Books I've Read: with Love Echo Park

 

I've always liked books that full immerse you in a specific time or place, and the blurb on this one made me think this was going to be one of those books.

It wasn't.

It's set in Echo Park,  a neighborhood in LA that was once home to the Cuban community.  Now, many of the Cuban families have moved out, taking their businesses with them, or allowing them to be bought by larger companies.

Clary is the granddaughter of one of the original business owners, and one of the few that remains open and thriving in the community.  Having grown up helping in the shop, she's become a talented florist and is being given more and more responsibility for coming up with creative ideas for weddings and other events.

Next door is a bike shop, one of the other neighborhood businesses that's still running.  As long as she can remember, Clary and the bike store owner's son, Emilio, have been at each others' throats.  Emilio is supposed to take over the bike shop once he finishes with school, but in a weak moment, he admits to Clary that he's desperate to escape Echo Park and travel.

With summer vacation ahead of her, Clary expects to spend her time working in the shop, hanging out with her friends and enjoying time with her large extended family.  But just how extended that might become is a bombshell she did not expect to have dropped in her lap.

Clary's summer ends up being spent discovering all she can about the history of Echo Park and its beautiful murals, negotiating a relationship with a sister she never knew she had, and discovering more about Emilio, the boy who's always been next door, but she's never really seen.

I enjoyed all the cultural references in this book and the things that make Clary's Cuban heritage something she's proud of.  Yet, I never really felt like I knew a lot about Echo Park as a neighborhood or what made it special.  I wanted to feel more present in the place and be able to see it through Clary's eyes.  

I think maybe the book tried to cram too much in.  Between the newfound sibling, the shop failing and Clary's attempts to save it, the romance and the very important friendship between Clary and her best friend, there was a lot going on and I feel like the thing the author really wanted to showcase - Echo Park - got a little lost in the mix.

But it was still an enjoyable enough read.  Just not exactly what I'd hoped for.

But don't just listen to me.  Here's the blurb:

From the New York Times and internationally bestselling author of A Cuban Girl’s Guide to Tea and Tomorrow, this novel follows two Cuban teens in LA’s Echo Park neighborhood who clash over their visions for the future, the secrets between their families…and the sparks flying between them.

Seventeen-year-old Clary is set to inherit her family’s florist shop, La Rosa Blanca—one of the last remnants of the Cuban business district that once thrived in Los Angeles’s Echo Park neighborhood. Clary knows Echo Park is where she’ll leave a legacy, and nothing is more important to her than keeping the area’s unique history alive. Besides Clary’s florist shop, there’s only one other business left founded by Cuban immigrants fleeing Castro’s regime in the sixties and seventies. And Emilio, who’s supposed to take over Avalos Bicycle Works one day, is more flight risk than dependable successor. While others might find Emilio appealing, Clary can see him itching to leave now that he’s graduated, and she’ll never be charmed by a guy who doesn’t care if one more Echo Park business fades away. But then Clary is caught off guard when an unexpected visitor delivers a shocking message from someone she thought she’d left behind. Meanwhile, Emilio realizes leaving home won’t be so easy—and Clary, who has always been next door, is who he confides in. As the summer days unfold, they find there’s something stronger than local history tying them together.

Weekly Goals 24-11-25

 It's one of those busy weeks where I have stuff on every night as well as a very full schedule at work.  I feel like I'm not going to have time for anything much else.  This is why I always try to finish writing projects ahead of the holidays.  Life gets crazy around this time of year, and adding the stress of trying to find time to write is something I don't need.

Sp, this week is one without any specific goals.  I just want to get through it, enjoy the stuff I have on and come out the other side.

What are your goals this week?

Celebrate the Small Things 21-11-25

 

It's the end of the week so what am I celebrating?

It's the weekend!

It's been a busy week, so I'm grateful for a couple of days to myself.  I'm planning to see Wicked: for Good too, which I'm looking forward to.

Only one rejection for A Stranger to Kindness this week.  It's been almost exactly a year since I finished writing that book.  Can't quite believe I've actually finished another one since.

I haven't gone back to look at the new book again.  I have about four weeks of work left before the holidays, so I'm going to leave it until I'm on my break to read through and start revisions.

I've been having gynecological issues for years now, and finally this week, I saw a doctor who actually believes me about how dreadful this is and has set things rolling to get the surgery I should have had five years ago.  It's not going to be fun, but once I recover, I believe this is going to change my life completely.

What are you celebrating this week?

Books I've read: Elena Vanishing

 

This is another of the books I stumbled upon on the Libby app when I finished something else I was reading.  It's a memoir, written by a mother and daughter team about the daughter's struggle with anorexia. I read a lot of books like this in the late '80s and early '90s, but it's been a long time since I read a new anorexia book.

Elena is kind of the perfect child.  An over-achiever who has her goal of being a nurse firmly entrenched and does everything she can to ensure she gets there.  She's studies hard, volunteers at the hospital and makes sure every minute of her day is used productively.  The only thing that isn't perfect, is her body and when she turns her determination, focus and over-achieving nature to that, she's as successful at losing weight as she is at everything else.

When the book starts, Elena is already deep in the throes of anorexia.  It started when she was away at boarding school, out of sight of her parents, so by the time she goes back to living with them again, the behaviors and the secrecy surrounding them are well entrenched.  Lying is a constant thing, telling her parents she's eating elsewhere as a way to avoid family mealtimes at home.  

The problem is, not eating is starting to make Elena sick.

When she complains of chest pains, her mother takes her to a doctor and the extent of her weightloss and the effects of her binging and purging become coming to light.  She's shipped back to the States to a hospital specializing in eating disorders, but this. is only the beginning of the journey for Elena.

The book follows her through her last year of high school and her attempts to go to college to get her nursing degree.  She goes through treatment after treatment, yet the voice in her head is stronger than any therapy and she finds herself at its mercy again and again, her face back in a toilet bowl and her body on the verge of collapse time and time again.

This was a particularly harrowing book because of how often Elena failed to get better.  Most other anorexia books I've read almost make the doctors saints in the way they get their patients through their treatment and back to health.  The doctors here fail as often as Elena does, and with each failure, she becomes more resitant to treatment or any kind of help.

I wouldn't say I enjoyed this one, but having lived for over 30 years with a friend who suffers from an eating disorder and has failed treatment more times than I can count, I feel like this is a very realistic look at what it feels like to be locked into a disease that's literally consuming you.  So if you're into that...

But don't just listen to me.  Here's the blurb: 

Seventeen-year-old Elena is vanishing. Every day means renewed determination, so every day means fewer calories. This is the story of a girl whose armor against anxiety becomes artillery against herself as she battles on both sides of a lose-lose war in a struggle with anorexia.

Told entirely from Elena's perspective over a five-year period and co-written with her mother, award-winning author Clare B. Dunkle, Elena's memoir is a fascinating and intimate look at a deadly disease, and a must read for anyone who knows someone suffering from an eating disorder.

Weekly Goals 17-11-25

 We had our staff Christmas party yesterday and it made me realize how little time there is left until the end of the year.  And how much I work I have to get done before then.  So, I'm going to need to really get going on some of that stuff because I'm away on tour with the orchestra for a week as well, and I'm not sure I'll get much work done over that period.  At least, not the kind of desk work I'm talking about here.  I'll be dong other work which is just as important, but it's not going get the stuff I need to get done for 2026 done.

I need to think a bit about what I want to give people for Christmas presents this year.  I don't have a ton of money and I usually try to make my gifts anyway, but I'm not sure how much time I'm going to have to do that this year.  Maybe I'll just bake for everyone...

I'm going to try and keep up my flash fiction writing this week and continue not to look at the new book.  I think agents must be trying to clear out their query boxes ahead of the holidays because I've had quite a slew of rejections for Stranger over the last week.

What are your goals this week?

Celebrate the Small Things 14-11-25

 

It's the end of the week so what am I celebrating?

It's the weekend!

It's felt like a long week, so I'm glad.  Even though I have some work stuff on tomorrow.

I've done a lot of teaching this week.  One of the other instructors is sick, so I've covered a bunch of her classes on top of teaching my own.  Plus, the weather has finally been good enough to ride my bike to work most days.  So I'm celebrating all that extra exercise.

I still haven't touched the new book.  I'm thinking I might leave it until the holidays now.  Then I'll have a nice long stretch of time to read through and make notes.

I've been writing flash fiction most days.  Just 1000 words, to a prompt, but it's keeping my imagination and my writing muscles in good order.

I saw Bugonia and it's definitely one of the best films I've seen in a long time.  Great acting and genuinely surprising storytelling.  You really didn't know where the story was going to go next and that's so unusual these days.

What are you celebrating this week?

Books I've Read: Okay for Now

 

I finished the book I had loaded to my Libby app and needed something else to read, so I browsed around a bit and found this one that looked like it could be interesting.  Within about five minutes of starting, I knew I was in good hands with this one.  It's as voicey as all hell and I was in Doug's pocket from page two or three.

It's set in the late sixties, during the Vietnam War.  Doug is in junior high in New York, loves the Yankees and his prize possession is a cap that was given to him by Joe Pepitone when he came to throw a ball around with some of the kids on the school team.   Unfortunately, Doug has two older brothers and the one who still lives at home - the other is in Vietnam - is kind of jerk and bullies him mercilessly.  So it's no big surprise when this brother finds the cap, steals it, then passes it on for cash.

This is the very efficient set up for the story which actually begins when Doug's father loses his job and they're forced to move to a small upstate town where he's found work at a factory.  A tough bully of a man, he doesn't take any of his family's feelings into account when he uproots them from their home and takes them to a dump of a house in the sticks.

Dough doesn't think he'll ever fit in there.  Everyone looks at him suspiciously, especially after a wave of petty crime sweeps the town and all eyes are on his older brother as the perpetrator.  But then Doug meets Lil outside the library and she doesn't seem to care that he's a weird outsider.  And inside the library he discovers a book of paintings by James Audubon than make his feel things he's never felt before.

With the support of the few new friends he makes in his new home, Doug begins building a life for himself, discovering he has talents he never suspected he possessed, finding the strength to stand up to his abusive father and to cope with living with his oldest brother who comes back from the war a very different man.

I really enjoyed this book.  Doug is exactly the kind of scrappy underdog character I love and his way of talking about the world he lives in and the people around him is both touching and hilarious at times.  He's a character you can't help but root for,  even when you want to scream at him not to do things you know he's going to do because he's a fourteen-year-old boy.  The supporting characters are all really well drawn too, even really incidental ones like the old guy who Doug delivers groceries to and needs his lightbulbs changed every week.

So I'd recommend this one.

But don't just listen to me.  Here's the blurb:

Midwesterner Gary D. Schmidt won Newbery Honor awards for Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boys and The Wednesday Wars, two coming-of-age novels about unlikely friends finding a bond. Okay For Now, his latest novel, explores another seemingly improbable alliance, this one between new outsider in town Doug Swieteck and Lil Spicer, the savvy spitfire daughter of his deli owner boss. With her challenging assistance, Doug discovers new sides of himself. Along the way, he also readjusts his relationship with his abusive father, his school peers, and his older brother, a newly returned war victim of Vietnam.