Chelsea Handler: My Horizontal Life

• ISBN-13: 9781455577514
• Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
• Publication date: 7/16/2013
• Pages: 221

In this raucous collection of true-life stories, Chelsea Handler recounts her time spent in the social trenches with that wild, strange, irresistible, and often gratifying beast: the one-night stand.

 You've either done it or know someone who has: the one-night stand, the familiar outcome of a night spent at a bar, sometimes the sole payoff for your friend's irritating wedding, or the only relief from a disastrous vacation. Often embarrassing and uncomfortable, occasionally outlandish, but most times just a necessary and irresistible evil, the one-night stand is a social rite as old as sex itself and as common as a bar stool.

 Enter Chelsea Handler. Gorgeous, sharp, and anything but shy, Chelsea loves men and lots of them. My Horizontal Life chronicles her romp through the different bedrooms of a variety of suitors, a no-holds-barred account of what can happen between a man and a sometimes very intoxicated, outgoing woman during one night of passion. From her short fling with a Vegas stripper to her even shorter dalliance with a well-endowed little person, from her uncomfortable tryst with a cruise ship performer to her misguided rebound with a man who likes to play leather dress-up, Chelsea recalls the highs and lows of her one-night stands with hilarious honesty.

 Encouraged by her motley collection of friends (aka: her partners in crime) but challenged by her family members (who at times find themselves a surprise part of the encounter), Chelsea hits bottom and bounces back, unafraid to share the gritty details. My Horizontal Life is one guilty pleasure you won't be ashamed to talk about in the morning.

 Before I get into this, I just want to say that I think Chelsea Handler is hilarious. She's one of my favorite comediennes. HOWEVER. This book is way more information than I really wanted. About a lot of things. Mainly, her vagina.
 The book started off hilarious, but somewhere in the middle it lost me. I personally am not a promiscuous or adventurous person. Far from it, in fact. I would say somewhat reserved even. But I acknowledge that other people have fewer scruples and repressed guilt issues than I do, and I don't begrudge them their sexual misadventures. But Chelsea, according to this, takes it to another level. Some of the stories are suitable mortifying and riotous. Some, however, are lessons in what not to do - ever.
 I was continually impressed, however, with Chelsea's stunning ability to act in the moment and improve her way out of awkward situations. I wish I had that presence of mind. Most of the time I just loose my tongue, unless I've already thought up a pliable lie and then BAM Oscar-winning performance. Swear to God.
 I don't feel like there is very much to say about an autobiography aside from one's personal reactions. It is, after all, someone else's life story, not fiction, and there isn't much to say about plot holes or character development. I did appreciate, though, that we visibly moved forward in Chelsea's life, and that there was a life lesson to take away at the end. She showed a level of maturity and self-realization that she had not previously displayed throughout the whole of the book, and I am a huge sucker for development. Four for you, Chelsea.
 Overall: B
 Not super impressed with her sexcapades, but props for the amounts of laugh-out-loud material. The stories, while some required mind-bleach, were told brilliantly.

Oscar Wilde: The Collected Oscar Wilde

• ISBN-13: 9781593083106
• Publisher: Barnes & Noble
• Publication date: 12/1/2007
• Series: Barnes & Noble Classics Series
• Pages: 640

A renowned eccentric, dandy, and man-about-town, Oscar Wilde was foremost a dazzling wit and dramatic genius whose plays, poems, essays, and fiction contain some of the most frequently quoted quips and passages in the English language. 
 This volume features a wide selection of Wilde's literary output, including the comic masterpiece The Importance of Being Earnest, an immensely popular play filled with satiric epigrams that mercilessly expose Victorian hypocrisy; The Portrait of Mr. W. H., a story proposing that Shakespeare's sonnets were inspired by the poet's love for a young man; The House of Pomegranates, the author's collection of fairy tales; lectures Wilde delivered, first in the United States, where he exhorted his audiences to love beauty and art, and then in England, where he presented his impressions of America; his two major literary-theoretical works, "The Decay of Lying" and "The Critic as Artist"; and a selection of verse, including his great poem The Ballad of Reading Goal, in which Wilde famously declared that "each man kills the thing he loves."
 A testament to Wilde's incredible versatility, this collection displays his legendary wit, brilliant use of language, and penetrating insight into the human condition.
 
So Oscar Wilde is pretty much one of my favorite playwrights of all time. I mean, The Importance of Being Earnest? Come on. One of the most hilarious plays of all time. He was also incredibly intelligent, albeit Socialist. And did I mention that he went to jail for being gay? So yeah, A+ life story.
 In Barnes and Nobles' classics edition, they compile a rather stellar display of his many works. Starting off with short stories, they segue into poetry, articles, essays, and finally end with a three act version of Earnest. Therefore, you get a great sampling of the many interests of Wilde and the way in which his brain worked.
 Personally, a lot of what he said really resonated with me and what I feel the political and media situation of today. His essay, Critic as Artist, screamed at me about the faultiness of the media. He also spent a lot of time in The Truth of Masks talking about the importance of period-accurate costuming in drama, referring to Shakespeare's copious notes to his performances, making it easy for reproductions to portray the characters as Shakespeare originally intended.
 Wilde, aside from having a great intellectual mind, was also highly creative and wrote beautifully. The collection starts off with eight short stories, my favorite of which was Lord Arthur Savile's Crime, which is written with the same humor and attention to the ridiculous as Earnest. Which is probably why I was so amused. I cracked up laughing just telling the story to my uncle after I read it.
 Overall: A
 Wilde can sometimes become dry and pedantic, which makes his essays occasionally difficult to muddle through. But this is still a great collection, and I highly recommend it. WARNING The House of Pomegranates is actually not included in this volume, not sure why it's in the blurb.

Janet Evanovich: Wicked Appetite

• Mass Market Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: St. Martin's Paperbacks; First Edition edition (August 16, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-13: 978-0312383350

Lizzy Tucker has inherited a historic house in Marblehead, Massachusetts, taken a new job as pastry chef for Dazzle's Bakery in Salem, and set her sights on a comfortable future. The comfortable future and any hope for normalcy evaporates when dark-haired, dark-hearted Gerwulf Grimoire and his nemesis, a blond beach bum named Diesel, enter Dazzle's and change Lizzy's life forever.
 Grimoire has set his sights on the Stones of SALIGIA, rumored to have found their way to Salem. These seven stones, each representing one of the seven deadly sins, can bestow frightening powers upon its owner. Powers that would be dangerous in Grimoire's hands...
 Diesel is a man with a mission: to stop Grimoire at all costs. In order t do so he'll need to convince the baker she alone has the ability to keep Grimoire from the stones. Once Lizzy and Diesel become a team, Diesel will have to guard Lizzy's body...day and night.
 The Seven Deadly Sins pretty much cover everything that's wicked. Diesel thinks they also pretty much cover everything that's fun. And Lizzy thinks Diesel and The Sins cover everything her mother warned her about...
 
 I sometimes forget how short Evanovich novels generally are these days. No less funny, no less ridiculous, no less Evanovich-y, but short.
 In Wicked Appetite, the first of the Lizzy and Diesel series, Lizzy is initiated into the world of the Unmentionables. And no, I'm not talking about your grandmother's underwear. I'm thinking there are going to be at least seven in the series, because I am a fan of complete-ness (not completion, mind you) and I swear to God if she doesn't hit all seven deadly sins...there will be hell to pay. See what I did there?
 Diesel, who we know from the between-the-numbers holiday books of Evanovich's Stephanie Plum series, is hunting Gerwulf Grimoire, his cousin, who is looking for the stones of the seven sins in order to rule the world. According to Diesel, of course. Lizzy seems to be the only person around who can help him, having the Unmentionable ability of being able to sense Unmentionable objects. Sound convoluted? It's not really. She makes Unmentionable cupcakes.
 Evanovich's humor shines through, as usual, in the completely unrealistic and ridiculous antics her characters get up to and the completely bemused, I-give-up-let's-roll-with-it attitude with which they confront their increasingly complicated lives. Her usual animal sidekicks are present in the forms of the monkey Carl and Cat, the one-eyed guardian of Lizzy's inherited home.
 As far as characterization goes, Evanovich has started to rely on tropes. Her girls are good-natured, awkward ladies confronted with strange circumstances who have breakdowns every once in a while that are easily tempered with baked goods. The men are sweet but occasionally lascivious. There's the crazy sidekick who is also good-natured but constantly causing problems. It's a formula that works, but it's a formula nonetheless.
 Overall: B
 There wasn't much punch to this novel, but it was funny and enjoyable. Hopefully the plot is cleared up a little more in future books. The characters aren't even really certain what they're looking for most of the time.

Diana Gabaldon: Dragonfly in Amber

• Mass Market Paperback: 976 pages
• Publisher: Dell; Reprint edition (November 2, 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-13: 978-0440215622

For twenty years Claire Randall has kept her secrets. But now she is returning with her grown daughter to Scotland's majestic mist-shrouded hills. Here Claire plans to reveal a truth as stunning as the events that gave it birth: about the mystery of an ancient circle of standing stones...about a love that transcends the boundaries of time...and about James Fraser, a Scottish warrior whose gallantry once drew a young Claire from the security of her century to the dangers of his...
 Now a legacy of blood and desire will test her beautiful copper-haired daughter, Brianna, as Claire's spellbinding journey of self-discovery continues in the intrigue-ridden Paris court of Charles Stuart...in a race to thwart a doomed Highlands uprising...and in a desperate flight to save both the child and the man she loves...

She even used the book title twice in the book (at least). Label me impressed.
 This book picks up right where the last one left off, once you get into the second part. First, though, you have to suffer through a few chapters of intense confusion. Claire is back in the present for some reason that we cannot at that point fathom, and she's looking for information on the men who died at Culloden, the very battle she was trying to prevent when last we left her. So immediately we know she failed. The question then becomes how and why.
 From there on it's a fairly romping adventure through France and back to Scotland with murder, scandal, and, of course, political intrigue. Jamie and Claire are trying to sabotage James and his Charles' attempt to initiate a revolution in England to gain the throne from George, but they have to appear to be Jacobites in order to farm their information without suspicion. This leads to some pretty uncomfortable circumstances as can be imagined.
 The one complaint I would have to lodge is a pacing issue. There are quite a few times when I was reading and I wondered why I was reading about some minute moment in Claire Randall's life. The book is already pretty massive and packed with action, so I could have done without some example of random domesticity. At the end, when you think it might be time to be close to over, you're wrong. The book continues far beyond what is reasonable. It seemed to be wondering in the last few chapters, skipping huge chunks of time. It was almost as if she was trying to cram everything into the last few sections and it came out kind of a trainwreck, I felt. Finally, the giant "plot twist" at the end seemed random and irrelevant when it came down to it. You didn't see it coming because a) it was almost forgotten and b) there was absolutely no hint of it. Rule #1 of writing a good mystery - don't pull your suspects or your motives completely out of your ass.
 SPOILER ALERT SPOILER SPOILER DO NOT READ IF YOU DON'T WANT A SPOILER
Aside from the pacing issues, the characterization was great. I especially enjoyed the development of Jack Randall (yes, he shows back up, are we really all surprised?). She did an excellent job of compromising what you thought of him and letting you see that maybe he had a softer side after all. And I thought Jamie learned a huge lesson in the last scene with Randall as well.
 Overall: B-
 The pacing issues really did bother me.