Category: Book Talk

Book Review: Beartown

Lauren3 Comments

A short recap of my history with Fredrik Backman.  I’ve read two of his books — A Man Called Ove and My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry — and loved them both!  That’s it.  That’s my history.  Told you it was short 🙂

I saw Beartown on a list of the best books of 2017 and was on board right away.  That being said, this book was a bit different for Backman.  There’s no curmudgeon!  Unless you count the town barkeep, but as she’s one of like 30 “main” characters, she doesn’t get a ton of airtime.

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Basically, this book is about a small town that eats, sleeps and breathes hockey and an incident involving the star player, Kevin, and the General Manager’s daughter, Maya.  What happens challenges everyone to question their own loyalties and morals.  It breaks the town but then remakes it.

The entire time I read it, something felt off but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it until I tried to explain it out loud to Joey.  Backman jumps back and forth between characters SO MUCH.  Every paragraph revolves around a different character.  In the beginning, I figured we were just meeting everyone, but it went on like that for the rest of the book.  There’s also SO MANY stories from the characters’ pasts (before the book takes place) included.  Again, in the beginning, this was fine but it continued on throughout the book, to the point where you spend more time hearing about things that happened in the past than you spend with the characters in the present action of the book.  It was wholly strange and it gave me an unending feeling that I didn’t really know the characters at all.

That being said, what you will get, and what I’ve come to love about Fredrik Backman’s novels, is a great deal of heart.  There are certainly many characters who are bad people with bad morals but there are just as many characters who know right from wrong, who show fierce loyalty and unfaltering compassion towards those they love and honestly, that’s enough to keep me reading.

Have you read Beartown (or anything by Fredrik Backman)?

What are you reading right now?

Weekend Things: 2017 to 2018

Lauren2 Comments

2017 wasn’t a perfect year and 2018 won’t be either, but the weekend that took us from one to the other most certainly was!  A long weekend felt like the perfect way to pause and reflect on 2017 while also having time to usher in 2018 and even though I’m feeling sort of tired today, I went to bed last night feeling completely at peace with how the weekend played out.

Went to close my office blinds on Friday and saw the most beautiful sunset.  I literally ran outside to snap a picture 🙂  The best way to kick off a long weekend is with a trip to the library to pick up new books, of course.  Joey wanted to stay in but in a rare moment, I did NOT feel like changing straight into my pajamas upon getting home and felt the itch to get out, so I convinced him to go see a movie.  We saw Call Me By Your Name and I’m still not sure what I thought of it.  Beautiful in many ways, confusing in many other ways.

Saturday and a bold statement: If I could only eat at one breakfast restaurant for the rest of my life, it would be Stowaway.  It’s just that every time we decide to go out, it’s the only place I really want to go and it never doesn’t sound good.  Thankfully, Joey indulges me in going all the time.  I don’t even know what we did on Saturday — wait, no that’s wrong!  WE FINISHED WATCHING THE LEFTOVERS!  And I seriously need someone who considers it “the best show ever” to explain to me because I hated it.  Help!

Filled in the rest of the day with a trip to the gym (I ran exactly one mile less in 2017 than I did in 2016, which I think should kill me, but I sort of don’t care?), a mountain of granola and our traditional New Year’s dinner of black eyed peas and collard greens.  Oh and we watched Gone Baby Gone and despite some real plot problems, we still liked it.

NYE!  Started with a bunch of yogurt pancakes (minus the apples and I subbed half whole wheat for all-purpose — loved them!) and then I made a pie for dinner the next day ♥  Later on, we hit up Huckleberry Roasters for some January planning, NYE caffeinating and new book reading.  It gave my heart such joy.  We need to hang out in coffee shops more.

Festivities for the night started with us getting all dressed up Great Gatsby-style!  We had a themed party to attend but went to dinner in costume first.  I think the gal taking our order at Cart-Driver was confused for a minute before we explained we were going to a party afterwards.  Just FYI, we ordered all the costumage (costumery?) on Amazon, it all arrived on Saturday and much to my shock and delight, it all worked out perfectly!  Not going to lie though, that headband was hell.  I took it off mid-party because it felt like it was actually cutting into my head and I had a headache all day Monday that I’m blaming on that thing.  What were women in the 20’s thinking?!

In conclusion, eating Cart-Driver’s clam pizza, talking 2017 happenings and cheersing Joey and Jenn at midnight felt like the best end to a weird rocky year.

The first day of 2018 was blissful.  Started slow and easy with breakfast on the couch, followed by movie time.  We’re seeing The King and I at The Buell next weekend but Joey had never seen the original, so I felt we needed to watch it.  Yul Brynner is a goddamn delight and I was overjoyed to discover the whole film is just as good as I remembered it being.  Newly discovered favorite line: “I’ll do the remembering!”  It just applies so well to my life 🙂  I also picked us up some lunch burritos from the newly opened Illegal Pete’s in our neighborhood.  Every young hungover Denverite seemed to be there so the line was brutal but worth it.

We had my family over for New Year’s Day dinner — a Dorsey family tradition that I thank my wonderful mother for — and it honestly made my heart so happy ♥  Made bacon-wrapped stuffed turkey chicken, shredded kale salad and cauliflower gratin plus that vegan French Silk Pie and loved how it all turned out.  Everyone left shortly after 9, we cleaned up in a state of euphoria and were in bed by 9:45.  It was the best!

Please be kind to us, 2018.