Showing posts with label marriage. Show all posts
Showing posts with label marriage. Show all posts
May 8, 2019
Jul 8, 2018
Jun 1, 2018
Jul 4, 2017
Sep 9, 2015
I married you for happiness - Lily Tuck
Summary: The tale unfolds over a single night as Nina sits at the bedside of her husband, Philip, whose sudden and unexpected death is the reason for her lonely vigil. Still too shocked to grieve, she lets herself remember the defining moments of their long union, beginning with their meeting in Paris. She is an artist, he a highly accomplished mathematician--a collision of two different worlds that merged to form an intricate and passionate love. As we move through select memories, real and imagined, the author reveals the most private intimacies, dark secrets, and overwhelming joys that defined Nina and Philip's life together.
Booklist Reviews
This short, affecting, original novel, by the author of the National Book Award–winning The News from Paraguay (2004), which was also an effective and unique novel (about a nineteenth-century South American dictator), takes readers of literary fiction to a place that could have afforded a macabre experience but is saved by the sensitivity of the author. The premise is not complicated. Late-middle-aged Nina discovers that her husband, Philip, who appears to be napping, has actually died in his sleep, and she sits by his bedside for a whole night. Of course, Nina's thoughts are going to be centered on their life together, but, naturally, they do not follow in any logical order. These mental perambulations through their marriage form the substance of the novel. Tuck thoroughly understands why a wife would desire to do this and, as a consequence, makes the act a sweet one, rich in sentiment, poignancy, and honesty. The result is that the reader imagines that this kind of personal tribute to a now-deceased loved one is absolutely appropriate. Copyright 2011 Booklist Reviews.
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May 1, 2014
A bride's story - Kaoru Mori
Summary: As she and her husband adjust to their arranged marriage, Amir strives to find her role as she settles into a new life and a new home in a society quick to define that role for her.
Booklist Reviews
*Starred Review* Life is busy in nineteenth-century Central Asia for 20-year-old Amir as she settles into her new role as a bride and gets to know her 12-year-old husband, Karluk. But her happiness is threatened when her nomadic family decide they need her back, seeing a more profitable marriage arrangement. Mori's artistic skill and love for this time period are evident in every pen stroke of this lush hardcover manga. The highly detailed clothes, rugs, and woodwork of the Caucasus region are brought to vibrant life, encouraging readers to linger over the panels. A five-page fox hunt, told entirely through movements, immerses readers in the quiet attention of the highly tuned skills on display. By the end of this first volume, the plot is only beginning to bloom, but there is ample enjoyment in watching the small, everyday activities that make up the family's life—laundry, hunting, raising children. Amir's cheerfulness is infectious, both to her new family and to readers. There is some nudity, and the age difference between Amir and her husband might raise eyebrows, but the strong female characters and unique historical setting make this manga a terrific addition to teen or adult collections. Copyright 2011 Booklist Reviews.
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Apr 3, 2014
Dept. of Speculation - Jenny Offill
Summary: An unflinching portrait of marriage features a heroine simply referred to as "the Wife," who transitions from an idealistic woman who once exchanged love letters with her husband and who confronts an array of universal difficulties. - (Baker & Taylor)
Booklist Reviews
This is a magnetic novel about a marriage of giddy bliss and stratospheric anxiety, bedrock alliance and wrenching tectonic shifts. Offill, author of the novel Last Things (1999) and various children's books, covers this shifting terrain and its stormy weather in an exquisitely fine-tuned, journal-like account narrated by "the wife," an ironic self-designation rooted in her growing fears about her marital state. She is smart if a bit drifty, imaginative and selectively observant, and so precisely articulate that her perfect, simple sentences vibrate like violin strings. And she is mordantly funny, a wry taxonomist of emotions and relationships. Her dispatches from the fog of new motherhood are hilarious and subversive. Her cynical pursuit of self-improvement is painfully accurate. Her Richter-scale analysis of the aftershocks of infidelity is gripping. Nothing depicted in this portrait of a family in quiet disarray is unfamiliar in life or in literature, and that is the artistic magic of Offill's stunning performance. She has sliced life thin enough for a microscope slide and magnified it until it fills the mind's eye and the heart. Copyright 2014 Booklist Reviews.
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Apr 1, 2014
Cutie and the boxer (DVD)
Summary: In New York City in 1969, nineteen-year-old art student Noriko fell in love with 41-year-old avant-garde artist Ushio Shinohara and put her career on hold to marry and support this rising star of the Manhattan art world. But 40 years later and still struggling, Ushio remains consumed with reinforcing his legacy via his 'boxing' paintings, while Noriko is now finding her own creative voice through a series of drawings.
Video Librarian Reviews
Filmmaker Zachary Heinzerling's Oscar-nominated documentary begins with an arresting title sequence in which diminutive 80-year-old avant-garde Japanese emigrant artist Ushio Shinohara creates one of his trademark "boxing" paintings—methodically moving left to right while beating the bejeezus out of a huge rectangular canvas with his paint-drenched boxing gloves, finishing the work in about two minutes. In 1969, the-41-year-old Ushio married 19-year-old art student Noriko in New York City, where the couple still live, struggling to make rent payments (at one point, Ushio literally stuffs some of his surreal sculptures into a battered suitcase and jets to Japan, returning with a few thousand dollars and a beaming smile). Noriko continues to pursue her own artistic dreams, creating drawings of a nude "Cutie and Bullie" in a series of semi-autobiographical cartoon panels (sometimes presented in striking iconographic animation here), although Ushio feels that his own work is much more important ("the average one has to support the genius"). But while the couple clearly have a loving relationship, Noriko is also starting to chafe at the proverbial bit, a little tired of being a "free secretary, free assistant, free chef." Fate smiles on Noriko when she lands the chance to do a joint exhibition with her husband (tellingly, he wants to call the exhibit "Roar!"; she successfully names it "Love Is a Roar"). Heinzerling's documentary interweaves fly-on-the-wall footage of the artists' daily lives (and interactions with their alcoholic artist son, Alex), combined with excerpts from a 1970s documentary by Rod McCall entitled Shinohara: The Last Artist. Serving up a delightful portrait of an unusual artist couple, this entertaining documentary is recommended. (R. Pitman). Copyright Video Librarian Reviews 2014.
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Jan 1, 2014
Dad is fat - Jim Gaffigan
Summary: "In Dad is Fat, stand-up comedian Jim Gaffigan, who's best known for his legendary riffs on Hot Pockets, bacon, manatees, and McDonald's, expresses all the joys and horrors of life with five young children--everything from cousins ("celebrities for little kids") to toddlers' communication skills ("they always sound like they have traveled by horseback for hours to deliver important news"), to the eating habits of four year olds ("there is no difference between a four year old eating a taco and throwing a taco on the floor"). Reminiscent of Bill Cosby's Fatherhood, Dad is Fat is sharply observed, explosively funny, and a cry for help from a man who has realized he and his wife are outnumbered in their own home"--Provided by publisher.
Publishers Weekly Reviews
Clean-mouthed comedian Gaffigan—best known for his riffs on Hot Pockets, McDonald's, and bacon—lived by himself for more than 13 years before getting married and fathering five children who now reside with him and his wife, Jeannie, in a two-bedroom New York City apartment. What began as a series of tweets about the everyday chaos of this self-professed loner's life has now become Gaffigan's hilarious first book. In 60 short chapters that read like stand-up bits, the comedian shares his insights on being the youngest of six kids in a Catholic family and explains why adults are really just "giant toddlers." He covers everything actual toddlers love, from candy to cousins, mocks preschool and nut allergies in three swift paragraphs, and explains why he and Jeannie opted for five home births as well as how they are raising so many kids in a such a tiny living space. Occasionally, Gaffigan feels the need to explain his jokes, but he needn't worry, as this laugh-out-loud collection also is one of the most honest and endearing portrayals of fatherhood penned by a contemporary comedian. The inclusion of dozens of photographs featuring Gaffigan's adorable family furthers the personal touch. 50 b&w photos. (May)
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The Rosie project - Graeme Simsion
Summary: Don Tillman, a professor of genetics, sets up a project designed to find him the perfect wife, starting with a questionnaire that has to be adjusted a little as he goes along. Then he meets Rosie, who is everything he's not looking for in a wife, but she ends up his friend as he helps her try and find her biological father.
Booklist Reviews
*Starred Review* Genetics professor Don Tillman's ordered, predictable life is thrown into chaos when love enters the equation in this immensely enjoyable novel. Never good with social cues, Don explains his difficulty empathizing with others, which he forthrightly says is a defining symptom of the autism spectrum, as a result of his brain simply being wired differently. Diagnosis is not the issue here, as the reader is rooting for Don as he searches for ways to fit in. With his fortieth birthday approaching, he designs a questionnaire to find a compatible female life partner using his overriding devotion to logic. But he finds his quest competing with the request of a woman to discover the identity of her biological father. The protagonist is passingly similar to that of Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (2003), but Simsion's first novel is not as dark, focusing instead on the humor and significance of what makes us human. Don is used to causing amusement or consternation in others, but as his self-awareness and understanding grow, so do his efforts to behave more appropriately. Determined and unintentionally sweet, Don embarks on an optimistic and redemptive journey. Funny, touching, and hard to put down, The Rosie Project is certain to entertain even as readers delve into deep themes. For a book about a logic-based quest for love, it has a lot of heart. Copyright 2013 Booklist Reviews.
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The Paris wife - Paula McLain
The Paris wife - McLain, Paula
Summary: Meeting through mutual friends in Chicago, Hadley is intrigued by brash "beautiful boy" Ernest Hemingway, and after a brief courtship and small wedding, they take off for Paris, where Hadley makes a convincing transformation from an overprotected child to a game and brave young woman who puts up with impoverished living conditions and shattering loneliness to prop up her husband's career.
Booklist Reviews
History is sadly neglectful of the supporting players in the lives of great artists. Fortunately, fiction provides ample opportunity to bring these often fascinating personalities out into the limelight. Gaynor Arnold successfully resurrected the much-maligned Mrs. Charles Dickens in Girl in a Blue Dress (2009), now Paula McLain brings Hadley Richardson Hemingway out from the formidable shadow cast by her famous husband. Though doomed, the Hemingway marriage had its giddy high points, including a whirlwind courtship and a few fast and furious years of the expatriate lifestyle in 1920s Paris. Hadley and Ernest traveled in heady company during this gin-soaked and jazz-infused time, and readers are treated to intimate glimpses of many of the literary giants of the era, including Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound, James Joyce, and F. Scott Fitzgerald. But the real star of the story is Hadley, as this time around, Ernest is firmly relegated to the background as he almost never was during their years together. Though eventually a woman scorned, Hadley is able to acknowledge without rancor or bitterness that "Hem" had "helped me to see what I really was and what I could do." Much more than a "woman-behind-the-man" homage, this beautifully crafted tale is an unsentimental tribute to a woman who acted with grace and strength as her marriage crumbled. Copyright 2011 Booklist Reviews.
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Nov 1, 2013
Honeymoon in Tehran - Azadeh Moaveni
Honeymoon in Tehran: two years of love and danger in Iran - Moaveni, Azadeh
Summary: The Iranian-American author describes her return to Iran as a reporter for "Time" magazine, her marriage to an Iranian man, the repressive Iranian society and its impact, and her family's decision to leave Iran.
Booklist Reviews
In this intimate look at the modern Iranian middle class, Moaveni, a journalist and the author of Lipstick Jihad (2005), blends her own experiences in Iran with her primary reporting subject: the dubious Tehran reaction to the ascendance of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. An Iranian American living in Lebanon, Moaveni unexpectedly fell in love when she returned to her homeland on assignment. This opened her eyes to a whole new aspect of Iranian life, that of young couples. She writes extensively about how the country s troubled economic situation forces twenty-somethings to postpone marriage and independence from their families. Iran s "brain drain" is well documented, but the reasons professionals grudgingly leave Iran have rarely been discussed by Western media, which instead focuses on Ahmadinejad s rantings. Moaveni tracks the country s increased social conservatism, and reveals both expensive marriage traditions and governmental manipulation. This perfect blend of political commentary and social observation is an excellent choice for readers interested in going beyond the headlines to gain an in-depth understanding of twenty-first-century Iran. Copyright 2008 Booklist Reviews.
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Nov 1, 2012
Scenes from an impending marriage - Adrian Tomine
Summary: A comic book based on the author's own wedding plans celebrates the absurd aspects of getting married, from taking dance lessons to managing family demands.
Booklist Reviews
Once the initial euphoria of popping the question wears off, the minefield of putting together a wedding takes shape. In small, nine-panel-grid vignettes, Tomine documents the perilous process, fraught with one-time decisions that few are qualified to make, from settling on the reception venue to making tactful negotiations on whittling down the guest list, agonizing over invitations that invariably wind up in the trash anyway, and picking from an assortment of cookie-cutter DJs. Interspersed are a few full-page panels that take a subversive, Family Circus spin on exercise ("This nonsense stops the minute we're married!"), dance lessons (ditto), and eyebrow-tweezing (ditto plus expletives). With the obsessive self-awareness bred into all great autobiographical cartoonists, Tomine incisively depicts the monumental-feeling pressures and expectations that can toss a fledgling couple into "the black hole of nuptial narcissism," or, in Adrian and Sarah's case, provide ample proof that they should be making the plunge after all. The institution of marriage as a whole just might benefit from having this little book as required reading. Copyright 2011 Booklist Reviews.
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May 1, 2012
No cheating, no dying - Elizabeth Weil
Summary: Examining marriage and its universal issues, the author draws on her own family misadventures as well as the advice of counselors in a range of disciplines to offer an affirmation of married life and its joys and difficulties. - (Baker & Taylor)
Kirkus Reviews
A frank examination of one woman's marriage and how she tried to improve it. What makes a good marriage? After 10 years with her husband, Dan, New York Times Magazine contributing writer Weil decided to find out. She could no longer view their relationship "like the waves on the ocean--a fact of life, determined by the sandbars below, shaped by destiny and the universe, not by me." The author wanted to create her own future and discover if her "good" relationship could be improved. Using self-help books, visits to therapists and marriage-education classes, Weil embarked on a yearlong journey with Dan to explore all the facets of their relationship, opening the doors on their present and past lives. In a narrative that is part memoir and part counseling book, the author candidly discusses their intimacy, religions, anger, money and views on monogamy and death. Humorous stories of Dan's obsessions with cooking, flamenco guitar playing, surfing and other athletic pursuits contrast with the personal pain they both felt and expressed at the loss of their unborn son. In the end, Weil writes that her marriage is "good enough"--a marriage "characterized by its capacity to allow spouses to keep growing, its ability to give the partners involved the strength and bravery required to face the world." A woman's project to improve her marriage reveals she already has something good right in front of her. Copyright Kirkus 2011 Kirkus/BPI Communications.All rights reserved.
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Apr 1, 2012
Cool, calm, and contentious - Merrill Markoe
Summary: "In this hilarious collection of personal essays, New York Times bestselling author Merrill Markoe reveals, among other things, the secret formula for comedy: Start out with a difficult mother, develop some classic teenage insecurities, add a few relationships with narcissistic men, toss in an unruly pack of selfish dogs, finish it off with the kind of crystalline perspective that only comes from years of navigating a roiling sea of unpleasant and unappeasable people, and--voilá--you're funny! But in Cool, Calm & Contentious, Markoe also reveals something more: herself. This is by far her most personal, affecting collection yet--honest, unapologetic, often painful, but always shot through with the bracing, wicked sense of humor that has made her such abeloved and incisive observer of life, both human and canine. In Cool, Calm & Contentious, she goes there: from the anal-retentive father who once spent ten minutes lecturing Markoe's forty-year-old, Ph.D.-wielding brother on how to fold a napkin, to the eternally aggrieved mother who took pleasure in being unpleasant to waiters and spent most of her life, Markoe says, in "varying degrees of pissed off"; from the way she surrendered her virginity as a freshman in college (to her, it was "something to be gotten rid of quickly, then never discussed again, like body odor"), to why, later in life, she ultimately came to find dogs so much more appealing than humans, Markoe holds nothing back. It's all here, in all its messy, poignant glory, and told the way only Merril Markoe knows how--with honesty, wit, and bite. Cool, Calm & Contentious offers something for everyone--fans of humorous essays, fans of memoir, fans of great writing and finely drawn characters, fans of dogs, fans of talking dogs, and fans of reading about mothers who are so difficult and demanding they actually make you feel good about your own life. But most of all, this book is for the many fans of Merrill Markoe, who will finally get a chance to learn what makes her tick--and what makes her so funny and wise"-- Provided by publisher.
Booklist Reviews
"For most of her life, my mother was varying degrees of pissed off." So begins Emmy-award winner Markoe's raucous new collection of essays featuring self-absorbed parents, selfish dogs, and really, really bad dates. With a perfect blend of sentimentality and scathing humor, Markoe recounts a host of precarious scenarios—losing her virginity, attending a Fetish Ball at the Hollywood Athletic Club, preparing to evacuate her Malibu home during the 1993 fires. She revisits her college days as an art major at the University of California, Berkeley, where she became proficient at operating power tools and navigating the advances of a professor in the department. Fans of Markoe's novels, including Walking in Circles before Lying Down (2006), know about her deep and abiding love for dogs. Here she engages her devoted hounds in a hilarious heart-to-heart about narcissism (she also offers a pithy primer on how to spot narcissists of the human variety). Markoe is the consummate comedienne, and this wry, sly offering will leave readers longing for more. Copyright 2011 Booklist Reviews
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Dec 1, 2011
Dear Carey - Dyan Cannon
Summary: The actress/filmmaker tells the story of her turbulent marriage to Hollywood legend Cary Grant, capturing the glamour of Hollywood's greatest period of stardom and revealing the stories of love and betrayal hidden from public view.
Reviews
“A revealing look at Cannon’s relationship with her first husband, who happened to be a Hollywood legend. (USA Today )
“Candid.” (Los Angeles Times )
“Dyan Cannon has written a complex and captivating memoir…an unqualified success.” (New York Journal of Books )
“Cannon writes of her time with one of Hollywood’s most glamorous and charming men and of her own life, pre- and post-Grant...with refreshing humor.. For those who enjoy memoirs of gutsy survivors.” (Library Journal )
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Nov 1, 2011
The Buddha in the attic - Julie Otsuka
Summary: Presents the stories of six Japanese mail-order brides whose new lives in early twentieth-century San Francisco are marked by backbreaking migrant work, cultural struggles, children who reject their heritage, and the prospect of wartime internment.
Booklist Reviews
"*Starred Review* Otsuka's stunning debut, When the Emperor Was Divine (2002), a concentrated novel about the WWII internment of Japanese Americans, garnered the Asian American Literary Award, the ALA Alex Award, and a Guggenheim. Her second novel tells the stories of Japanese mail-order brides at the start of the twentieth century in a first-person-plural narrative voice, the choral "we." This creates an incantatory and haunting group portrait of diverse women who make the arduous ocean journey to California buoyant with hope only to marry strangers nothing like the handsome young men in the photographs that lured them so far from home. Prejudice and hardship soon transform the brides into fingers-worked-to-the-bone laborers, toiling endlessly as domestic workers, farmers, prostitutes, and merchants. Every aspect of female life is candidly broached in Otsuka's concise yet grandly dramatic saga as these determined, self-sacrificing outsiders navigate the white water of American society, only to watch their American-born children disdain all things Japanese. Drawing on extensive research and profoundly identifying with her characters, Otsuka crafts an intricately detailed folding screen depicting nearly five decades of change as the women painstakingly build meaningful lives, only to lose everything after Pearl Harbor. This lyrically distilled and caustically ironic story of exile, effort, and hate is entrancing, appalling, and heartbreakingly beautiful." Copyright 2011 Booklist Reviews.
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Sep 1, 2011
The Duggars - Michelle Duggar
Summary: A behind-the-scenes look at this supersize, faith-filled family from Arkansas that's full of entertaining and enlightening stories, photos, recipes, tips, traditions, and practical ideas for rearing happy children.
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