January Jolly Reads

Alice Munro is a smooth writer covering complex emotions and the unpredictability of life. If you are looking for happiness, this book might make you feel better, since her characters are rather miserable. I enjoyed the writing in these stories - descriptions, dialogue, and quirky twists of entangled lives kept me interested and yet not entertained. Each little world of thirty pages, fraught with anger, sadness, and pain, left me bereft of feelings, hollowed out inside and anxious. So, for reading pleasure, I can't recommend this book. For a master class in writing, Alice Munro's Too Much Happiness gets an A plus.

Michael Lewis' Home Game is heartfelt, well-written, and at times appallingly funny. He kept a journal as his kids were born. Instead of sunny delight and enthusiasm for fatherhood, Lewis discusses why it is parents don't hurl babies off balconies after many sleepless nights. His exhaustion, his descriptions of reality - his two girls arguing over everything, and his realization that he's more of the third string quarterback kept me chuckling throughout the book.

P. 42 At some point in the last few decades, the American male sat down at the negotiating table with the American female and - let us be frank - got fleeced. The agreement he signed, foisted all sorts of new paternal responsibilities on him and gave him nothing of what he might have expected in return. Not the greater love of his wife, who now was encouraged to view him as an unreliable employee. Not the special love of his child, who, no matter how many times he fed and changed and wiped and walked her, would always prefer her mother in a pinch.

p. 108 Small children are also a mood altering substance with financial consequences

p. 109 I know for a fact that my children are insane

p. 154 I've sometimes felt that we are using the wrong manual to fix an appliance - that say we're trying to repair a washing machine with the instructions for the lawn mower. But my wife presses on, determined to find room enough for three children's happiness.

Home Game is a quick, entertaining read and Mr.Lewis' love of his three kids, wife, and life shines through. I relished his exasperation, trials, and down home astonishment at family life in general.

p.187 Like dreams, these fatherhood moments are easily forgotten, and no doubt also a lot more interesting to the teller than to anyone else.

Michael Lewis' writing will keep you interested.