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One Bird’s Choice by Iain Reid

While I don’t usually read memoirs, One Bird’s Choice by Iain Reid was recommended to me from a friend, so I decided to give it a try. Iain describes himself as “an overeducated, underemployed twenty-something, living in the big city in a bug-filled basement apartment and struggling to make ends meet.” He finds part-time employment at a radio station near his parent’s home, and decides to bite the bullet and move in with them to help save money. While Iain was hoping for a temporary move, his stay ends up being a year long. As the year goes along, Iain settles a little too comfortably into his new lifestyle, which includes home cooked meals, farm chores, lots of beer drinking, and taking fashion advice from his parents.
I thought One Bird’s Choice was interesting and fun to read. Iain’s parents sound hilarious, and I laughed a lot at many of their scenes. When I started reading, I almost was wondering if Iain was just a lazy pile, and why he wasn’t trying harder to find a job and not have to live with his parents. But as I was getting his perspective on his life and his future, I realized that he simply was unsure what he wanted to be when he grew up. Sure, he had a few goals and interests, but he didn’t have a set career he was trying to achieve. I thought it would be difficult for me to relate to him, being the overly ambitious gal that I am, but through his comedic and truthful writing, I was able to develop a bond. Overall, I enjoyed this book and would recommend it.
[Rating: 4]

In My Mailbox: Week of May 22

In My Mailbox: Week of May 22, 2011

Title: Love and Freedom
Author: Sue Moorcroft
Received: From Choc Lit
Synopsis: New start, new love. That’s what Honor Sontag needs after her life falls apart, leaving her reputation in tatters and her head all over the place. So she flees her native America and heads for Brighton, England. Honor’s hoping for a much-deserved break and the chance to find the mother who abandoned her as a baby. What she gets is an entanglement with a mysterious male whose family seems to have a finger in every pot in town. Martyn Mayfair has sworn off women with strings attached, but is irresistibly drawn to Honor, the American who keeps popping up in his life. All he wants is an uncomplicated relationship built on honesty, but Honor’s past threatens to undermine everything. When secrets about her mother start to spill out …Honor has to make an agonising choice. Will she live up to her dutiful name and please others? Or will she choose freedom? From the best selling author of Starting Over, this novel has great charm and a cast of unforgettable characters.

Title: Confessions of a Call Center Girl
Author: Lisa Lim
Received: From Lisa Lim
Synopsis: Madison Lee is a fresh college grad, ready to take on the world of print media. But she has zero luck landing a job. Unemployment is at ten percent and on the rise. Desperate and left with no other options, she accepts a position as a service rep at a call center in Pocatello, Idaho. At the Lightning Speed call center in Spudsville, Maddy plunges into the wild and dysfunctional world of customer service where Sales is prided over Service and an eight hour shift is equivalent to eight hours of callers bashing her over the phone. Oh sure, the calls are bad. But Maddy manages to find humor on the phone and off the phone. And with all the salacious drama behind the calls, there is never a dull moment at the Lightning Speed call center.
Lately . . . Maddy has been pining for her smolderingly gorgeous co-worker Mika Harket. Now things are heating up on the phone–and elsewhere. Don’t hang up on this novel. Working at a call center has never been this garish . . . or this delightful.

Title: The Summer We Came to Life
Author: Deborah Cloyed
Received: From Eric @ Planned Television Arts
Synopsis: Every summer, Samantha Wheland joins her childhood friends – Isabel, Kendra and Mina – on a vacation somewhere exotic and fabulous. This year, it’s a beach house in Honduras, but for the first time, their clan is not complete. Mina lost her battle against cancer six months prior, and the friends she left behind are still struggling to find a way to move on without her. Before the trip ends, the bonds of friendship with her living friends, the older generation’s stories of love and loss, and Samantha’s glimpse into a world far removed from the one in which she belongs will convince her to trust her heart.

Title: One Bird’s Choice
Author: Iain Reid
Received: From a friend
Synopsis: Meet Iain Reid: an overeducated, underemployed twenty-something, living in the big city in a bug-filled basement apartment and struggling to make ends meet. When Iain lands a job at a radio station near his childhood home, he decides to take it. But the work is only part time, so he is forced to move back in with his lovable but eccentric parents on their hobby farm. What starts out as a temporary arrangement turns into a year-long extended stay, in which Iain finds himself fighting with the farm fowl, taking fashion advice from the elderly, fattening up on a gluttonous fare of home-cooked food, and ultimately easing (perhaps a little too comfortably) into the semi-retired, rural lifestyle. A hilarious and heartwarming comic memoir about food, family, and finally growing up, One Bird’s Choice marks the arrival of a funny, original, and fresh new voice.