Better late than never, right?
There's actually a very specific reason why I picked up this memoir - for a while now, I've been sort of fascinated by the character Anybodys in West Side Story. Like various of the Jets, she doesn't have a clear antecedent in Romeo and Juliet, but is rendered with an intriguing degree of specificity as a) a supporting character and b) someone who vocally refuses to conform to gender norms in the early 1960s. I wondered if she was a creation of Laurents, who wrote the book for West Side Story, and accordingly decided to pick up Original Story By to see if he discussed it at all. While that question wasn't addressed in any way, shape or form, the book was a delightful read. Laurents isn't afraid to indulge in some good, old-fashioned name-dropping - he seems to have interacted with an unbelievable array of Old Hollywood figures, and is wonderfully willing to talk about who he doesn't like and why and to dissect how his own work translated from page to screen.
December 26: Dash and Lily's Book of Dares by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan
Good, but probably my least favorite of Cohn and Levithan's three collaborations. I liked the different scope of New York locales they utilized for this book, and the way they used the Christmas season to revel in touristy kitsch, but Dash and Lily as protagonists come off a bit abrasive in their high opinions of their own points of view.
December 26: Fannie's Last Supper by Chris Kimball
Reading more Cooks Illustrated and watching more of the America's Test Kitchen shows in the past year have really made me a fan of Kimball. (I love this Slate piece, where he declares that suggested cooking times are "bullshit.") The enthusiasm that drives his presence in the shows is evident in this take on the Fannie Farmer cookbook of 1896. The academic in me would've liked a bit more examination of how class shaped kitchen work and who performed it, but the budding foodie reader loved the detail Kimball devoted to dissecting every element of the late-nineteenth-century multi-course dinner party.
December 27: Matched by Allie Condie
A solid introduction to what is clearly intended to be a series, but also a bit dry. Once you've read more than one young-adult take on a dystopian universe, the whole structure of the "heroine being part of the system/heroine questioning the system/heroine rejecting the system and working for the revolution" can feel pretty rote if it isn't executed with a significant measure of unique framing and writing infused with emotion. I think the ideas shaping the world of Matched have potential for a great second book, but I felt the introduction was just good.
December 27: The Help by Kathryn Stockett
December 28: Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen
Both books where I'm intrigued to see how they've been adapted for the screen later this year - they could be affecting if done well, and melodramatic camp-fests if not. (Maybe fabulously so? I mean, one thing that really stuck with me when I read Water for Elephants was that, trusting that they stick to the story, Cristoph Waltz getting *spoiler alert!* clubbed to death with a circus tent pole by the elephant he once abused could make for the kind of clip that out-of-context viral fame is made of.)
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