JESS JUST READS

A BOOK REVIEW BLOG

Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Coast Trail by Cheryl Strayed

At twenty-two, Cheryl Strayed thought she had lost everything. In the wake of her mother’s death, her family scattered and her own marriage was soon destroyed. Four years later, with nothing more to lose, she made the most impulsive decision of her life. With no experience or training, driven only by blind will, she would hike more than a thousand miles of the Pacific Crest Trail from the Mojave Desert through California and Oregon to Washington State — and she would do it alone.

This non-fiction book explores self-discovery and the recapturing of one’s lost identity. Cheryl struggles after her mother dies, and despite having a seemingly perfect husband who is supportive and comforting, she feels like she can’t function. She feels lost – wild. So she treks the PCT and over the course of three months, regains her sense of self and ‘finds herself’ (that’s not meant to sound cheesy).

Cheryl weaves in and out of past and present seamlessly, and neither time period is too dominant at one point in the novel. However, the writing could be better. The sentences are quite basic, and the story is very much ‘I did this and then I did this, but then I did this, and then I went here’. It feels too much like a retelling (without emotional connection or reflection), to the point where I couldn’t read more than one chapter at a time because the story dragged. Plus, when you’re backpacking, sometimes your days seem the same, and the story weaves into one. But Cheryl met a lot of people along the way, and I liked that she slotted them into the story intermittently. They broke up the tale and sped up the story.

Cheryl presents herself in an honest way – she seems real, and she doesn’t seem ‘photoshopped’ or altered to appear desirable to the audience. She does not present herself in a way that all readers will love her. She admits her faults and her mistakes, and she doesn’t try to make excuses for why she made them. For example, why would you hike the PCT trail if you’d never even been backpacking before? Some would say that’s suicide, and it is quite frustrating in the story when Cheryl makes silly decisions because of her lack of experience. But her desire to trek the path on her own and complete it – which she does – cements her as strong and independent, and the reader comes to respect her.

I’d recommend this book to adventurers, not necessarily readers. People who like to spend their weekends surfing or hiking or bike riding will like this book.

My Score: 6/10
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Seriously…I’m Kidding by Ellen Degeneres

“Sometimes the greatest things are the most embarrassing.” Ellen Degeneres’ winning, upbeat candor has made her show one of the most popular, resilient and honored daytime shows on the air. (To date, it has won no fewer than 31 Emmys.) Seriously… I’m Kidding, Degeneres’ first book in eight years, brings us up to date about the life of a kindhearted woman who bowed out of American Idol because she didn’t want to be mean.

I really wanted to love this book because I watch Ellen’s show all the time and I think she’s hilarious. But this book just didn’t work for me. The first few chapters are very clever and funny, but then it lacks for the remainder of the book.

Each chapter focuses on something different, but it all seems to be surface level. You don’t complete the novel feeling like you know anything more about Ellen. This is a book where she picks random topics and gives you her opinion on them. And that’s fun at first, but it gets old.

I wish Ellen wrote on a more personal level, so that there was a balance between humour and seriousness. Lena Dunham’s book does this perfectly. But I do understand that Ellen’s book probably never intended to achieve what Lena’s did. Seriously…I’m Kidding is designed to make people laugh, and it does, but there needs to be something propelling the story forward. If there are only jokes, then the reader gets a little bored. Also, I could skip chapters that bored me and it wouldn’t matter. And even in non-fiction, a reader shouldn’t want to do this.

This book may ‘bring us up to date’ on Ellen’s life, but it doesn’t really delve deep into who Ellen is behind her comedic front. I’d only recommend this book to people who are Ellen fans.

My Score: 4/10
Buy at BOOKTOPIA or BOOKWORLD

‘The New Easy’ by Donna Hay

Donna’s latest book is all about new ways to make cooking easier. It features new flavour combinations and new shortcuts, designed to simplify life in the kitchen. It captures how most of us, including Donna, like to cook – with quick solutions for busy weeknights, and special dishes for weekends when you have more time up your sleeve. Each chapter contains clever and versatile ideas to put a spin on some of your favourites. So once you’ve mastered a dish, you can refer to a new section called ‘re-style’, showing you how to transform it into a chic starter for a dinner party, say, or a handy addition to a picnic.

It’s hard for me to review a cookbook – I feel I can’t give an honest opinion until I’ve had a go at making all the recipes. But then it’ll be four years before I can write a review, so I’m going to write it now, after only completing a few recipes.

Donna’s latest cookbook is designed to make cooking easy, for people like myself who don’t want to waste a lot of time cooking. I don’t want to slave away in the kitchen, since I live with roommates and I’m the only one who eats what I cook anyway. Just quietly, I’m a serial cereal-for-dinner offender.

I definitely think this cookbook is targeted at families or people who are cooking for more than just themselves. The recipes are detailed, plentiful, and take a bit of time to do. Even the chapter for ‘weekends’ seems a little over-catered for. The instructions are easy to follow; however, sometimes they aren’t detailed enough.

The first recipe I made was the Easy Banana Bread, and Donna’s instructions on mashing the bananas was a little vague. I assume you’re supposed to mash them as much as possible? But I mashed for what felt like hours and there were still lumps? Also, I personally feel that four bananas is too much for a banana bread recipe. It was too flavour heavy, not to mention the random bits of lumpy banana throughout. But at least I know now for when I decide to make it again.

‘The New Easy’ is beautifully laid out with stunning pictures and clear photographs of the meals (let’s just clarify that my banana bread DID NOT look like the picture, but when does a recipe ever look as good as in the book?).

My Score: 8/10

Buy HERE

Not that Kind of Girl by Lena Dunham

These are stories about getting your butt touched by your boss, about friendship and dieting (kind of) and having two existential crises before the age of 20. Stories about travel, both successful and less so, and about having the kind of sex where you feel like keeping your sneakers on in case you have to run away during the act. Stories about proving yourself to a room of 50-year-old men in Hollywood and showing up to an outlandishly high-fashion event with the crustiest red nose you ever saw.

Lena Dunham is known for her television series, Girls, her confidence in Hollywood, and her comedic personality. And this non-fiction book goes behind-the-scenes and helps you understand how she became who she is.

Not that Kind of Girl is funny, insightful, intriguing, and engaging. Lena is a clever writer – the story often diverts on tangents, but I was never annoyed or frustrated. Instead, I relished the tangents because they proved to be more hilarious than the original story Lena was telling.

This book is decorated with hilarious cartoon drawings to accommodate Lena’s stories. The funniest cartoon is probably the picture of the curtains featured three quarters of the way through the book. The caption reads: ‘The curtain my date wiped his dick on’. Lena doesn’t shy away from personal stories – in fact, I’d say 80% of the stories in the book are related to/about sex. Sometimes you wonder if the stories are actually true because you can’t help but think, surely the guy didn’t do that? Or surely that couldn’t happen, right? Who knows. But it’s hilarious either way.

Lena separates the sections of her book and revolves them around different aspects of her life, for example body, work, food etc. Each chapter provides an insight into her life and is illustrated with essays, lists, or emails. The differing ways that Lena tells her stories allows for an engaging read. If the book was entirely made up of essays, then I suspect the reader would get a little bored. But Not that Kind of Girl is written with effortless prose. I’m going to finish my review with the below quote:

“If I could take what I’ve learned and make one menial job easier for you, or prevent you from having the kind of sex where you feel you must keep your sneakers on in case you want to run away during the act, then every misstep of mine was worthwhile.”

My Score: 9/10

The Fictional Woman by Tara Moss

I’m one of those people who doubted Tara’s ability to write because she’s spent so many years not trying to be a writer. Perhaps I thought that great writers are those who have always wanted to write, or tried to write. Many doubted the quality of Tara’s crime novels because she spent her adolescence as an international model. I haven’t read any of her crime novels – mostly because of this doubt – and was therefore the perfect person to read ‘The Fictional Woman’.

Tara squashes those who don’t believe she can write. The book is well-written and Tara comes across as honest, compassionate, and very self-assured. She talks about some very sensitive topics in a respectful way. Each chapter focuses on a different aspect of Tara’s life, and the book could probably be read in a different order and still make sense. In each chapter, Tara weaves in personal stories, anecdotes, and facts to argue a certain side of her that she feels she needs to reflect.

The pace, however, does slow down mid way through (around the chapter on the gender wars). For a few chapters, there are few personal stories and a lot of facts, and I felt myself losing interest. She did regain my interest for the final third of the novel, but by then, I was inundated with information and statistics. After a while, you become quite passive to the facts and statistics because there’s too many of them.

This non-fiction novel highlights Moss’ intelligence and awareness of women and their importance in society. The book becomes an insightful eye-opener for those who don’t realise how marginalised women can be in the home or in the workplace.

My Score: 8/10