Category: Jen Lancaster

Tigers In Red Weather

~ Wendy-Marie ~ Leave a comment

Ever pick up a book because of cool cover art, read the inside flap and added it to your book bag, crawled onto your bed and read said book and then closed the covers after you’ve finished and asked “Why the bleep did I read this?”

Or is it just me? It can’t be just me…

This afternoon, a book with cover showing a retro siren in red beach togs with a slash of matching red lipstick lured it’s way into my stack of library books. I could blame the general awfulness of the day (unexpected mission critical car repairs for Mr Saturn that drained my NecronomiCon 2015 savings and a big chunk out of our personal checking accounts, headache from dealing with said car repairs, feelings of failure for not being able to pay for everything myself and having to ask Blacklight to pay his share, etc) for picking up Liza Klaussmann’s Tigers in Red Weather. I could blame PMS. I could blame my brain being addled by finding the brand new Margaret Atwood just sitting in the general fiction stacks unmarked as brand spanking new vs in New Fiction where it truly belonged. Or I could blame the Agent of the Random because sometimes books just aren’t awesome or the right book for a reader. I firmly believe every book has it’s reader and Great Tulu knows I’m not going to love every book.

I’m sure for the right person (IE not me) Tigers in Red Weather would be a treat. It’s the tale of two cousins, the darkly handsome Nick (a lady) and lush (in more ways than one if you get my meaning hic hic hic) Helena. Nick is rich, bored, and non traditional lovely with flashing green eyes. The men just love themselves some Nick. Helena is the lovely blonde cousin who feels second best from their childhood days on Martha’s Vineyard (her mother didn’t marry as well as Nick’s mother). We first meet the cousins in fall 1945 as they break up house (Nick to head south to her Navy husband, Helena to Hollywood and a second marriage). We then skip to the late 1950s, meet their children (Nick’s daughter Daisy and Helena’s son Ed), bad stuff goes down one magic summer and then we skip-a-doodle to through the 1960s, learn some secrets (I would have totally pegged Nick’s husband Hughes as a deeply closeted homosexual vs the true secret) and then the book mercifully ends.

I plugged along through everything, wanting to shake Nick and Helena by the shoulders until their brains rattled. I also pictured Helena’s son, the not quite “right” Ed as a budding Norman Bates. The most shocking and interesting thing about the book was turning to the author info and discovering Liza Klaussmann is descendant of Herman Melville. Does my loathing of Melville extend to his distant family? If so, is my love of Monica Dickens, descendant of the dreaded Charles Dickens an aberration? These questions compel me more than the fates of Nick and Helena, Ed and Daisy.

In the right hands, again NOT MINE,  I firmly believe someone will adore Tigers in Red Weather. I imagine the right reader (NOT ME) to be someone who loves Downtown Abbey, cupcakes, wines and Martha Stewart. I can totally see Jen Lancaster reading Tigers in Red Weather on her Kindle by the pool and loving it to death.

In these undead raccoon paws?Eh…but kudos to the fine marketing geniuses at the Hachette Book Group and jacket designer Lindsey Andrews because I would have never picked up this book if it wasn’t for the cover, not even if I found it at the Simsbury Public Library book sale on $8 bag day.

If You Were Here

~ Wendy-Marie ~ Leave a comment

***May 2011 backlog post…I know, I know…another one! 🙂 ***

Can a writer go from a string of best selling memoirs to a novel? Jen (My Fair Lazy, Bitter is the New Black) Lancaster is the latest author to try. Like Laurie Notaro’s There’s a (Slight) Chance I Might Be Going to Hell, Jen Lancaster’s If You Were Here, has our plucky heroine Jen Mia moving from her cute house in a bad city neighborhood to suburban bliss.

Only instead of selling her house for a packet when her husband gets a job, our plucky Mia is fed up with the local gangster wannabes and her party girl landlord Vienna. So why not move to the town that John Hughes immortalized as Shermer, IL in his classic 1980s teen films. And oh, not just any house but Uber Hot Guy Jake Ryan’s house!

Cue Blacklight standing in living room with a hot Dunkee Cup (it’s been raining for a week!) with a blank look on his face. Then watch Blacklight run away screaming the second you pop Sixteen Candles in Mr DVD Player.

But given Jen’s Mia’s wacky life, do you think the move goes smoothly? Oh hells bells nah! The house or as I’ve dubbed it Mia’s Money Pit (remember that movie? Tom Hanks? Shelley Long? Hot blond ballet dancer Alexander HisPantsArentTightEnough? Cue Blacklight canceling my Netflix subscription), is a crumbling disaster! Just like Mia’s relationship with her new neighbors, Posh Asshole, Yummy Mummy and Old Asshole.

Toilets crash through ceilings, walls cave in. Microwave hot dogs are eaten <shudder>. Things are just horrible! How is a gal suppose to write her blog best selling Amish zombie teen series and keep up her Stephenie Meyer hate under these conditions?!?!?! Actually, now really wish Mia’s Amish zombie teen series existed because that sounds AWESOME SAUCE and would totally put it on my library hold list!

Will things work out for Mia? Can you say duh? Does Blacklight mainline Dunkee Cup? Do I think movie Thor is hawt?

Now you don’t have to be part of the Jen Lancaster fandom to read If You Were Here. Anyone who likes quirky girl books will be charmed. And any girl who watched Sixteen Candles  ohhhhfivebazillontimesuntilherfatherthreatenedtochopupthevcrwithhischainsawloveyoudadster! will have a certain Thompson Twins song in her head on endless loop as she walks to the bookstore register with If Your Were Here in hand, visions of hot guys and pink dresses in their heads.

The only thing that sucks, besides the vampires in Twilight, okay alllll of the Twilight series? Dearest Jen really likes Stephenie Meyer…sighhhh….

I Am Sort of Bummed…A Tale from the Library Bag

~ Wendy-Marie ~ Leave a comment

***This was originally posted on the Confessions blog***

Yesterday morning there was a lovely email waiting for me in my inbox at Company X. One of my holds was in! Fist pump and YESSSSS! Mental note to race to library right after work!

And race to the library I did (well, race after coming home to change work clothes and drag Blacklight away from Orbiter). Jen Lancaster’s MY FAIR LAZY was mine mine MINE! (Okay for the next 21 days) A jaunt to West Hartford and Aldis and I was sprawled on Mr Couch with book in hand and a bag of Clancy’s finest Sour Cream and Onion chips.

And two hours later I was looking at the picture of Alec Baldwin, Jen and Fletch going “Ohhhh that’s what Fletch looks like”. A few more pages and book was done. Cue me walking out to the kitchen and telling Blacklight “Gee I’m really glad I didn’t buy this for (peeking at inside front cover) $24.95.” Blacklight was all “okay…can I order the next Thomas Convenant yet?”

Now remember this is Jen Lancaster. The author I recommend to all my girls. The first author I ever followed on MySpace and Twitter (yes, even BEFORE I followed HE WHOSE NAME CAN NOT BE SPOKEN…okay Blacklight just peeked over my shoulder and said “You mean Neil Gaiman? Thanks for blabbing honey! Back to the Jen Lancaster Love Fest) The gal whose inspired me to start the WordPress blogs last year. But the hardcover in my library bookcase? Just not feeling it.

Maybe it’s too many memoirs in a few years. Maybe it’s because I can go to Twitter and read her instant thoughts. Maybe it’s because I’m an NPR listening snob…Okay THAT SOUND? My dear Blacklight laughing as he tries to pour some get tippy in a shot glass. Because the wife who wears a CAPTAIN AMERICA FOR PRESIDENT t-shirt, listens to NPR, watches YOU’RE CUT OFF! and refers to COPS as her “SESSSY MAN CATALOG” is just way too funny. Whatever. Back to Jen!

Maybe I’m asking for too much when Jen’s other memoirs owned me from page one. Next time I get a hankering for Jen in print I’m going to grab SUCH A PRETTY FAT or PRETTY IN PLAID but MY FAIR LAZY? Some lucky duck in my area is going to be holding MY FAIR LAZY in their hot little hands by Tuesday tops.