Absolutely Faking it - Tiana Templeman

For Tiana Templeman, travel has always meant hiking boots and hostels, so when she wins a trip for two to stay at thirteen of the world's most exclusive five-star hotels including economy airfares, it sounds like the chance of a lifetime, an opportunity to see how the other half lives.

But with a travel budget stretched tighter than the straps on their bulging backpacks, Tiana and her husband have no room for diamonds and designer clothing (if they actually owned any in the first place). From the Ritz in Paris to the Dorchester in London and the Peninsula in Hong Kong, Tiana is faced with questions of etiquette she never thought she'd have to answer: is it all right to cook instant noodles beside the Chanel toiletries in the bathroom? How do you deal with tipping when you can't even afford a bottle of water from the mini-bar? And what on earth are you meant to do with a private butler?

Through fourteen countries, over five months and with countless hilarious and mortifying adventures, Tiana learns that in establishments catering for those with champagne tastes when you're on a beer budget, life can be harder than it looks.

It took me two attempts to start reading this book, but once I got into it I actually really enjoyed it.

At first Tiana and her husband are so worried about how they look and fit in to their surroundings in their flash hotels that I actually gave up on the book I was that frustrated with their whining, but once they settled in to their accommodations, the book actually got interesting and you got to hear about some pretty interesting places (Some that I have never thought about visiting before and now am intrigued by).

I still think that more detail could have been give at each of the locations hey visited. For a 5 month long holiday it is a surprisingly short book, even in the places written about that I have been to, I felt important or obvious details were left out. But it did give me a good sneak peak in to some of the extravagant hotels that I will probably never get to experience myself.

I would probably read this book again one day, and would definitely recommend it as a light read for those who enjoy travelling, but a word of warning – reading this book can lead to a sudden onset of travel bug fever!

Testimony - Anita Shreve

At a New England boarding school, a sex scandal is about to break. Even more shocking than the sexual acts themselves is the fact that they were caught on videotape. A Pandora’s box of revelations, the tape triggers a chorus of voices–those of the men, women, teenagers, and parents involved in the scandal–that details the ways in which lives can be derailed or destroyed in one foolish moment, the needs and fears that drive ordinary men and women into intolerable dilemmas, and the ways in which our best intentions can lead to our worst transgressions.

Anita Shreve is one of my favourite authors, and this book is a perfect example why. Beautifully written, this novel is a cautionary tale that explores the precipitating factors and aftermath of a student sex scandal at a private Vermont high school. Told through the alternating personal testimonies of 21 people involved or impacted, its creative structure is an all-out exploration of viewpoint: first-, third-, and even second-person, in past and present tenses.

The writing style of this book was very clever and wove all the parts of this challenging topic together seamlessly. For what could have been an uncomfortable issue (and sometimes was when reading the novel) it brought together each point of view to give the reader an overall picture on what went on, and your opinion on the matter at the beginning of the book, might not necessarily be the same once you finish reading.

Full of strong emotion, without the melodrama, this one is definitely worth a read (and re-read!)

Handbags and Gladrags - Maggie Alderson

Emily Pointer seemingly has it all--a job as a stylist for the hot British magazine Chic, a killer wardrobe, trips to glamorous locales, and a cosmopolitan husband. So why is she jeopardizing it all for an affair with a roguish Australian photographer? Perhaps because everything's not as it seems on the surface. Emily and her husband have a relationship based more on how they look together than how they feel about each other. Emily's superficiality and her ambivalence about her infidelity initially make her a very unsympathetic character. But, after a somewhat inauspicious introduction, she begins to change--coming to terms with her tumultuous childhood and reexamining her shallow lifestyle.

If you look on other book website, this book averages a 3.5 out of 5 rating. Maybe it’s because I read such a wide variety of books, that I actually really enjoyed reading something that was light-hearted and easy to read for a change.

I thought the writing style was great, the characters were believable and suited the storyline, the story itself moved at a great pace and not once did I find myself getting bored with it, and the writing was so casually descriptive that I could imagine everything perfectly, without getting annoyed or bored with tonnes of words to describe one item or setting. And even though I don't closely follow the fashion world, I could still keep up with what was going on in the story.

It was a great story and one I enjoyed floating away to – and it had the perfect mix of fashion, backstabbing, name-dropping and hot sexy moments (without going in to too much detail that it made me feel like I was reading a men’s magazine)

If you are looking for a humerous, light-hearted easy chic story then this one is for you. I would even go as far to say I would probably put it in the pile of books I would read again at some point. Loved it.

The Boat - Nam Lee

The Boat by Nam Le is a collection of engaging short stories that give us insight in to seven very different sets of lives.

The first opening story, ‘Love and Honor and Pity and Pride and Compassion and Sacrifice’, features a Vietnamese character named Nam who is struggling to complete his Iowa Writer's Workshop master's as his father comes for a tense visit, the first since an earlier estrangement shattered the family.

In Halflead Bay, an Australian mother begins an inevitable submission to multiple sclerosis as her teenage son prepares for the biggest soccer game of his life.

The narrator of Meeting Elise, a successful but ailing artist in Manhattan, mourns his dead lover as he anticipates meeting his daughter for the first time since she was an infant.

A child assassin in Columbia is coming to terms with the warrant of his best friend.

Another story, titled simply "Hiroshima," traces the life of a young Japanese girl moved to the safety of the nearby countryside in the days immediately preceding the dropping of the atomic bomb.

The next story follows a young American woman’s search for self-purpose when she visits Iran to support a college friend who is fighting against their way of life to have women’s rights recognized.

After this whirlwind tour, Nam Le returns for the finale to Vietnam for his title story, "The Boat." Not surprisingly, this one is a flight and survival story, focusing on Mai, a young girl cast adrift for days in the Pacific with two hundred other refugees on a smugglers' trawler that has lost its engines.

I picked up this book from Angus and Robertson as part of their ‘50 books you can’t put down’ promotion. From reading the back of the book I didn’t realise they were separate short stories – I thought they were going to be related or intertwined somehow, but even though they were totally separate stories, they were brilliantly written. Each story has the same author, but Le has a gift for writing each story in a totally different writing style that best suits the theme of the story.

Each story was engaging (but some more so than others depending on your personal interests) and it left me wishing that I could read more of each of them to see how things turned out for them.

I would recommend this book as a quick read – nothing really too heavy but still very thought provoking and culturally rich.

Eat Pray Love - Elizabeth Gilbert

It’s not often I say that I really disliked a book, but this was one of them...

At the age of thirty-one, Elizabeth Gilbert moved with her husband to the suburbs of New York and began trying to get pregnant, only to realize that she wanted neither a child nor a husband. Three years later, after a protracted divorce, she embarked on a yearlong trip of recovery, with three main stops: Rome, for pleasure (mostly gustatory, with a special emphasis on gelato); an ashram outside of Mumbai, for spiritual searching; and Bali, for "balancing."

I think the idea for the storyline had potential, it’s just that Gilbert made it in to a story designed to make housewives going through a mid-life crisis and who are depressed about their lives feel like they have hope. As a female approaching 30 I found that really insulting, and I hope that if I am ever faced with the situation of an unhappy marriage that I would not turn to an (unimaginative) novel for inspiration. The most depressing part about this is that as a ‘reflection of her life’ I can’t help but think that as soon as she gets home from her travels she will fall in to the same old traps and become unhappy again. She didn’t really learn anything, she just ate her way through depression then had a passionate affair to try and help her forget her broken relationship back home. Not very motivational I must say.

Now, I don’t think it is fair of me to say that I hated the WHOLE book –her adventures in Rome wasn’t totally unbearable to read through, but once she got to India I was practically in a boredom induced coma! So I pretty much skipped this whole section and went straight to Bali and woke up again slightly.

My advice to those interested in reading it is this: There has been so much hype about it that you are most likely going to read it. If you go in with a lower set of expectations than I did then maybe you won’t find it as sufferable as I did. All I know is that I NEVER throw away books, and this one went straight in to the local St Vinnies charity bin.

Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress - Dai Sijie

The Cultural Revolution of Chairman Mao Zedong altered Chinese history in the 1960s and '70s, forcibly sending hundreds of thousands of Chinese intellectuals to peasant villages for "re-education." This short novel is by a writer who was himself re-educated in the '70s and tells how two young men endured years of banishment, emphasizing the power of literature to free the mind. Dai Sijie's unnamed 17-year-old protagonist and his best friend, Luo, are doctors' sons, and as a result are condemned to serve four years in a remote mountain village, carrying pails of excrement daily up a hill.

 The two friends are good at storytelling, and the village headman commands them to reenact cinema shows for the villagers, reciting the plots and dialogue of movies. When another city boy leaves the mountains, the friends steal a suitcase full of forbidden books he has been hiding, knowing he will be afraid to call the authorities. Enchanted by the prose of a host of European writers, they dare to tell the story of The Count of Monte Cristo to the village tailor and to read Balzac to his shy and beautiful young daughter. Luo, who adores the Little Seamstress, dreams of transforming her from a simple country girl into a sophisticated lover with his foreign tales. He succeeds but lives to regret the consequences. 

Sijie has a beautiful writing style and it is a shame this novel is so short as I could have kept reading on, although towards the end it almost lost me as it changed writing styles drastically, but thankfully found it’s way back.

The topic of the Mao dynasty is very intriguing to me and this story give a light-hearted insight in to one of the many different stories.

This book was a bargain for only $5 at a second-hand book fair, and now that I have read it once I think it will sit in my bookcase until it gets lent out to someone new as although I enjoyed the story and read it quite quickly, I don’t think it is one I could read again soon.

Almost French - Sarah Turnbull

Almost French is an insightful and funny memoir that gives a firsthand look at the struggles faced when Australian Sarah Turnbull tries to settle into a city that is infamous for their chilly attitude to ‘outsiders’, and  gives a glimpse of the true nature of Parisians and daily life in their gorgeous city. 

Sarah has taken a year off from her job with a TV network to move to Paris has a new lover, Frederic. This novel is not so much about love (although from the story you can definitely see why Sarah was attracted to, and fell in love with, Frederic), but about new life and adventures.

Sarah battle to assimilate to a new culture is humorously written. A perfect example of this is when Sarah is running to the bakery one Saturday morning to get fresh bread for breakfast. On her way out, Frederic catches a glimpse of her and nearly has a heart attack. "Are you going out like that, wearing your gymnastic pantaloons?" he asks. Sarah completely oblivious to his horror says, "Yeah, I'm just going to the bakery". Frederic says "But, that's not nice for the baker man...".

She also writes of finding work, making friends, surviving dinner parties and adapting to the rhythms and pace of life with a Parisian boyfriend, all the while with humor and a developing sense of wisdom.

Almost French is still one of my all time favourite books – a great read that will be sure to inspire most to visit the city of love.