Review: How to Build a Girl by Caitlin Moran

352 pages, Published September 23rd 2014 by Harper

Caitlin Moran's debut novel How to Build a Girl is the story of fourteen-year-old Johanna Morrigan's reinvention and simultaneous coming of age in 1990s London. After suffering a huge embarrassment on local TV and making a slip-up that might cost her family their monthly benefits, Johanna decides to make some serious changes. She begins submitting music reviews to a London journal, discovers an all-black wardrobe, and falls in love with a rock star.

By seventeen, Johanna goes by her nom de plume, Dolly Wilde, and has become the quintessential rock journalist - she's a hard-drinking, poison-pen-wielding self-proclaimed Lady Sex Adventurer. Despite her success and adventuring, Johanna isn't quite happy living as Dolly Wilde. She no longer wants to write negative reviews of bands she hates, but to be positive about those that she likes. 

How to Build a Girl by Caitlin Moran is one of those rare books that can be described in one word: hilarious. If you're like me, then you won't just be chuckling to yourself during this book, you'll be full-on laughing out loud. I expected a pretty standard coming of age story, mostly drama, some thoughtful musings. Instead I got a hilarious story told by one of the most unique protagonists I can recall. Johanna is smart, witty, and blunt. She speaks candidly about the things teenage girls deal with, like masturbation, sex, and periods. Johanna's voices makes How to Build a Girl into a refreshing take on adolescence and making one's mark on the world. My only qualm with the the novel was that Johanna's "sex adventuring" got a bit repetitive after a few anecdotes. I have no problem with mentions of sex and the stories were, of course, still funny. But after several tales of Johanna's misadventuring with men, the stories became a little more bland and ran together.

How to Build a Girl reads like a hybrid of The Bell Jar, Almost Famous, and Angus, Thongs, and Full-Frontal Snogging. With a sharp, funny narrator, Caitlin Moran provides a story that's relatable enough for readers to reflect on their own adolescences and how they eventually "built" themselves.

Rating: 4/5

**I received a free e-galley of How to Build a Girl from Edelweiss.

Review: Book Riot Quarterly Box

There are several things that I REALLY love in the world: my family, my friends, my boyfriend, my dogs, books, and lastly, getting things in the mail. I also really love combining these things. Since my boyfriend probably won't send himself to me via FedEx, I usually settle for getting books in the mail - books that I order online, the rare ARCs that I win, and most recently, every three months, a Book Riot quarterly box! Now, I don't want to spoil my review but...this subscription box is probably the best thing ever. It's truly a bibliophile's dream come true.

If you're unfamiliar with the words I am saying, Book Riot is a site that covers any and all things book-related. You have your reviews, lists, links, and quizzes. THEN you have special features like "Book Fetish" (a weekly catalog of bookish jewelry, clothes, art, and more), "Literary Tourism" (each post explores a certain location - bookstores, books set there, literary history, etc.), and "Reading Pathways" (suggested three book sequences to become familiar with an author). Needless to say, this website is the bomb.

While browsing around Book Riot a few months back, I noticed a section that I had overlooked in the past: "Subscriptions." Here, you can subscribe to Book Riot podcasts and...AWESOME REAL LIVE BOOKS DELIVERED TO YOUR DOOR! You have two options here:

1. The Riot Read - For $30 you get "a great new book in your mailbox every month, along with related articles, interviews, and explorations brought to you by the writers of Book Riot." Right now there's only one subscription available, "The Main Event," which is mostly adult fiction. But Young Adult and Non-fiction Riot Reads are coming soon!
2. The Quarterly Box - For $50, "every 3 months, Book Riot will send you a package of books and bookish stuff." 

I should also mention that I previously subscribed to a similar service - Powell's Indiespensible. Their boxes are $40 and ship every 6 weeks, but I was usually less than impressed. I kept waiting to get better goods, but ended up cancelling after 4 deliveries. So while I was a little wary of trying a similar service, looking at the contents of the previous Quarterly Boxes quickly helped me past my trepidation. I decided to take the dive - the BIG dive - and go for the Quarterly Box rather than sniffing around the monthly Riot Read.

After several weeks of staring down the mailman, my first Quarterly Box arrived yesterday! Here are the goods.

Library Life - Pulling out the Weeds

In the library world, weeding isn't a summer chore your parents make you do. It's the process of deciding which items are no longer needed in the collection and giving them the boot. In fancier terms, weeding is also called "deselection."

Myself and some co-workers are planning a pretty huge overhaul of the library's children's section. A lot of the children's materials have never been weeded, or at least not in the past 20ish years. So part of rearranging and updating the section is weeding out the things that are no longer needed in our collection. I recently weeded the entire Juvenile Biography section and found some real gems. 

Every library has different policies when it comes to collection development and weeding. Some libraries remove materials that haven't circulated in five years or so. Others put a much longer expiration date on their items. But there are, of course, considerations aside from circulation dates to be made when deciding whether or not to weed an item. Here are some general guidelines that I follow when weeding:

• Last circulation date - When is the last time the item was checked out? My library is pretty lenient here. If it was checked out five years ago, we'll probably keep it. If it hasn't been checked out for 10 or 15 years, it will probably be discarded.

• 

  Walt, you're looking a little old here...

  

  Oh...you haven't been checked out in 22 years. I'm sorry, Walt, but this is goodbye.
• Age of the material - Is a book so old that its information is no longer relevant? It might need to go. For example, books about politicians that are still alive can become outdated pretty quickly. I found several Hillary Clinton bios specifically about "The Life of the First Lady." Of course I think we should have biographies about Hil, but they should have information that goes beyond 1995.
• Redundancy - Do we have several books on the same topic? Libraries should have a lot of information about certain popular topics and people. We don't, however, need a lot of information about every topic or person. For example, I pulled a particularly old and beat-up biography of George Washington. Sure, he's a popular guy, but I left about 15 other bios for interested grade schoolers to peruse.
• Multiple copies - At one point, the library actually needed 8 copies of The Help. There was a ton of buzz over the movie, people were talking about the book everywhere, and we couldn't keep a copy on the shelf. Now, we could probably stand to weed that particular book down to about 3 copies (maybe even 2!). This is, like most of my "criteria", a judgment call. It's up to the weeder to decide how many copies of a book the library needs, but it helps to consider the other guidelines.
• Relevance - I was drowning in biographies of 1990s athletes and movie stars during my weeding. Some of them I'd heard of (I see you, Tara Lipinski!) but some were so outdated that I'd their names didn't even ring tiny, distant bells. Unfortunately, kids no longer want to read about Sarah Michelle Gellar or LeAnn Rimes. I know...it hurts my heart too.
• Physical condition - Even if a book is still relevant and has been checked out, we may need to remove it from the collection because of its physical condition. We just can't keep books around that are falling apart. One of my coworkers is pretty brilliant at book repairs, so she fixes up anything that can be saved. But some books are simply beyond repair. If it's something that we think should still be in the collection, we'll get a new copy. I recently had to toss an old copy of The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers because the cover was falling off and everything else was being held together with scotch tape. I immediately purchased another copy because, duh, we need a few Two Towers around. But if a book is super junky AND irrelevant, say sayonara.
• Subject matter - Finally, it's important to consider the item's subject matter. Even if something has never been checked out or is pretty old, I'll keep it if it's considered a "classic" or if it touches on a unique subject. Some things are just important to keep in a collection. When I weed the young adult section, I try not to get rid of books that bring cultural and ethnic diversity to the collection. Even if they haven't been checked out within the arbitrary time period that we've selected as a weeding guideline, I'll keep these books in our collection because it's important that young people (and old people and in-between people!) have access to different narratives and perspectives.

These rules aren't set in stone! There's a lot of wiggle room and plenty of judgment calls involved in weeding. I also run weeds by my boss before I actually remove them from the catalog. He might know more about a certain topic than I do and think that we should keep a book that I weeded. Or a coworker might be able to tell me the value of a certain item that I then decide to keep in the collection. It takes a village! Or...something.

So what happens after we've decide to remove something from the collection? I'm sure it's different everyone, but this is how it works at my library...First we check out weeded books to a special "discard" account. This account is cleared out periodically by the people who work for our larger network (TLN) so that they're not just sitting in magical check out land forever. Then we rip out the first page of the book (the page with the library's bar code in it). I know, ripping books sounds blasphemous, but I promise it ends well! Next, we take our special "DISCARD" stamp and stamp it a few times on the inside cover of the book. And finally, we put the weeded items into our book sale in the lobby where they will await new, loving homes!

Some people seem to hate the idea of weeding. They think we shouldn't get rid of anything because WHAT IF??? But I generally like weeding. The physical act of weeding, like so many library duties, can be calming. And the results are good too! Weeding leads to a cleaner, more relevant and updated library collection. And of course it's easier for patrons to find what they're looking for when they don't have to sort through the weeds to get there.

It's not you, Leo, it's me. I'm just having a hard...okay, fine, it IS you.

Book Haul - Feminist Edition

I've been on a feminism kick for a while now and have recently been amping up my feminist book buying. These are purchases that I've made in the last month or so. Currently finishing up Men Explain Things to Me by Rebbeca Solnit. I've heard very good things about The Purity Myth by Jessica Valenti. Pretty much everything else I just discovered from surfing online. So these are my feminist/women's studies purchases of the past month or so:

• Men Explain Things to Me by Rebecca Solnit
• Yes Means Yes: Visions of Sexual Power & A World Without Rape by Jaclyn Friedman and Jessica Valenti
• Girls Like Us: Fighting for a World Where Girls Are Not For Sale by Rachel Lloyd
• Half the Sky: Turning Oppression Into Opportunity for Women Worldwide by Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn
• The Purity Myth: How America's Obsession with Virginity is Hurting Young Women by Jessica Valenti
• Manifesta: Young Women, Feminism, and the Future by Jennifer Baumgardner and Amy Richards

I can't imagine that I'll get to ALL these books in the near future, but I look forward to picking my way through them in the months and years to come.

Favorites of 2014 (So Far)

I've read 69 books so far this year and have been impressed with quite a few. Not all of these books were published in 2014, of course, but most were (with a few that were released within the last three years or so). These are my favorite reads so far and they all get an automatic recommendation from me:

• Me Before You by JoJo Moyes
• Astonish Me by Maggie Shipstead
• Where'd You Go, Bernadette? by Maria Semple
• The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin
• Lexicon by Max Barry
• We Were Liars by E. Lockhart
• Since You've Been Gone by Morgan Matson
• The Empathy Exams by Leslie Jamison
• The Weight of a Human Heart by Ryan O'Neill
• Bad Feminist by Roxane Gay

     

Pre-Order Fever

There must be something in the water because badass ladies are writing badass books from here to Timbuktu. I'm not the type to wait around for a book that I really, really want. So I've already pre-ordered several books that are coming out this fall/late summer. And since my birthday is October 5th, I figure a few of these can act as birthday presents for myself. Here's What I'm most excited for:

Bad Feminist by Roxane Gay (pub. August 5, 2014)

Not That Kind of Girl by Lena Dunham (pub. September 30, 2014)

Grace's Guide: The Art of Pretending to be a Grown-Up by Grace Helbig (pub. October 21, 2014)

Yes Please by Amy Poehler (pub. October 28, 2014)

What can I say? I'm into funny ladies and their funny (or serious) words. I already heard that Mindy Kaling is writing another book so I can officially die happy. Yahoo for pre-orders!

Flash Reviews - June 2014

I've been reading a LOT this year and not reviewing anything, so I figured I'd try doing some "flash reviews." These will just be quick, two or three (or four or five) sentence reviews about the general impression/feelings I got from the books I read in the past month.

• All-American Girl by Meg Cabot (YA Fiction)
• I picked this up because it sounded cute and simple and it was exactly that: cute and simple. An average American teenager unthinkingly saves the President's life, then proceeds to fall in love with the first son who happens to be in her art class. Cute. Simple. 3.5/5
• This One Summer by Mariko Tamaki and Jillian Tamaki (Graphic Novel)
• This One Summer is a coming of age story about two pre-teens who spend every summer together at their families' respective cottages. The artwork was absolutely stunning, but something in the story didn't quite resonate with me and the characters were less than likable. 3.5/5
• The One by Kiera Cass (YA Fiction)
• This is the last book in The Selection series. Think The Hunger Games mixed with "The Bachelor". Now make it ten times worse than you imagined and you'll have The Selection. These books are pure, terrible fluff and I have no excuse for reading the whole series aside from wanting to know how the inevitable love triangle is resolved. 1.5/5
• Ready Player One by Ernest Cline (Fiction)
• The hero of Ready Player One is Wade, a young man who spends almost all of his time in a virtual online world called OASIS. Wade is making strides to win a contest set by the creator of the OASIS to win control of the virtual world and its creator's vast fortune. Fast paced and fascinating, Ready Player One is a delightful dystopian thriller. 4/5
• Choker by Elizabeth Woods (YA Fiction)
• I knew what I was getting into with Choker. A YA thriller set around teenaged Cara, whose childhood best friend Zoe appears after several years of radio silence. Of course, strange, terrible things start to happen once Zoe comes to town. Worth reading if you like a twist ending (albeit a relatively predictable twist ending). 2.5/5
• A Guide to Being Born by Ramona Ausubel (Short Stories)
• Ramona Ausubel's collection is literally organized around the stages of being born - love, conception, gestation, and birth. Her stories are beautiful, strange, and often breathtaking. This was a very enjoyable read. 4/5
• Astonish Me by Maggie Shipstead (Fiction)
• Astonish Me is the story of Joan, a ballet dancer who gives up her career after becoming pregnant. The novel spans several decades and covers the stories of various figures in Joan's life. I found Shipstead's writing to be lovely and the story enthralling, right up to a surprising twist at the conclusion. 5/5
• Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger (Fiction)
• Twin sisters move into their mysterious aunt's London flat about her untimely death in Niffenegger's sophomore novel. This novel had the potential to be very interesting, but the plot just wasn't executed well enough. And the last hundred pages or so were so strange and ridiculous that the book lost almost any credibility it would have had. 2/5
• Dept. of Speculation by Jenny Offill (Fiction)
• This is a very short novel narrated by an anonymous wife who reflects on her crumbling marriage and relationship with her daughter. Offill's prose was lovely, but it wasn't quite enough to carry me through with interest. 3/5
• Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn (Fiction)
• I finally got around to reading Gone Girl this month, even though it has been insanely popular for at least two years now. This really was an edge of your seat thriller for me. I read most of it in a day and I absolutely did not see the twist coming. The ending was pretty upsetting to me and some of the last quarter of the book seemed a little ridiculous. But the rest of Gone Girl was very, very good and made for an enjoyable, exciting read. I look forward to reading more of Flynn's books! 4/5
• Everything Leads to You by Nina LaCour (YA Fiction)
• LaCour's novel is a love story wrapped in a mystery. Emi Price is a budding production designer living in her brother's awesome LA apartment for the summer. When she stumbles across a hidden letter in a recently deceased Hollywood film legend's home, she and her best friend Charlotte find themselves on an adventure they never imagined. Emi spends the summer learning about film, friends, love, and, of course, herself. 4/5
• The Naturals by Jennifer Lynn Barnes (YA Fiction)
• Barnes's The Naturals is billed as Criminal Minds for the YA set. I LOVE Criminal Minds and I obviously enjoy YA books, so I figured this was a shoo in. It was enjoyable with (of course) a twist ending. As long as you're willing to suspend your disbelief enough to buy an FBI program for teenagers with innate psychological crime-solving abilities, you'll probably like this book. 3.5/5
• The Word Exchange by Alena Graedon (Fiction)
• This book had a very interesting premise: Anana Johnson's father, editor of the last print dictionary in existence, just before the dictionary is set to print its final edition. Around the same time, Americans start coming down with a virus called the Word Flu, spread through their ubiquitous handheld devices called memes. Unfortunately, this proved to be a dense, sometimes exhausting read. Not only was the plot confusing, I literally felt like I had the Word Flu myself while reading. I really would not recommend this unless you like an unrewarding challenge. 2/5
• Case Histories by Kate Atkinson (Fiction)
• In Case Histories, Jackson Brodie is a Private Investigator who has been called on to solve three cold cases that span over thirty years. His investigations lead him to dead ends, new relationships, and shocking conclusions. This wasn't the fastest-paced mystery I've read, but it kept my attention and I was satisfied by its conclusion. 4/5

Impressions:

• Fourteen books in a month is almost a record for me! I'm excited that I've been on such a kick lately and I hope it continues...forever.
• A weird coincidence this month: three of the books I read had a character named Theo (Her Fearful Symmetry, The Word Exchange, and Case Histories). Strange! 
• Favorite Read: Astonish Me by Maggie Shipstead
• Least Favorite Read: The One by Kiera Cass
• Most Disappointing Read: The Word Exchange by Alena Graedon...this was actually hard to choose because I had a few disappointments this month. 

On Audiobooks

My first experience with audiobooks was listening to the Harry Potter series, narrated by the incomparable Jim Dale. A few of my friends in high school owned these and we'd listen to them while we did our Calculus homework or on road trips or simply while sitting around. One friend even brought them to me during a stay in the hospital. The Harry Potter books had always been important to my group of friends, and these were an extension of the series.

Beyond listening to Mr. Dale's  fabulous voicework, I didn't have much interest in audiobooks. They almost seemed like cheating to me, like an easier way to read a book. Once I started working in a library, however, I decided to give audiobooks another shot. I checked out Emma by Jane Austen and listened to it every day on my way to and from work. I'd barely made it through a third of the book by the time it was due back. So I quit, thinking I would NEVER have enough listening time for audiobooks.

Then, in March of this year, I got into a car accident. I rear-ended a gigantic Two Guys and a Truck moving truck. I'd had a few anxiety-ridden months during which playing games and checking things on my phone acted as a form of therapy in keeping my brain distracted. The accident was completely my fault, as I shamefully admit that I was looking at my phone when I hit the truck. My car wasn't quite totalled, but it was VERY banged up and cost a lot of money to fix. I knew I needed to make a change. I needed something to occupy my brain while I was driving, but not something that required looking foolishly away from the road. So I decided to give audiobooks another try.

I was very picky when selecting my first audiobook: I wanted something short enough that I would actually be able to listen to the whole thing, but not a book that had been abridged; I wanted something that was already on my "to read" list, but not something so new that I wouldn't be able to interloan it from the library. I landed on Vampires in the Lemon Grove, a 2013 collection of short stories by Karen Russell. This ended up being an interesting first listening experience because each story had a different narrator. I was incredibly impressed; each narrator fit their respective story perfectly. I was completely taken by the whole experience. It took me a little less than two weeks to finish Vampires in the Lemon Grove and I made sure I had another audiobook lined up as soon as I was done.


Since my accident, I've listened to 8 audiobooks and I definitely no longer think that it's cheating. I spend just as much time listening to an audiobook as I would reading the physical book. I've also taking up a dual-reading method: if I'm really into an audiobook, I'll grab the physical copy too. That way I can listen in the car and read when I'm anywhere else. I also make it a point to rewind a bit if I feel like I didn't completely catch a section of the audiobook (I do the same thing with physical books. I'm constantly rereading if I think I skimmed something). The work is there, the time is there, and the book is there. Sometimes, I even feel like I get a richer experience from the audiobook. When I listened to Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger, the story left something to be desired, but the narrator, Bianca Amato, was absolutely amazing. Her accents, her voices, and her tone were all perfect. It made listening to a "meh" book much more rewarding. In several senses, my accident was a wake up call. Not only am I a safer drive, but I now have an amazing new way to "read" books. I look forward to discovering many more fantastic "listens" in the years to come.

Page and Screen: Orange is the New Black

Warning: This post contains some mild spoilers for both the book and TV show Orange is the New Black!

Like most people with an Internet connection and a pulse, I marathoned the Netflix original series Orange is the New Black when it was released in August. The series follows Piper Chapman, a white upper middle-class New Yorker sentenced to 15 months in federal prison for a ten-year-old drug offense. Through Piper’s eyes, we enter a world that is largely unfamiliar to most watchers. In this world, a leftover ice cream cone is the catalyst for an all-out brawl, sanitary pads are used for everything from cleaning to makeshifting shower shoes, and ex-lovers appear at the absolute worst possible moment. But in Litchfield Prison, Piper also finds something unexpected--friendship with women from all walks of life...and a few enemies too. 

Unsurprisingly, Orange is the New Black is based on a book - the bestselling memoir of the same name by Piper Kerman. I had previously heard of the book and thought it sounded interesting, but after watching the show, I had to get my hands on a copy. I knew that the show couldn’t have been adapted too faithfully from the book, but I was surprised at just how much had been changed and added for TV. The book isn’t about one-liners or catfights. Although it made me smile a few times, it wasn't a funny book. Kerman's memoir is about a privileged white woman's journey through the prison system and the truly life-changing experiences she encounters there.

What You Can Expect from Orange is the New Black: The TV Series

• Comedy. I laughed out loud at OITNB more times than I can count. My friends are in the habit of throwing one-liners from the show out in everyday conversation (and by everyday I mean every conversation we have every day). One memorable scene shows Nikki comforting Alex in the law library, patting her head and saying, “There’s always hope tomorrow’ll be taco night.” But Taystee pops her head out from around a nearby shelf and yells, “Tomorrow’s beef and noodles!” Pennsatucky’s ruminations on same-sex relations are hilariously backwards: “She a lesbian. They lesbianing together,” she says solemnly. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
• Unexpected sympathy. Probably my favorite thing about OITNB is how well-rounded and intensely human the characters are. Through strategic flashbacks, we see background stories for characters that might otherwise be looked over. It’s in these retrospectives that we learn about Sophia’s experiences before and during her sex-change operation and what led her to commit credit card fraud. Likewise, we see the stern Miss Claudette murder a man who abused a young girl employed in her cleaning company. These flashbacks lend real depth to the women in Litchfield Prison and keep them from being just numbers to us.
• Drama. Drama. Drama. Yes, it’s worth saying three times. For all the laughs we get from the ladies locked up in Litchfield, there are just as many instances of anger, heartache, backstabbing, and sadness. Unexpected pregnancies, violence, death, star-crossed romance, and family are just a few of the dramatic avenues explored in OITNB. But these more serious storylines are rarely over-the-top and perfectly balance the show's comedic moments.
  

  
  

  

What You Can Expect from Orange is the New Black: The Book

• Piper. This book is very much a memoir - it’s personal. Rather than getting much back story on the minor characters, we almost exclusively see Piper’s point of view throughout her sentence. This doesn’t mean that we don’t know anything about the other prisoners. Kerman adds in details often about her fellow inmates’ sentences and crimes. But the personal stories of other prisoners were either fictionalized or embellished for the show. Although Piper is the main character on the OITNB show, she often comes off as selfish and flaky. We get a different impression of her when reading from her perspective. Piper is both scared and smart, selfish and selfless, but she really, truly cares about her friends in prison and works to improve their lives.
• Commentary on prison and the criminal justice system. Piper Kerman isn’t angry that she’s in prison; she understands that she committed a crime and must face the consequences. But she doesn’t agree with the prison system as a whole: its unhelpful prerelease classes meant to reintegrate inmates into the outside, the lack of useful classes for further education, the pointless rules. Kerman notes that the real lesson she learned in prison was from living and working with the women who may have hypothetically been affected by her crime. She notes, “Our current criminal justice system has no provision for restorative justice, in which an offender confronts the damage they have done and tries to make it right to the people they have harmed. (I was lucky to get there on my own, with the help of the women I met.) Instead, our system of ‘corrections’ is about arm’s-length revenge and retribution, all day and all night. Then its overseers wonder why people leave prison more broken than when they went in.” And there's more where that came from.
• Community. Piper Kerman survives her prison sentence not because of her own will power or strength but because of the women she meets there. At first she's only approached by other white women who provide her with personal hygiene items, well wishes, and advice. But soon she finds herself safely within a network of women of varied backgrounds, personalities, and uncertain futures. These women support each other endlessly: Piper proof-reads her fellow inmates' letters for appeal, Pop gives advice to anyone in need, Yoga Janet provides a relaxing and constructive space in her yoga classes. They plan elaborate parties for each other's birthdays, make prison-crafted gifts for special occasions, and lend each other a shoulder to cry on or an ear to listen. These women are alone, save for each other, and they express their solidarity and support whenever possible. As a mild-mannered prisoner is taken to solitary confinement, her fellow inmates openly express their disdain for the prison's decision. Kerman writes, "One of the lieutenant's goons cuffed her, not that gently, and the buzz among the women surged to a low roar. Then Sheena started to chant: 'Ali-ice, Al-ice, Al-ice, Al-ice, Al-ice!' as they led the little pacifist away. I had never seen prison guards look scared before." In these moments we see just how much these women need each other.
  
  

The Verdict
I was surprised how different Piper Kerman's memoir was from the show I had watched. The show was addicting, funny, and heart wrenching. The book, however, presented a quite somber look at life in a women's prison. It wasn't an "unputdownable" book; in fact, it took me three or four weeks to finish. But I found it to be enlightening, engaging, and fascinating to read the "real" Piper's take on her prison sentence. Many elements of the book were included in the show, but the writers took great liberties with the more dramatic and humorous moments. Overall, I enjoyed both the book and TV show. But if you're looking for something easy and engrossing, check out the Orange is the New Black show on Netflix. If you're more interested in a realistic look at prison, try reading Kerman's memoir.