CHARITY GIRL by Michael Lowenthal

As some of you may know, I tend to read some pretty odd-content books. CHARITY GIRL was no exception. Not only was a good read and generally well-written, but it told of a relatively unknown chapter in US history of moral and medical campaigning that lead to the detainment of nearly 30,000 women at over 40 sites around the country.
Having left her home and Russian immigrant mother, Freida Mintz works Jordan Marsh shop girl and is smart and independent. She lives on her own, with her $8 a week pay and enjoys her nights out with BFF Lou.
Following a night with a US Army private leaving for WW1, Freida is left with more than the memory to remember him by. He has given her syphillis. She is tracked down by the Committee on Prevention of Social Evils Surrounding Military Camps and sent to a detention camp for prostitures and charity girls - or those thought to be either one - behind barbed wire and subjected to medical procedures and general moral ubraiding from the staff. (google/wikipedia charity girls, detainment camps, and WW1 for more info on that one)
A turn-of-the-century feel to it, CHARITY GIRL and its author Michael Lowenthal accurately describes this dark period of wartime history. Since penicillin has no yet been discovered, Freida is given substances like mercury, arsenic compounds, iodine and silver nitrate and put to work sewing, shoveling manure and gardening. She and the other girls in the house are re-educated about the ills of the flesh according to the Committee and the house staff, in an effort to rehabilitate her.
Although somewhat graphic - the detail is needed and required -CHARITY GIRL is an impressive and well-documented historical account of this time period.

DREAM WHEN YOU ARE FEELING BLUE by Elizabeth Berg.

I'll be honest. I picked up this book based on its title (a line from a 1940's Johnny Mercer song) and its cover. I briefly skimmed the back and thought, this sounds good. I'm a sucker for 1940's war-time nostalgia (hello Swing Kids anyone?) and DREAM WHEN YOU ARE FEELING BLUE definitely fit the bill, right down to the meat rationing, coffee coupons, pin curls and period slang.
The Heaney sisters, Louise, Kitty and Tish, are daughters of Irish immigrants living in Chicago during WWII. Doing their American duties for the war-effort, the girls regularly attend USO dances, knit socks and scarves, and write letters to the servicemen overseas. Louise writes to her fiance (a ring Kitty was commissioned with picking up and delivering after the boys left, Kitty to Julian, her longtime boyfriend and would-be fiance,if he would just propose, and young Tish to a myriad of men she meets at dances.
Kitty is no doubt the character with which most readers identify - as I'm sure Berg did intentionally. She is confident and headstrong but confused by the many emotions she feels writing her beau away at war, a task with which she continually struggles -grasping at topics to write about and discuss - but her ease with which she pens letters to another soldier she has met a dance. She takes the family-imposed war effort (writing, knitting and rationing) into her own hands when quits her desk job at an insurance agency to begin a Rosie the Riveter-type job at a bomber factory.
DREAM WHEN YOU ARE FEELING BLUE takes the war with which the world is consumed, and causes it to play a supporting role in the book, as Kitty and her sisters confront numerous era-sensitve incidents.
Portions of the book are the letters that the girls receive back from their servicemen. Also a sucker for letters, (as some of you may know) I found these written pieces to be the most telling. Even though the letters were censored and read, as they were during wartime, readers can empathize and sympathize with the girls as the read each one outloud to her sisters. One can see them around the dining room table, pin curls in place with bobby pins, robes pulled tight around their nightgowns, excitedly opening letter after letter.
DREAM WHILE YOU ARE FEELING BLUE is almost a nostalgic chick-lit gives a sentimental twist to this time of modern warfare and e-mails rather than pen-to-paper correspondance.

DREAM WHEN YOU ARE FEELING BLUE by Johnny Mercer
Get in touch with that sundown fellow
As he tiptoes across the sand
He's got a million kinds of stardust
Pick your fav'rite brand, and

Dream, when you're feeling blue
Dream, that's the thing to do
Just watch the smoke rings rise in the air
You'll find your share of memories there

So dream when the day is through
Dream, and they might come true
Things never are as bad as they seem
So dream, dream, dream

instrumental

Dream when the day is through
Dream, and they might come true
Things never are as bad as they seem
So dream, dream, dream
Dream
So dream, dream, dream

FIVE THINGS I CAN’T LIVE WITHOUT by Holly Shumas

1.Books
2. my family and friends (no that does not count as 2 separate things)
3. margaritas on the rocks, no salt
4. Chapstick
5. a good hairbrush

You should have known this review would start like that. I encourage you to do your own as well. And yes, its okay if it changes now and then.

FIVE THINGS I CANT LIVE WITHOUT by Holly Shumas was one I had wanted to read, but had a very hard time getting ahold of it. My library didn’t carry it; the bookstore couldn’t seem to find it; alas my new love, Paperspine.com, shipped it to me. (Its like Netflix for books)
A quick read, if a bit plodding, FIVE THINGS, follows Nora, a 29-year old currently writing animal bios at a local shelter, as she abruptly quits, moves in with her boyfriend and opens her own business writing profiles for Internet daters. Sounds easy enough, right? Wrong. Unfortunately, Nora is an overthinker, spending waaaaaaaaaaay too much time in her “meta-life,” analyzing every possible outcome of a situation before it ever really begins.

While interviewing her clients, Nora asks them the Five Things question and begins considering the Five Things She Cant Live Without. She begins taking a salsa class with her all-too-perfect boyfriend of 6 months Dan in an effort to pick up the pace on an otherwise coasting relationship; visits with friends who are moving forward in their lives in contrast to Nora’s almost-30 mentality.

FIVE THINGS was a good book. But that’s about it. It was an easy and just okay book What would have made it better?

1. more about Dan (he sounded awesome, why would Nora ever question that)
2. less bitching and whining from Nora
3. a little more background on her friends
4. the reality of paying the bills with a job created and posted on Craiglist
5. more intellectual substance to provoke readers into writing their own list.

OVERALL: FIVE THINGS I CAN’T LIVE WITHOUT was just okay. It was well-written but seemed to lack something meatier with more substance. I don’t care for near-neurotic heroines who still get the awesome guy, can pay the bills, and has a cool job, and that’s how I ended up feeling about Nora. I was glad I read it but not wholly satisfied.