clare Abshire. 

The book opens with the two characters meeting in a library.  Clare is 20 and Henry 28.  Clare has already met the older version on Henry, but he is clueless as to who she is and why she is staring at him.  Without giving the entire book away, the next 500 or so pages detail their lives from each of their perspectives. 

The ideas portrayed by Niffenegger raise certain questions in the readers minds.  Clare’s character is defined by waiting while Henry is the classic asshole who is completely unreliable until he finally grows up.  When we stop to think about it, are we at all different from Henry and Clare?  Sure we can not time travel, but we have the same thoughts and feelings. 

Throughout the book it is noted time and again that time traveling can not change what has already happened.  This goes against all rules of time traveling we as Americans know. I still think of Back to the Future for all my time traveling rules.  However, The Time Traveler’s Wife is much different and raises interest into the idea of free will.  How far does free will go if we don’t have free will while time traveling… I told you this was deep stuff.

The deep thoughts provoked by Niffenegger’s book do not hinder the easy read style in which she writes.  There is still a certain romantic flow that kept me from ever putting down the book.  I brought this book with me everywhere just in case I had ten minutes of free time while my boss went to the bathroom. 

There comes a point in the book where the reader is told exactly what is going to happen and how the book is going to end.  Usually this would ruin the book (unless you read the last page of the book halfway through like me), but Niffenegger makes it work.  The audience is still so intrigued to find out more about these two characters that we have so deeply come to love.

It will be interesting to see how the movie portrays Clare and Henry’s love and emotions.  It is easy to tell a story in a movie, but much harder to give the story emotions.  I do hope they can accomplish this feat.

Keep a lookout for her newest novel, A Fearful Symmetry to be released September 29.

The bottom line:  if you are looking for an easy read that provokes thought and emotion, this is the book for you.

I have found over the years that I am deeply influenced by the emotions I read in books.  The week that I got engaged I was reading Heartburn by Nora Ephron.  This is a true story of how her husband cheated on her.  Not the best book for me to be reading during the “happiest” moment of my life.  I think I threatened Tom over 30 times that if he cheated on me, we would be over- immediately.  Poor Tom had just proposed to me, he didn’t understand why I was acting so paranoid.  I blame it on the book!

Now, I am reading Julie & Julia by Julie Powell.  This true story and soon to be movie was adapted for the screen by Nora Ephron.  The books and movies that she is involved with are always amazing (When Harry Met Sally, Sleepless in Seatle, Michael, You’ve Got Mail).  So needless to say, I am stoked about seeing Julie & Julia and even happier to be reading it.

Last night I came upon this passage: 

I was supposed to have spent my twenties (a) hammering away for some ninety hours a week at some high paying, ethically dubious job, drinking heavily, and having explosive sex with a rich array of twenty-something men; (b) awaking at noon every day in my Williamsburg loft to work on my painting/poetry/knitting/performance art, easily shaking off the effects of stylish drugs and tragically hip clubs and explosive sex with a rich array of twenty-something men (and women if I could manage it); or (c) pursuing higher education, sweating bullets over an obscure dissertation and punctuating my intellectual throes with some pot and explosive sex with a rich array of professors and undergrads.  These were the models, for someone like me.

But I did none of these things.  Instead I got married.  I didn’t mean to, exactly.  It just kind of happened.

This completely cracked me up!  Immediately I felt connected to this Julie Powell person.  Don’t get me wrong- I LOVE being married and I LOVE my husband.  But (and there is always a but) I never saw myself being married in my early twenties.  When I read the passage to my husband the poor guy responded, “You want to have sex with other people?”  How can I explain- it isn’t the sex, but I can’t expect guys to understand that!

This is why I love to read.  The emotions portrayed in books, almost always relate to me.  Reading sometimes confuses the shit out of me and makes me feel emotions I don’t have, but sometimes it reminds me of how I actually feel at that moment.

I am looking forward to reading more of this book.  However, I still feel sad about being finished with The  Time Traveler’s Wife.  I keep reading Julie & Julia and every now and then I think to myself, “this just isn’t as good as the last one”.  I know I can’t really compare a sci-fi romance to a memoir, but I am. 

This is the reason why I think I am having trouble:  with Time Traveler’s Wife I felt like I was in another world, experiencing something special between two people.  Now, with Julie & Julia, I feel like I am reading my life.  Like Julie Powell is playing some sick joke on me.  I guess I have to keep reading to see if the parallels continue (I seriously want to go to culinary school- another similarity- creepy, I know).

Time to turn the page and find out…

Image from Barnes&noble.com