Beautiful Boy (David Sheff)

Audio/Hardcover

A father shares the experience of having a meth-addicted son and the toll it takes on everyone in his life.  You can't read this book without feeling the strain and sadness that every day is for a family with an addict, but there was just something about this guy that really bothered me.  And I'm not talking about the addict -- he's, of course, a black hole of demand and tragically wasted potential -- I'm talking about the father.

I just flat-out don't believe David Sheff much of the time.  I'm sure he's giving his two younger children more wise comments than they actually verbalized themselves.  A couple of examples: 6 or 7-year-old Daisy says that she doesn't believe that death is scary but, instead, like the end of a vacation when you're ready to go home.  Jasper, somewhere in the 10 to 12-year-old range refers to his college-age brother as a "good kid."  No, no, no.  That's not how children think or speak.

Yes, I'm sure that the Sheffs are in hell most of the time.  But this book came off as a indulgent, self-absorbed, and unnecessarily stretched.  Focus on the two kids and your wife -- while you're wasting effort on Nic, you're killing the family that still has a chance.

C-
Non-fiction #4

Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH (Robert C. O'Brien)

Hardcover

The single-mother Frisby mouse family is in trouble.  It's almost time to move out of the garden for spring planting, but one of the kids is too sickly to make the move. In desperation, she seeks out the help of the suspiciously organized rats who also reside on the farm.

The book isn't about Mrs. Frisby at all; the meat of the story is the rats and how they went from regular ol' scavengers to reading/building super rats.  So why is the rat tale told in clumsy flashback?  All tension of their capture and escape from the testing laboratory was removed since we could clearly see the outcome in the "present."

Decent idea shared in the most boring way possible.

C

I Am a Genius of Unspeakable Evil and I Want to Be Your Class President (Josh Lieb)

Hardcover

Tons of fun.

Oliver is, undeniably, a genius -- just no one has any idea and he likes it that way.  He learned English (and some Spanish) from the nurses in the hospital when he was born, so knew from his second day on earth that his father doesn't deserve to get any of his genius-reflected glory.  He's not the most pathetic boy in school, but he's close...regularly feigning fear of the most pathetic boy in school and confusion about assigned reading he completed at age two.

My only problem with the entire book (which regularly made me cackle aloud) was the ending.  Oliver, as narrator, has demonstrated his father's disinterest and disappointment in his son's entire existence.  I actually had a discussion with my husband in the middle of this book of how HEALTHY I thought Oliver's attitude was -- to truly fly above (or seemingly below) others' perceptions and opinions, ignoring whatever wasn't truth, even when the "other" in question is a parent who should, in a decent world, be in one's corner.  But, in the end, we seem to find out that Oliver's the same as 99 percent of the population.  He just wants Daddy to be proud of him.  Boo.

B+