Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother by Amy Chua

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Summary: A memoir of a Chinese mother raising her decidedly American kids.

Read the whole book. Don't just read the excerpts you find online; read the whole book. I found this a funny, touching and encouraging memoir, not an insulting treatise on Western parenting.

Amy Chua is ambitious and driven. So naturally, that applies to her parenting as well. Her first daughter Sophia is a natural at the Suzuki piano lessons she takes and soon becomes a young gifted prodigy. Amy decides that it's not enough for both girls to be good at piano and chooses an instrument for her younger daughter Lulu - the violin.

It's not until she struggles with getting Lulu to practice that the disadvantages of the Tiger Mother or Chinese method of parenting become apparent. With Sophia, Amy could nag, browbeat, threaten and cajole. With Lulu, none of the threats worked. Amy finds herself more and more frustrated even as Lulu becomes an incredibly talented violinist accepted to study with world famous musicians and tutors. The insults fly and the ultimatums become greater and greater.

Amy's a tough cookie, but Lulu is even tougher. Amy rejects the poorly-drawn handwritten birthday cards scribbled for her at the last minute because she's seen their previous work and know that her kids can do much better. It doesn't show the love and respect that Amy deserves when she gets a scrap of paper with no thought put into it. So when Amy is explaining why she has rejected her kids' cards, you get it. She expects the best and knows what her kids are capable of. One day Lulu decides to cut her own hair, as an act of defiance against her mother. I wish that Amy would have let her daughter go around with a self-inflicted raggedy haircut, to let her live with the consequences, but since I couldn't even do that when my own daughter cut her hair, I immediately laughed and understood.

This is ultimately a memoir about love, as Amy's love for her children drive her to push them to be not just good but excellent. She believes in them so strongly that she pushes them until they do actually succeed. That's really what a Tiger Mother does - she believes her children are capable of great things and will help them reach goals that lesser parents would let their kids fall short of. I need to assume the best of my children and not coddle them, and this book brought me more into balance. Some mothers I know never allow their kids to suffer a moment of discomfort, pain or stress. Amy Chua is often the source of stress for her children, but they are leading far richer and deeper lives than my children ever will.

 Once a week, while my own kids were being taken care of by paid teachers, I'd sneak off to the bookstore and read this on my Nook in a Barnes & Noble and laugh out loud about Amy and her parenting tactics. I loved this book, and wish I were more of a Tiger Mother.

And One Last Thing ... by Molly Harper

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Summary: After humiliating her husband publicly over his affair, an ex-wife learns who she is and what she wants.

Molly Harper is the author of the terribly funny and sassy book about librarian-turned-vampire Jane Jameson. So I picked up her latest book.

Lacey Terwilliger (ridiculous name!) accidentally gets delivered flowers that were meant for her husband's mistress/secretary instead. As revenge, she sends out a scathing e-mail to her husband's client and holiday card list, berating her husband for being spineless and bad in bed. After Lacey becomes late night comic fodder, she retreats to her family cabin, isolated in the woods.

Of course, the isolated cabin is not so isolated, since there's a hunky man next door. After Lacey's few attempts at friendship, the hunk, Monroe, makes it very clear that he is NOT attracted to Lacey. Their mutual antipathy is predictable. Monroe is a mystery writer, holed up for some peace and quiet and to finish his novel. Lacey is miffed and ignores him, and then suddenly he realizes that Lacey is kinda cute. They become "friends with benefits" and Lacey starts writing her own novel, about a woman who wants to kill her husband. It works as therapy, until Lacey gets a job offer to write angry letters for other women. Monroe scolds Lacey for even considering it and that's when Lacey and Monroe have their first big fight.

"You know, maybe it's not that I don't want to be in a relationship, maybe it's that I don't want to be in relationship with you. You're always pushing and judging and trying to make me into the person that- I don't know - is worthy of you? I mean, you wouldn't even talk to me until I proved that I was low-maintenance enough for you. I don't want to be your pet project. I've already tried living with a man whose standards I couldn't meet and I'm not doing it again."

This was actually a sad book about the decline of a marriage. I felt strange laughing in the funny spots, when the death of this marriage didn't really get as much respect as it deserved. But it is well-written with characters that are nuanced and realistic.

You Can’t Drink All Day If You Don’t Start in The Morning by Celia Rivenbark

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Summary: A series of comedic newspaper articles about life, kids and marriage by a Southern columnist. 

“Coupled with the sad fact that I’m not Really Nice at all is this awful personality defect that makes me crack a joke at the worst possible time.” Me too, hons, me too.

I just discovered Celia Rivenbark, my newest favorite humorist. Maybe I was in the right mood, or maybe I just started with her best book, but I found You Can’t Drink All Day If You Don’t Start in The Morning to be the funniest of the many books she has out.

Celia Rivenbark, who often refers to herself as Mama Celia, likes TV, likes to eat cheese, and she’s a bit of a princess, with a low tolerance for morons – just like me. Of course, she’s Southern and I am not.
With regards to camping:

“Then there was the “urgent media advisory” from the makers of a handheld bug-repelling device that 'efficiently repels black flies, mosquitoes, and no-see-ums.' You know what else repels those insects? Hotel rooms.”

And her fitness level mirrors mine.

"I have several close friends who have run marathons, a word that is actually derived from two Swahili words: mara, which means “to die a horrible death,” and thon, which means “for a stupid t-shirt.” Look it up."

Every time she cracks an insensitive joke, I howl with laughter and wonder if I'm a meaner person than I thought.

"What is it with men, anyway?

Hons, I have to tell you that I was crushed at the revelations that my former political crush, John Edwards, had strayed.

My attractive single friend Susie quipped over a glass of wine when the news leaked that she was upset about Edwards’ cheating heart for two reasons.

“On the one hand, it’s just so horribly disappointing that he's that kind of man,” se said, “but on the other hand, I’m upset because all this time I didn’t know he was available."

If you take yourself seriously, this will NOT be the book for you.

I didn’t enjoy Belle Weather: Mostly Sunny with a Chance of Scattered Hissy Fits, simply because most of her stories revolve around construction and home repair. That’s simply not interesting to me. Stuck in the middle of stories about varmint capture and trips to Home depot is an open letter to Britney Spears, whom Mama Celia wants to love and protect.

“Brit, the problem, as I see it, is that you had two babies in twelve months. This has caused you to go astronaut-lady-in-diapers level of crazy and nobody seems to understand that.”

In Bless Your Heart, Tramp, and other Southern Endearments, Rivenbark asks:

“Why not a bumper sticker for the unlucky parents, something like: My fifteen-year-old’s in Detox and Not Speaking To Any of Us” or “My Kid Robbed a 7-Eleven and is in a Center for Youthful Offenders.”

This reminds of a bumper sticker I saw that read: My Kid Knocked Up Your Honor Student.

Life is funny and Rivenbark takes it to the absurd and beyond. You Can’t Drink All Day If You Don’t Start in The Morning is my favorite of all her novels. And yes, I have read them all.