Cat's bookshelf: all en-US Fri, 24 Jan 2025 08:39:39 -0800 60 Cat's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg Stay True 59900070 New Yorker staff writer Hua Hsu, a gripping memoir on friendship, grief, the search for self, and the solace that can be found through art.

In the eyes of eighteen-year-old Hua Hsu, the problem with Ken--with his passion for Dave Matthews, Abercrombie & Fitch, and his fraternity--is that he is exactly like everyone else. Ken, whose Japanese American family has been in the United States for generations, is mainstream; for Hua, the son of Taiwanese immigrants, who makes 'zines and haunts Bay Area record shops, Ken represents all that he defines himself in opposition to. The only thing Hua and Ken have in common is that, however they engage with it, American culture doesn't seem to have a place for either of them.

But despite his first impressions, Hua and Ken become friends, a friendship built on late-night conversations over cigarettes, long drives along the California coast, and the textbook successes and humiliations of everyday college life. And then violently, senselessly, Ken is gone, killed in a carjacking, not even three years after the day they first meet.

Determined to hold on to all that was left of one of his closest friends--his memories--Hua turned to writing. Stay True is the book he's been working on ever since. A coming-of-age story that details both the ordinary and extraordinary, Stay True is a bracing memoir about growing up, and about moving through the world in search of meaning and belonging.]]> 208 Hua Hsu 0385547773 Cat 0 to-read 4.00 2022 Stay True
author: Hua Hsu
name: Cat
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/24
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Light Princess 41432 44 George MacDonald 0152453008 Cat 5 3.96 1864 The Light Princess
author: George MacDonald
name: Cat
average rating: 3.96
book published: 1864
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2025/01/10
shelves:
review:

]]> The Burgess Boys 15823461
With a rare combination of brilliant storytelling, exquisite prose, and remarkable insight into character, Elizabeth Strout has brought to life two deeply human protagonists whose struggles and triumphs will resonate with readers long after they turn the final page. Tender, tough-minded, loving, and deeply illuminating about the ties that bind us to family and home, The Burgess Boys is Elizabeth Strout's newest and perhaps most astonishing work of literary art.]]> 320 Elizabeth Strout 1400067685 Cat 3 Tell Me Everything out of order, and it was fascinating to see how these characters have evolved in the imagination of their author across the past decade. The pace on this one felt a bit desultory; the attempts to interweave the experiences of the Somali community and the Burgess family's not entirely successful; but the groundwork was set for vivid family relationships and a meditation for how trauma and loss radiate forward in time. Nonetheless I prefer the slimmer, more pointed, and more compassionate somehow portrait of the same characters (and often the same events) in Tell Me Everything.]]> 3.58 2013 The Burgess Boys
author: Elizabeth Strout
name: Cat
average rating: 3.58
book published: 2013
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/29
date added: 2024/12/30
shelves:
review:
I read this novel and Tell Me Everything out of order, and it was fascinating to see how these characters have evolved in the imagination of their author across the past decade. The pace on this one felt a bit desultory; the attempts to interweave the experiences of the Somali community and the Burgess family's not entirely successful; but the groundwork was set for vivid family relationships and a meditation for how trauma and loss radiate forward in time. Nonetheless I prefer the slimmer, more pointed, and more compassionate somehow portrait of the same characters (and often the same events) in Tell Me Everything.
]]> <![CDATA[The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet]]> 55145261 A deeply moving and mind-expanding collection of personal essays in the first ever work of non-fiction from #1 internationally bestselling author John Green

The Anthropocene is the current geological age, in which human activity has profoundly shaped the planet and its biodiversity. In this remarkable symphony of essays adapted and expanded from his ground-breaking, critically acclaimed podcast, John Green reviews different facets of the human-centered planet - from the QWERTY keyboard and Halley's Comet to Penguins of Madagascar - on a five-star scale.

Complex and rich with detail, the Anthropocene's reviews have been praised as 'observations that double as exercises in memoiristic empathy', with over 10 million lifetime downloads. John Green's gift for storytelling shines throughout this artfully curated collection about the shared human experience; it includes beloved essays along with six all-new pieces exclusive to the book.]]> 304 John Green 0525555218 Cat 5 The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History). He doesn't minimize either, and yet this note of profound melancholy intensifies other pleasures and sources of (fleeting) meaning, like the whisper of a child who wants to tell you something (the subject of one of his essays).]]> 4.37 2021 The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet
author: John Green
name: Cat
average rating: 4.37
book published: 2021
rating: 5
read at: 2021/09/08
date added: 2024/12/27
shelves:
review:
I am a snob. So, John Green's YA romances are (were?) so wildly popular that I've always assumed that I wouldn't like his work or would find it too cutesy/pat. (See my opening point.) A dear friend of mine recommended that I read this essay collection, and, because it has a snooty/academic word in it, of course, I felt that I could do that without tarnishing my self-opinion. Besides, this collection comes from a timely podcast. Snobbery sometimes falls to the wayside when currency is on the horizon. In any case, I mock myself and not this book because I absolutely loved the book. Green is candid and vulnerable, nerdy and trivia-tastic, witty and reflective, quotidian and cosmic in his concerns. He writes odes to Diet Dr Pepper, scratch and sniff stickers, Liverpudlian football and singing, Mario Kart. He registers the sadness and fear of pandemic isolation as well as the larger sadness and fear of climate change, the vitality of the non-human forms of life around us, but also our inevitable investments in the human, both personal relationships and artistic expression. He also writes of the strangeness and splendor of the natural world, salt flats and sycamore trees. He places his own mental illness and physical struggles (viral meningitis, staph infection of the eyes) at the center of the embodied and scary experience of being human, so there's no striving for a lofty tone of rationality over mess. Green takes stock of the relationship between intimate fears of inevitable mortality and planetary fears of the sixth extinction (The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History). He doesn't minimize either, and yet this note of profound melancholy intensifies other pleasures and sources of (fleeting) meaning, like the whisper of a child who wants to tell you something (the subject of one of his essays).
]]> <![CDATA[Leave Only Footprints: My Acadia-to-Zion Journey Through Every National Park]]> 42034231
When Conor Knighton decided to spend a year wandering through "America's Best Idea," he was worried the whole thing might end up being his worst idea. But, after a broken engagement and a broken heart, he desperately needed a change of scenery. The ambitious plan he cooked up went a bit overboard in that department; Knighton set out to visit every single one of America's National Parks, from Acadia to Zion.

Leave Only Footprints is the memoir of his year spent traveling across the United States, a journey that yielded his "On the Trail" series, which quickly became one of CBS Sunday Morning's most beloved segments. In this smart, informative, and often hilarious book, he'll share how his journey through these natural wonders, unchanged by man, ended up changing his worldview on everything from God to politics to love and technology. Whether it's waking up early for a naked scrub in an Arkansas bathhouse or staying up late to stargaze along our loneliest highway, Knighton goes behind the scenery to provide an unfiltered look at America. In the tradition of books like A Walk in the Woods or Turn Right at Machu Picchu, this is an irresistible mix of personal narrative and travelogue-some well-placed pop culture references, too-and a must-read for any of the 331 million yearly National Parks visitors.]]> 323 Conor Knighton 198482354X Cat 0 to-read 4.24 2020 Leave Only Footprints: My Acadia-to-Zion Journey Through Every National Park
author: Conor Knighton
name: Cat
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Oh William! (Amgash, #3) 56294820
So Lucy is both surprised and not surprised when William asks her to join him on a trip to investigate a recently uncovered family secret—one of those secrets that rearrange everything we think we know about the people closest to us. What happens next is nothing less than another example of what Hilary Mantel has called Elizabeth Strout’s “perfect attunement to the human condition.� There are fears and insecurities, simple joys and acts of tenderness, and revelations about affairs and other spouses, parents and their children. On every page of this exquisite novel we learn more about the quiet forces that hold us together—even after we’ve grown apart.

At the heart of this story is the indomitable voice of Lucy Barton, who offers a profound, lasting reflection on the very nature of existence. “This is the way of life,� Lucy says: “the many things we do not know until it is too late.”]]> 240 Elizabeth Strout 0812989430 Cat 4 3.79 2021 Oh William! (Amgash, #3)
author: Elizabeth Strout
name: Cat
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/14
date added: 2024/12/16
shelves:
review:
I am finishing the year fixated on Elizabeth Strout novels! I loved Lucy's perspective in this novel as she understands her youth through her first marriage, compares herself to her mysterious (and somewhat snobby) mother-in-law, and both feels forever close with her first husband William and yet also persistently distant from him, as he shuts down his emotions and confidences and criticizes her for the very same strangeness that he calls spirit and joy when he's satisfied with her. I felt that this combination of intense intimacy and a feeling of constantly being on guard or at arm's length was very true to my experience of certain close relationships, especially ones that unfold across decades. Lucy sees both her ex-husband's carefully cultivated persona and his vulnerability. Strout does a wonderful job thinking through the reverberating effects of intergenerational trauma, both historical and personal.
]]> <![CDATA[Tell Me Everything (Amgash, #5)]]> 204811915 People) of a novel about new friendships, old loves, and the very human desire to leave a mark on the world.

With her remarkable insight into the human condition and silences that contain multitudes, Elizabeth Strout returns to the town of Crosby, Maine, and to her beloved cast of characters—Lucy Barton, Olive Kitteridge, Bob Burgess, and more—as they deal with a shocking crime in their midst, fall in love and yet choose to be apart, and grapple with the question, as Lucy Barton puts it, “What does anyone’s life mean?�

It’s autumn in Maine, and the town lawyer Bob Burgess has become enmeshed in an unfolding murder investigation, defending a lonely, isolated man accused of killing his mother. He has also fallen into a deep and abiding friendship with the acclaimed writer Lucy Barton, who lives down the road in a house by the sea with her ex-husband, William. Together, Lucy and Bob go on walks and talk about their lives, their fears and regrets, and what might have been. Lucy, meanwhile, is finally introduced to the iconic Olive Kitteridge, now living in a retirement community on the edge of town. They spend afternoons together in Olive’s apartment, telling each other stories. Stories about people they have known—“unrecorded lives,� Olive calls them—reanimating them, and, in the process, imbuing their lives with meaning.

Brimming with empathy and pathos, Tell Me Everything is Elizabeth Strout operating at the height of her powers, illuminating the ways in which our relationships keep us afloat. As Lucy says, “Love comes in so many different forms, but it is always love.”]]> 326 Elizabeth Strout 0593446097 Cat 5
Strout makes the trauma of the past and the tentative attempts at repair in the present her perennial theme, and while her view of the world at large is very pessimistic (as is mine), she commits to the idea that on the small scale, we can care for one another, whether strangers, friends, or lovers.]]> 3.98 2024 Tell Me Everything (Amgash, #5)
author: Elizabeth Strout
name: Cat
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/12/13
date added: 2024/12/13
shelves:
review:
I loved this one so much! A celebration of adult friendship and intimate conversation, a book that's not only about our constant speculation about what other people are thinking and feeling but also about our collaborative storytelling by way of gossip, designed to get a little closer to their experiences and to our own. This Strout installment features Olive Kittredge and Lucy Barton, the central figures in Strout's two interlaced series, talking to one another, and Olive is so abrupt, direct, and judgmental, and Barton is so tender, dreamy, and speculative; they make a very satisfying odd couple.

Strout makes the trauma of the past and the tentative attempts at repair in the present her perennial theme, and while her view of the world at large is very pessimistic (as is mine), she commits to the idea that on the small scale, we can care for one another, whether strangers, friends, or lovers.
]]> Butter 200776812 The cult Japanese bestseller about a female gourmet cook and serial killer and the journalist intent on cracking her case, inspired by a true story.

There are two things that I can simply not tolerate: feminists and margarine.

Gourmet cook Manako Kajii sits in Tokyo Detention Center convicted of the serial murders of lonely businessmen, who she is said to have seduced with her delicious home cooking. The case has captured the nation’s imagination but Kajii refuses to speak with the press, entertaining no visitors. That is, until journalist Rika Machida writes a letter asking for her recipe for beef stew and Kajii can’t resist writing back.

Rika, the only woman in her news office, works late each night, rarely cooking more than ramen. As the visits unfold between her and the steely Kajii, they are closer to a masterclass in food than journalistic research. Rika hopes this gastronomic exchange will help her soften Kajii but it seems that she might be the one changing. With each meal she eats, something is awakening in her body, might she and Kaji have more in common than she once thought?

Inspired by the real case of the convicted con woman and serial killer, "The Konkatsu Killer," Asako Yuzuki’s Butter is a vivid, unsettling exploration of misogyny, obsession, romance and the transgressive pleasures of food in Japan.]]> 464 Asako Yuzuki 0063236400 Cat 0 to-read 3.50 2017 Butter
author: Asako Yuzuki
name: Cat
average rating: 3.50
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Lucy by the Sea (Amgash #4) 60657583
Rich with empathy and emotion, Lucy by the Sea vividly captures the fear and struggles that come with isolation, as well as the hope, peace, and possibilities that those long, quiet days can inspire. At the heart of this story are the deep human connections that unite us even when we're apart--the pain of a beloved daughter's suffering, the emptiness that comes from the death of a loved one, the promise of a new friendship, and the comfort of an old, enduring love.]]> 291 Elizabeth Strout 0593446062 Cat 0 to-read 3.80 2022 Lucy by the Sea (Amgash #4)
author: Elizabeth Strout
name: Cat
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> James 173754979 A brilliant reimagining of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn—both harrowing and satirical—told from the enslaved Jim's point of view

When Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a man in New Orleans, separated from his wife and daughter forever, he runs away until he can formulate a plan. Meanwhile, Huck has faked his own death to escape his violent father. As all readers of American literature know, thus begins the dangerous and transcendent journey by raft down the Mississippi River toward the elusive and unreliable promise of the Free States and beyond.

Brimming with nuanced humor and lacerating observations that have made Everett a literary icon, this brilliant and tender novel radically illuminates Jim's agency, intelligence, and compassion as never before. James is destined to be a major publishing event and a cornerstone of twenty-first-century American literature.

Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780385550369.]]> 303 Percival Everett Cat 5 The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of African-American Literary Criticism, Henry Louise Gates Jr. writes about the trope of the talking book as a means of liberation; here, Everett thinks through the force of the Black pencil, the revolution of a Black man writing about his own experience, threatened with extinction through lynching. As the book flows towards its conclusion, like the powerful river it describes, it accrues anger and grief, forbidding the reader to look away from rape and torture as did Twain. ]]> 4.46 2024 James
author: Percival Everett
name: Cat
average rating: 4.46
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/12/03
date added: 2024/12/07
shelves:
review:
You don't need me to tell you, this one is a STUNNER. Everett's satire is very funny as enslaved Jim code-switches to keep the white people around him docile, but he also digs in deeply to slave narratives in order to flesh out the world beyond Twain's horizons. In The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of African-American Literary Criticism, Henry Louise Gates Jr. writes about the trope of the talking book as a means of liberation; here, Everett thinks through the force of the Black pencil, the revolution of a Black man writing about his own experience, threatened with extinction through lynching. As the book flows towards its conclusion, like the powerful river it describes, it accrues anger and grief, forbidding the reader to look away from rape and torture as did Twain.
]]> <![CDATA[The Wild Robot Protects (The Wild Robot, #3)]]> 75593520
Roz calms and organizes the animals, but the poison tide takes a terrible toll on the island. And when the robot discovers that her new body is waterproof, she marches into the waves and sets out across the ocean, determined to stop the poison tide.

During her undersea journey, Roz encounters amazing geological formations and incredible creatures, and she sees the devastation caused by the toxic waters. Creatures she meets along the way direct her to a mysterious character known as the Ancient Shark, who explains that the poison tide is caused by a huge station that floats on the waves; a station operated by humans and by robots. To stop them, the Ancient Shark is prepared to attack with an army of sea creatures. However, Roz hopes to find a peaceful solution, instead. Can the wild robot save the ocean and her island and everything she loves?]]> 288 Peter Brown Cat 3 The Wild Robot Escapes), this installment is more straightforward and in some sense mournful than the other two. Roz travels through a poisoned ocean, insulated only by her own artificiality, and she encounters marine life who have resolved to destroy the mining vessel creating this pollution. Perhaps it's because I read this installment after the election, which bodes horrifying things for the planet; it was more difficult to bring myself to a hopeful place in the conclusion of the novel. The plot is ripped from the headlines, as I had just seen a John Oliver episode on deep sea mining and how destructive it is likely to be in spite of its proponents' claim of sustainability. ]]> 4.11 2023 The Wild Robot Protects (The Wild Robot, #3)
author: Peter Brown
name: Cat
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2024/11/24
date added: 2024/12/07
shelves:
review:
Though Brown does a beautiful job with marine life in this installment, as well as capturing the way that capitalism ensnares good individuals in destructive projects (a theme that also came up in The Wild Robot Escapes), this installment is more straightforward and in some sense mournful than the other two. Roz travels through a poisoned ocean, insulated only by her own artificiality, and she encounters marine life who have resolved to destroy the mining vessel creating this pollution. Perhaps it's because I read this installment after the election, which bodes horrifying things for the planet; it was more difficult to bring myself to a hopeful place in the conclusion of the novel. The plot is ripped from the headlines, as I had just seen a John Oliver episode on deep sea mining and how destructive it is likely to be in spite of its proponents' claim of sustainability.
]]> <![CDATA[The Wild Robot Escapes (The Wild Robot, #2)]]> 34219841 279 Peter Brown 0316382043 Cat 5 4.35 2018 The Wild Robot Escapes (The Wild Robot, #2)
author: Peter Brown
name: Cat
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2018
rating: 5
read at: 2024/11/15
date added: 2024/12/07
shelves:
review:
I loved this one too! Again, Peter Brown is a profound ecological thinker, as Roz the robot serves as enslaved labor on a farm, so he subtly invokes the long history of human enslavement for agricultural labor. Drawing on a Haraway-ian sense of the posthuman, Roz becomes friends with the animals who make life on the farm and profit from its work possible. By telling the children a new kind of story about robots and animals, Roz lays the groundwork for her own escape and also for them building a new kind of future (as hopefully will Brown's child readers).
]]> <![CDATA[The Wild Robot (The Wild Robot, #1)]]> 26030734
When robot Roz opens her eyes for the first time, she discovers that she is all alone on a remote, wild island. She has no idea how she got there or what her purpose is—but she knows she needs to survive. After battling a violent storm and escaping a vicious bear attack, she realizes that her only hope for survival is to adapt to her surroundings and learn from the island's unwelcoming animal inhabitants.

As Roz slowly befriends the animals, the island starts to feel like home—until, one day, the robot's mysterious past comes back to haunt her.

From bestselling and award-winning author and illustrator Peter Brown comes a heartwarming and action-packed novel about what happens when nature and technology collide.]]> 282 Peter Brown 0316381993 Cat 5 Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene. In this fable of interspecies kinship and care, Brown makes an argument for ecological relation that embraces the posthuman in both robot and animal forms. A tender, touching, and vividly imagined book.]]> 4.19 2016 The Wild Robot (The Wild Robot, #1)
author: Peter Brown
name: Cat
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2016
rating: 5
read at: 2024/10/31
date added: 2024/12/07
shelves:
review:
I loved this book and its simple, stark illustration style! I would love to teach this with Donna Haraway's "The Cyborg Manifesto" and/or Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene. In this fable of interspecies kinship and care, Brown makes an argument for ecological relation that embraces the posthuman in both robot and animal forms. A tender, touching, and vividly imagined book.
]]> Green Island 199609086
While operating with startling self-awareness, Green Island does not simply offer poems that interrogate the circumstances of their own making. The work found in this slim volume questions the poetic tropes of beauty and romantic love and their relationships to the lyric. Ultimately working within the confines of a received tradition to expand what is possible within it, Liz Countryman shows us moments of quiet revelation in the quotidian, the comic, and the vestiges of popular culture.

ձ> 90 Liz Countryman 196120908X Cat 5
Everyplace I ever stepped seemed like some potential way to always be,
as though I might have stayed there--
a thing I didn't choose, but could keep
as an everlasting option--a mood--

like staying inside on a cloudy day, and wanting the living room to be quiet,
the white clouds, the ageing year
maybe touching one of two keys on the piano . . . (lines 65-71)

As in her other collection, A Forest Almost, Countryman also thinks about how we perceive and define or demarcate outdoor spaces--"That time we were in the forest we felt we had almost reached the forest" ("Forest," line 1)--and what the relationship is between our feelings of dwelling there and the velocity of our passing through: "It was never a matter of reaching the forest. It was a question of being / invited in, and then of staying long enough that eventually when / leaving it we might have the illusion that our car wound slowly, as / though pushing against a rubber band, when really it must have / whooshed through the trees toward adjacent forests." Her imagination lingers at the thresholds of spaces--caves, reefs, forests, stairs, hallways--and wonders what makes us imagine that one side is one thing and the other another. The movement of bodies blurs those conceptual lines, and Countryman's poetry uses language to capture that telescoping sensibility of both being here and elsewhere and refusing to pretend that the map is constant or safe.

Also, though unrelated to all I have said above, I love this line: "Our kiss like two manatees bumping in gentle fear of motorboats" ("Circular," line 2).]]> 4.50 Green Island
author: Liz Countryman
name: Cat
average rating: 4.50
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2024/11/07
date added: 2024/12/07
shelves:
review:
I loved this poetry collection, which interweaves reflections on motherhood, memory, and ecology. The poet-speaker is constantly orienting herself in space and time and imagining the orientation of others (like her two young daughters). My favorite of the poems, "Dresser," describes how childhood always feels just on the edge of our "now," like a childhood home or mood feels like it could be right outside the window or in the other room if we just found a way to edge ourselves through that barrier--in part because childhood impressions are so intense:

Everyplace I ever stepped seemed like some potential way to always be,
as though I might have stayed there--
a thing I didn't choose, but could keep
as an everlasting option--a mood--

like staying inside on a cloudy day, and wanting the living room to be quiet,
the white clouds, the ageing year
maybe touching one of two keys on the piano . . . (lines 65-71)

As in her other collection, A Forest Almost, Countryman also thinks about how we perceive and define or demarcate outdoor spaces--"That time we were in the forest we felt we had almost reached the forest" ("Forest," line 1)--and what the relationship is between our feelings of dwelling there and the velocity of our passing through: "It was never a matter of reaching the forest. It was a question of being / invited in, and then of staying long enough that eventually when / leaving it we might have the illusion that our car wound slowly, as / though pushing against a rubber band, when really it must have / whooshed through the trees toward adjacent forests." Her imagination lingers at the thresholds of spaces--caves, reefs, forests, stairs, hallways--and wonders what makes us imagine that one side is one thing and the other another. The movement of bodies blurs those conceptual lines, and Countryman's poetry uses language to capture that telescoping sensibility of both being here and elsewhere and refusing to pretend that the map is constant or safe.

Also, though unrelated to all I have said above, I love this line: "Our kiss like two manatees bumping in gentle fear of motorboats" ("Circular," line 2).
]]> <![CDATA[The Life and Times of Hannah Crafts]]> 43615455 A groundbreaking study of the first Black female novelist and her life as an enslaved woman, from the biographer who solved the mystery of her identity, with a preface by Henry Louis Gates Jr.

In 1857, a woman escaped enslavement on a North Carolina plantation and fled to a farm in New York. In hiding, she worked on a manuscript that would make her famous long after her death. The novel, The Bondwoman's Narrative, was first published in 2002 to great acclaim, but the author's identity remained unknown. Over a decade later, Professor Gregg Hecimovich unraveled the mystery of the author's name and, in The Life and Times of Hannah Crafts, he finally tells her story.

In this remarkable biography, Hecimovich identifies the novelist as Hannah Bond "Crafts." She was not only the first known Black woman to compose a novel but also an extraordinarily gifted artist who honed her literary skills in direct opposition to a system designed to deny her every measure of humanity. After escaping to New York, the author forged a new identity--as Hannah Crafts--to make sense of a life fractured by slavery.

Hecimovich establishes the case for authorship of The Bondwoman's Narrative by examining the lives of Hannah Crafts's friends and contemporaries, including the five enslaved women whose experiences form part of her narrative. By drawing on the lives of those she knew in slavery, Crafts summoned into her fiction people otherwise stolen from history.

At once a detective story, a literary chase, and a cultural history, The Life and Times of Hannah Crafts discovers a tale of love, friendship, betrayal, and violence set against the backdrop of America's slide into Civil War.]]> 304 Gregg Hecimovich 0062334751 Cat 5 The Bondwoman's Narrative, so it was so exciting to read Hecimovich's account of the life of the enslaved (and then self-liberated) author. He creates a truly impressive pace for a research-based tome, generating suspense about his own research and discovery process, but also emphasizing the intersecting stories of enslaved women whose lives touched and mirrored that of Hannah Crafts. Mindblowing to think about what she accomplished in this novel, both telling her own story and also repurposing famous works (like Bleak House and Uncle Tom's Cabin) to amplify the moral implications of her journey and the Gothic features of plantation life.]]> 3.80 2023 The Life and Times of Hannah Crafts
author: Gregg Hecimovich
name: Cat
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2024/10/30
date added: 2024/12/07
shelves:
review:
This was beautifully done! One of my first scholarly publications was an essay about The Bondwoman's Narrative, so it was so exciting to read Hecimovich's account of the life of the enslaved (and then self-liberated) author. He creates a truly impressive pace for a research-based tome, generating suspense about his own research and discovery process, but also emphasizing the intersecting stories of enslaved women whose lives touched and mirrored that of Hannah Crafts. Mindblowing to think about what she accomplished in this novel, both telling her own story and also repurposing famous works (like Bleak House and Uncle Tom's Cabin) to amplify the moral implications of her journey and the Gothic features of plantation life.
]]> <![CDATA[The Comfort of Crows: A Backyard Year]]> 123087784 The Comfort of Crows, Margaret Renkl presents a literary devotional: fifty-two chapters that follow the creatures and plants in her backyard over the course of a year. As we move through the seasons—from a crow spied on New Year’s Day, its resourcefulness and sense of community setting a theme for the year, to the lingering bluebirds of December, revisiting the nest box they used in spring—what develops is a portrait of joy and grief: joy in the ongoing pleasures of the natural world, and grief over winters that end too soon and songbirds that grow fewer and fewer.

Along the way, we also glimpse the changing rhythms of a human life. Grown children, unexpectedly home during the pandemic, prepare to depart once more. Birdsong and night-blooming flowers evoke generations past. The city and the country where Renkl raised her family transform a little more with each passing day. And the natural world, now in visible flux, requires every ounce of hope and commitment from the author—and from us. For, as Renkl writes, “radiant things are bursting forth in the darkest places, in the smallest nooks and deepest cracks of the hidden world.�

With fifty-two original color artworks by the author’s brother, Billy Renkl, The Comfort of Crows is a lovely and deeply moving book from a cherished observer of the natural world.]]> 270 Margaret Renkl 1954118465 Cat 5 The Backyard Bird Chronicles. I found the chapters about climate change and environmental damage the most powerful to read; there's one chapter where she talks about being surrounded by her neighbor's pesticides, trying to keep her wildflowers in the backyard as an ecological sanctuary but knowing how far the odds are against her because of the collective habits and norms in the United States. Each season is so vivid, as Renkl makes companions of plants and animals. One of the finest nature writers working today.]]> 4.17 2023 The Comfort of Crows: A Backyard Year
author: Margaret Renkl
name: Cat
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2024/11/01
date added: 2024/12/07
shelves:
review:
Renkl writes lyrically, intimately, and mournfully about the non-human life in her own backyard. This was a perfect companion book to Amy Tan's The Backyard Bird Chronicles. I found the chapters about climate change and environmental damage the most powerful to read; there's one chapter where she talks about being surrounded by her neighbor's pesticides, trying to keep her wildflowers in the backyard as an ecological sanctuary but knowing how far the odds are against her because of the collective habits and norms in the United States. Each season is so vivid, as Renkl makes companions of plants and animals. One of the finest nature writers working today.
]]> Hot Comb 40245803
“Following in the rich tradition of Lynda Barry, Ebony Flowers addresses the sometimes harsh, sometimes devastating pangs of childhood ending. She pays beautiful homage to the struggle to find your place in a world that has such rigid rules about who we are,� Drawn & Quarterly Publisher and acquiring editor Peggy Burns commented. “Hot Comb explores the poetry in everyday life, all the while centering the lives and stories of black women. Ebony’s ease with the comics language is remarkable. Her black and white drawings, as well as her colour collage work, are both equally stunning.”]]> 184 Ebony Flowers Cat 5 3.80 2019 Hot Comb
author: Ebony Flowers
name: Cat
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2019
rating: 5
read at: 2024/10/23
date added: 2024/12/07
shelves:
review:
I found this collection of short stories (are they still called short stories when they are in comics form, or should I just call them "comics"? Also, seems like memoir rather than fiction) about the hair of Black girls and women very powerful. I was especially struck by the way that Flowers connects physical pain and discomfort (from hair regimens) with larger forms of pain and trauma stemming from racism. The vignette about her sister's anxiety and hair-pulling was particularly poignant and disturbing in this way. Flowers communicates the intensity and vulnerability of childhood and adolescence, particularly as a time when girls learn discomfort with their bodies, a transition intensified by our white supremacist culture.
]]> <![CDATA[We Solve Murders (We Solve Murders, #1)]]> 203956647 A brand new series. An iconic new detective duo. And a puzzling new murder to solve...

Steve Wheeler is enjoying retired life. He does the odd bit of investigation work, but he prefers his familiar habits and routines: the pub quiz, his favorite bench, his cat waiting for him when he comes home. His days of adventure are over: adrenaline is daughter-in-law Amy’s business now.

Amy Wheeler thinks adrenaline is good for the soul. As a private security officer, she doesn’t stay still long enough for habits or routines. She’s currently on a remote island keeping world-famous author Rosie D’Antonio alive. Which was meant to be an easy job...

Then a dead body, a bag of money, and a killer with their sights on Amy have her sending an SOS to the only person she trusts. A breakneck race around the world begins, but can Amy and Steve stay one step ahead of a lethal enemy?

Alternate cover edition of ISBN 059365322X.]]> 400 Richard Osman Cat 3 The Thursday Murder Club series, but my hope is that the central relationship between the father and his daughter-in-law will become more robust and interesting as the series goes on. Osman's narration is still witty, and part of the novel takes place in South Carolina (which is where I live, so I appreciated that). A lot of hijinks and flying around the world in this one, which didn't maintain my interest as much as I would have liked.]]> 4.06 2024 We Solve Murders (We Solve Murders, #1)
author: Richard Osman
name: Cat
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/10/07
date added: 2024/12/07
shelves:
review:
Not nearly as wonderful as his The Thursday Murder Club series, but my hope is that the central relationship between the father and his daughter-in-law will become more robust and interesting as the series goes on. Osman's narration is still witty, and part of the novel takes place in South Carolina (which is where I live, so I appreciated that). A lot of hijinks and flying around the world in this one, which didn't maintain my interest as much as I would have liked.
]]> The God of the Woods 199698485 When a teenager vanishes from her Adirondack summer camp, two worlds collide

Early morning, August 1975: a camp counselor discovers an empty bunk. Its occupant, Barbara Van Laar, has gone missing. Barbara isn’t just any thirteen-year-old: she’s the daughter of the family that owns the summer camp and employs most of the region’s residents. And this isn’t the first time a Van Laar child has disappeared. Barbara’s older brother similarly vanished fourteen years ago, never to be found.

As a panicked search begins, a thrilling drama unfolds. Chasing down the layered secrets of the Van Laar family and the blue-collar community working in its shadow, Moore’s multi-threaded story invites readers into a rich and gripping dynasty of secrets and second chances. It is Liz Moore’s most ambitious and wide-reaching novel yet.]]> 490 Liz Moore Cat 4 4.15 2024 The God of the Woods
author: Liz Moore
name: Cat
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/09/22
date added: 2024/12/07
shelves:
review:
I devoured this book! Moore creates a vivid sense of place as well as evoking the costs of cis-heteropatriarchy and capitalism in a thriller that is faithful to its characters and its context (a summer camp and the community surrounding it). I found it very satisfying that the culprit was right in front of my eyes the whole time, and yet I didn't see the solution until the conclusion.
]]> The Backyard Bird Chronicles 194803881
Tracking the natural beauty that surrounds us, The Backyard Bird Chronicles maps the passage of time through daily entries, thoughtful questions, and beautiful original sketches. With boundless charm and wit, author Amy Tan charts her foray into birding and the natural wonders of the world.

In 2016, Amy Tan grew overwhelmed by the state of the Hatred and misinformation became a daily presence on social media, and the country felt more divisive than ever. In search of peace, Tan turned toward the natural world just beyond her window and, specifically, the birds visiting her yard. But what began as an attempt to find solace turned into something far greater—an opportunity to savor quiet moments during a volatile time, connect to nature in a meaningful way, and imagine the intricate lives of the birds she admired.]]> 291 Amy Tan 0593536134 Cat 5 4.05 2024 The Backyard Bird Chronicles
author: Amy Tan
name: Cat
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/09/22
date added: 2024/12/07
shelves:
review:
Who knew that Amy Tan could draw like this??? Vivid portraits (actual drawings and character sketches) of the birds in her backyard. Tan communicates her own tender sense of the urgency of this involvement with the non-human life right outside her window. An absolute delight and made me want to talk about my own backyard birds with Tan; she tries to understand their lives, their actions, and their relationships, acknowledging always her own limitations as a human observer.
]]> <![CDATA[Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow]]> 58784475 In this exhilarating novel, two friends—often in love, but never lovers—come together as creative partners in the world of video game design, where success brings them fame, joy, tragedy, duplicity, and, ultimately, a kind of immortality.

On a bitter-cold day, in the December of his junior year at Harvard, Sam Masur exits a subway car and sees, amid the hordes of people waiting on the platform, Sadie Green. He calls her name. For a moment, she pretends she hasn't heard him, but then, she turns, and a game begins: a legendary collaboration that will launch them to stardom. These friends, intimates since childhood, borrow money, beg favors, and, before even graduating college, they have created their first blockbuster, Ichigo. Overnight, the world is theirs. Not even twenty-five years old, Sam and Sadie are brilliant, successful, and rich, but these qualities won't protect them from their own creative ambitions or the betrayals of their hearts.

Spanning thirty years, from Cambridge, Massachusetts, to Venice Beach, California, and lands in between and far beyond, Gabrielle Zevin's Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is a dazzling and intricately imagined novel that examines the multifarious nature of identity, disability, failure, the redemptive possibilities in play, and above all, our need to connect: to be loved and to love. Yes, it is a love story, but it is not one you have read before.]]> 401 Gabrielle Zevin 0735243344 Cat 4 4.12 2022 Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow
author: Gabrielle Zevin
name: Cat
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2024/10/05
date added: 2024/12/07
shelves:
review:
A moving meditation on friendship and (interactive) storytelling, mortality and meaning. My biggest complaint is that Marx felt unreal and idealized to me. Zevin writes compellingly about physical pain and trauma, both experienced and inherited.
]]> <![CDATA[I Cannot Control Everything Forever: A Memoir of Motherhood, Science, and Art]]> 127280334 An eloquent and intimate debut memoir about navigating the gap between expectation and reality in modern motherhood.

I Cannot Control Everything Forever is Emily Bloom’s journey towards and through motherhood, a path that has become, for the average woman, laden with data and medical technology. Emily faces decisions regarding genetic testing and diagnosis, technologies that offer the illusion of certainty but carry the weight of hard decisions. Her desire to know more thrusts her back into the history of science, as she traces the discoveries that impacted the modern state of pregnancy and motherhood. With the birth of their daughter, who is diagnosed with congenital deafness and later, Type 1 diabetes, Emily and her husband find their life centered around medical data, devices, and doctor’s visits, but also made richer and fuller by parenting an exceptional child.

As Emily learns, technology and data do not reduce the labor of caretaking. These things often fall, as the pandemic starkly revealed, on mothers. Trying to find a way out of the loneliness and individualism of 21st century parenthood, Emily finds joy in reaching outwards, towards art and literature–such as the maternal messiness of Louise Bourgeois or Greek myths about the power of fate–as well as the collective sustenance of friends and community.

With lyrical and enchanting prose, I Cannot Control Everything Forever is an inspired meditation on art, science, and motherhood.]]> 352 Emily C. Bloom 1250285682 Cat 0 to-read 4.14 I Cannot Control Everything Forever: A Memoir of Motherhood, Science, and Art
author: Emily C. Bloom
name: Cat
average rating: 4.14
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> A House with Good Bones 60784409 A haunting Southern Gothic from an award-winning master of suspense, A House With Good Bones explores the dark, twisted roots lurking just beneath the veneer of a perfect home and family.

"Mom seems off."

Her brother's words echo in Sam Montgomery's ear as she turns onto the quiet North Carolina street where their mother lives alone.

She brushes the thought away as she climbs the front steps. Sam's excited for this rare extended visit, and looking forward to nights with just the two of them, drinking boxed wine, watching murder mystery shows, and guessing who the killer is long before the characters figure it out.

But stepping inside, she quickly realizes home isn’t what it used to be. Gone is the warm, cluttered charm her mom is known for; now the walls are painted a sterile white. Her mom jumps at the smallest noises and looks over her shoulder even when she’s the only person in the room. And when Sam steps out back to clear her head, she finds a jar of teeth hidden beneath the magazine-worthy rose bushes, and vultures are circling the garden from above.

To find out what’s got her mom so frightened in her own home, Sam will go digging for the truth. But some secrets are better left buried.]]> 247 T. Kingfisher 1250829798 Cat 0 to-read 3.65 2023 A House with Good Bones
author: T. Kingfisher
name: Cat
average rating: 3.65
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/31
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Why, Why, Why? 45871018 119 Quim Monzó 1948830043 Cat 0 to-read 3.72 1993 Why, Why, Why?
author: Quim Monzó
name: Cat
average rating: 3.72
book published: 1993
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/28
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Time Surfing: The Zen Approach to Keeping Time on Your Side]]> 34638416
“This book is for anyone who feels trapped by over-full, over-scheduled days. It explains how to escape the raging storms of busyness and find your way back to a more enjoyable and natural relationship with the clock. Time Surfing is abeautiful idea, expressed brilliantly in this beautiful book.� Tony Crabbe, author of international bestseller How to Thrive in a World of Too Much
Who has time these days? Any moments that haven’t already been accounted for are swallowed up by smartphones, social media and working into the evening hours. Stress can often seem to be caused solely by the outside world, but in fact it also comes from within.
This book will inspire and guide you to choose peace as a basis for carrying out all your daily activities, whether at work or in the home. The approach is based on a step-by-step method called Time Surfing, which consists of seven simple and easy-to-learn instructions backed with targeted tips and techniques.

Rooted in Zen Buddhism, the emphasis is very much on making the most of the time you have rather than trying to control time itself. The instructions � which include making time for “breathers� throughout the day and finishing a task before starting another � will feel instinctive, and will make it possible for you to surf over the waves of time. You will learn that you can trust your intuition when it comes to choosing what to do, and, as a result, your actions will be not only inspired but also very effective. The focus you experience will be relaxed and unforced. But, more than anything else, an inner sense of calm will arise.]]> 176 Paul Loomans 1786780917 Cat 0 to-read 3.71 2013 Time Surfing: The Zen Approach to Keeping Time on Your Side
author: Paul Loomans
name: Cat
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Kings of the Wyld (The Band, #1)]]> 30841984
Their glory days long past, the mercs have grown apart and grown old, fat, drunk - or a combination of the three. Then an ex-bandmate turns up at Clay's door with a plea for help. His daughter Rose is trapped in a city besieged by an enemy one hundred thousand strong and hungry for blood. Rescuing Rose is the kind of mission that only the very brave or the very stupid would sign up for.

It's time to get the band back together for one last tour across the Wyld.]]> 502 Nicholas Eames 0316362476 Cat 0 to-read 4.26 2017 Kings of the Wyld (The Band, #1)
author: Nicholas Eames
name: Cat
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Masquerade 195790999 Set in a wonderfully reimagined 15th century West Africa, Masquerade is a dazzling, lyrical tale exploring the true cost of one woman’s fight for freedom and self-discovery, and the lengths she’ll go to secure her future.

Òdòdó’s hometown of Timbuktu has been conquered by the the warrior king of Yorùbáland. Already shunned as social pariahs, living conditions for Òdòdó and the other women in her blacksmith guild grow even worse under Yorùbá rule.

Then Òdòdó is abducted. She is whisked across the Sahara to the capital city of Ṣàngótẹ̀, where she is shocked to discover that her kidnapper is none other than the vagrant who had visited her guild just days prior. But now that he is swathed in riches rather than rags, Òdòdó realizes he is not a vagrant at all; he is the warrior king, and he has chosen her to be his wife.

In a sudden change of fortune, Òdòdó soars to the very heights of society. But after a lifetime of subjugation, the power that saturates this world of battle and political savvy becomes too enticing to resist. As tensions with rival states grow, revealing elaborate schemes and enemies hidden in plain sight, Òdòdó must defy the cruel king she has been forced to wed by re-forging the shaky loyalties of the court in her favor, or risk losing everything—including her life.

Loosely based on the myth of Persephone, O.O. Sangoyomi’s Masquerade takes you on a journey of epic power struggles and political intrigue that turn an entire region on its head.]]> 352 O.O. Sangoyomi 1250904293 Cat 0 to-read 3.94 2024 Masquerade
author: O.O. Sangoyomi
name: Cat
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/12
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Black Gotham: A Family History of African Americans in Nineteenth-Century New York City]]> 18954390 A groundbreaking history of elite black New Yorkers in the nineteenth century, seen through the lens of the author's ancestors Part detective tale, part social and cultural narrative, Black Gotham is Carla Peterson's riveting account of her quest to reconstruct the lives of her nineteenth-century ancestors. As she shares their stories and those of their friends, neighbors, and business associates, she illuminates the greater history of African-American elites in New York City.

Black Gotham challenges many of the accepted "truths" about African-American history, including the assumption that the phrase "nineteenth-century black Americans" means enslaved people, that "New York state before the Civil War" refers to a place of freedom, and that a black elite did not exist until the twentieth century. Beginning her story in the 1820s, Peterson focuses on the pupils of the Mulberry Street School, the graduates of which went on to become eminent African-American leaders. She traces their political activities as well as their many achievements in trade, business, and the professions against the backdrop of the expansion of scientific racism, the trauma of the Civil War draft riots, and the rise of Jim Crow.

Told in a vivid, fast-paced style, Black Gotham is an important account of the rarely acknowledged achievements of nineteenth-century African Americans and brings to the forefront a vital yet forgotten part of American history and culture.]]> 566 Carla L. Peterson 0300164092 Cat 0 to-read 4.00 2011 Black Gotham: A Family History of African Americans in Nineteenth-Century New York City
author: Carla L. Peterson
name: Cat
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2011
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Slavery's Exiles 17918164
Although well-known, feared, celebrated or demonized at the time, the maroons whose stories are the subject of this book have been forgotten, overlooked by academic research that has focused on the Caribbean and Latin America. Who the American maroons were, what led them to choose this way of life over alternatives, what forms of marronage they created, what their individual and collective lives were like, how they organized themselves to survive, and how their particular story fits into the larger narrative of slave resistance are questions that this book seeks to answer. To survive, the American maroons reinvented themselves, defied slave society, enforced their own definition of freedom and dared create their own alternative to what the country had delineated as being black men and women's proper place. Audacious, self-confident, autonomous, sometimes self-sufficient, always self-governing; their very existence was a repudiation of the basic tenets of slavery.

Sylviane A. Diouf is an award-winning historian specializing in the history of the African Diaspora, African Muslims, the slave trade and slavery. She is the author of Servants of Allah: African Muslims Enslaved in the Americas (NYU Press, 2013) and Dreams of Africa in Alabama: The Slave Ship Clotilda and the Story of the Last Africans Brought to America, and the editor of Fighting the Slave Trade: West African Strategies.

"Diouf persuasively captures the quiet heroism of North American maroons. Less dramatic and long-lived than many of the maroon communities in Suriname, Jamaica, or Brazil, those in the southern United States were nonetheless ever present. Diouf demonstrates how much freedom mattered to the enslaved and how, within the limited possibilities open to them, those that set off into the inhospitable swamps and forests managed to forge a new life beyond the authority of whitefolks."
-Richard Price, author of Maroon Societies]]> 403 Sylviane A. Diouf 081472437X Cat 0 to-read 4.10 2013 Slavery's Exiles
author: Sylviane A. Diouf
name: Cat
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Interstellar MegaChef (Flavour Hacker, #1)]]> 207299482 Looking for your one shot to rise to the "top of the pots" in the cutthroat world of interstellar cuisine? Look no further--you might have what it takes to be an Interstellar MegaChef!

Stepping off a long-haul star freighter from Earth, Saras Kaveri has one bag of clothes, her little flying robot Kili... and an invitation to compete in the galaxy's most watched, most prestigious cooking show. Interstellar MegaChef is the showcase of the planet Primus's austere, carefully synthesised cuisine. No one from Earth--where they're so incredibly primitive they still cook with fire--has ever graced its flowmetal cookstations before, or smiled awkwardly for its buzzing drone-cams. Until now.

Corporate prodigy Serenity Ko, inventor of the smash-hit sim SoundSpace, has just got messily drunk at a floating bar, narrowly escaped an angry mob and been put on two weeks' mandatory leave to rest and get her work-life balance back. Perfect time to start a new project! And she's got just the idea: a sim for food. Now she just needs someone to teach her how to cook.

A chance meeting in the back of a flying cab has Saras and Serenity Ko working together on a new technology that could change the future of food--and both their lives--forever...]]> 453 Lavanya Lakshminarayan 1837862338 Cat 0 to-read 3.54 2024 Interstellar MegaChef (Flavour Hacker, #1)
author: Lavanya Lakshminarayan
name: Cat
average rating: 3.54
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Death at the Sign of the Rook (Jackson Brodie, #6)]]> 203164357 The stage is set. Marooned overnight by a snowstorm in a grand country house are a cast of characters and a setting that even Agatha Christie might recognize � a vicar, an Army major, a Dowager, a sleuth and his sidekick - except that the sleuth is Jackson Brodie, and the ‘sidekick� is DC Reggie Chase.

The crumbling house - Burton Makepeace and its chatelaine the Dowager Lady Milton - suffered the loss of their last remaining painting of any value, a Turner, some years ago. The housekeeper, Sophie, who disappeared the same night, is suspected of stealing it.

Jackson, a reluctant hostage to the snowstorm, has been investigating the theft of another The Woman with a Weasel, a portrait, taken from the house of an elderly widow, on the morning she died. The suspect this time is the widow’s carer, Melanie. Is this a coincidence or is there a connection? And what secrets does The Woman with a Weasel hold? The puzzle is Jackson’s to solve. And let’s not forget that a convicted murderer is on the run on the moors around Burton Makepeace.

All the while, in a bid to make money, Burton Makepeace is determined to keep hosting a shambolic Murder Mystery that acts as a backdrop while the real drama is being played out in the house.

A brilliantly plotted, supremely entertaining, and utterly compulsive tour de force from a great writer at the height of her powers.]]> 320 Kate Atkinson 0385547994 Cat 3
But what Atkinson does so well--and what feels tonally at odds with much of the rest of the book--is psychological portraiture. For me, the best parts of the book were two characters who had suffered life-marring losses. The first is military veteran Ben who lost his leg to an IED and has not recovered from the resulting depression and PTSD. His meditations on his feelings of uselessness and confusion, his tender relationship with his caring sister, and his desire to reconnect with the world are very moving; as in Life After Life, Atkinson writes powerfully about war and its effects on bodies and minds. The second is a vicar who has lost both his faith and his voice; his son died of SIDS, and Simon (the vicar) and his wife had been complaining about what a fussy baby he was. Their marriage falls apart, and so too does Simon's sense of self or ministry. These two characters are vivid and melancholy, so it's a bit odd to find them in this light-hearted romp of a murder mystery fantasy. Perhaps predictably for my English professor self (my students sometimes complain about the grimness of my literary selections), I enjoyed these two best and appreciated (I'll refrain from all but the vaguest spoilers) Atkinson's commitment to their psychological recovery, even if she does put them through some physical rigors all the same.]]> 3.69 2024 Death at the Sign of the Rook (Jackson Brodie, #6)
author: Kate Atkinson
name: Cat
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/09/13
date added: 2024/09/13
shelves:
review:
This was a little silly (deliberately so, I suspect), and yet it was so much fun to read. Atkinson embeds a pair of mysteries, both about art thefts, within a performance of an Agatha-Christie-style murder mystery meant to monetize the Downton-Abbey-like home of a formerly illustrious family. It feels like the three intersecting plots--art thievery, parodic murder mystery, and, late in the game, a dangerous murderer-at-large--are overlaid only schematically, and the threat of the last of these three seems as hollow as the middle one. Atkinson seems truly interested in art theft and the way that it works for money laundering within organized crime, and as her detective Jackson Brodie researches it, she leads us down that (genuinely quite fascinating) rabbit hole as well. The Agatha Christie parody feels a tad unnecessary, and the Waiting-for-Guffman-esque incompetence of the hired players is less funny than it might be.

But what Atkinson does so well--and what feels tonally at odds with much of the rest of the book--is psychological portraiture. For me, the best parts of the book were two characters who had suffered life-marring losses. The first is military veteran Ben who lost his leg to an IED and has not recovered from the resulting depression and PTSD. His meditations on his feelings of uselessness and confusion, his tender relationship with his caring sister, and his desire to reconnect with the world are very moving; as in Life After Life, Atkinson writes powerfully about war and its effects on bodies and minds. The second is a vicar who has lost both his faith and his voice; his son died of SIDS, and Simon (the vicar) and his wife had been complaining about what a fussy baby he was. Their marriage falls apart, and so too does Simon's sense of self or ministry. These two characters are vivid and melancholy, so it's a bit odd to find them in this light-hearted romp of a murder mystery fantasy. Perhaps predictably for my English professor self (my students sometimes complain about the grimness of my literary selections), I enjoyed these two best and appreciated (I'll refrain from all but the vaguest spoilers) Atkinson's commitment to their psychological recovery, even if she does put them through some physical rigors all the same.
]]> The Midnight Feast 199743738 Secrets. Lies. Murder. Let the festivities begin...

It’s the opening night of The Manor, and no expense, small or large, has been spared. The infinity pool sparkles; crystal pouches for guests� healing have been placed in the Seaside Cottages and Woodland Hutches; the “Manor Mule� cocktail (grapefruit, ginger, vodka, and a dash of CBD oil) is being poured with a heavy hand. Everyone is wearing linen.

But under the burning midsummer sun, darkness stirs. Old friends and enemies circulate among the guests. Just outside the Manor’s immaculately kept grounds, an ancient forest bristles with secrets. And the Sunday morning of opening weekend, the local police are called. Something’s not right with the guests. There’s been a fire. A body’s been discovered.

THE FOUNDER * THE HUSBAND * THE MYSTERY GUEST * THE KITCHEN HELP

It all began with a secret, fifteen years ago. Now the past has crashed the party. And it’ll end in murder at� The Midnight Feast.]]> 354 Lucy Foley 0063003104 Cat 4
Through her plotting and characterization, Foley also underlines the operations of class and wealth through sexual violence and the exploitation of women. In the conclusion of the book, she reinforces the idea that solidarity between women and other sources of power than the legal system can stand against this apparently unconquerable front of money and power, embodied by Francesca's "Grandfa" and perhaps also her masculine nickname ("Frankie") that marks her as the inheritor of his patriarchal power.]]> 3.55 2024 The Midnight Feast
author: Lucy Foley
name: Cat
average rating: 3.55
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/09/08
date added: 2024/09/13
shelves:
review:
I enjoyed this book so much! The voice performances in the audiobook were outstanding, particularly the actor who voiced Eddie. Pagan rites and the people's revenge; real estate development and the loss of the commons; poisonous mushrooms and a psychedelic bacchanal--Foley goes over the top in the best possible way to condemn the narcissistic imperviousness of the top 1%. Though the novel is rooted in a British class context, it spoke to my feelings of frustration and fear in the all-too-Trump era. The plot is well set up; the twists surprise; and without spoilers, I will simply say that the baddies get their just desserts. Also, two of the central narrators of the book--Eddie and Bella--are well-drawn and complex, self-questioning and risk-taking. I'm impressed in a mystery that is populated by some caricatures (see: villainous Francesca and her self-help psycho-babbles) that these two feel more finely drawn. Their responses to trauma and loss, their attempts at self-invention and action, speak to the way that youthful experiences reverberate through time and shape a life. They also speak to the contradictions of class identity: Eddie comes from a farming family that's fallen on hard times and begins secretly working at the new hotel; Bella recounts her adolescence visiting the beach here in a camper van and her longing for the luxury and status that Francesca and the manor house represented (in spite of Francesca's coldness and cruelty).

Through her plotting and characterization, Foley also underlines the operations of class and wealth through sexual violence and the exploitation of women. In the conclusion of the book, she reinforces the idea that solidarity between women and other sources of power than the legal system can stand against this apparently unconquerable front of money and power, embodied by Francesca's "Grandfa" and perhaps also her masculine nickname ("Frankie") that marks her as the inheritor of his patriarchal power.
]]> A Sorceress Comes to Call 195790847 A dark retelling of the Brothers Grimm's Goose Girl, rife with secrets, murder, and forbidden magic

Cordelia knows her mother is unusual. Their house doesn’t have any doors between rooms, and her mother doesn't allow Cordelia to have a single friend—unless you count Falada, her mother's beautiful white horse. The only time Cordelia feels truly free is on her daily rides with him. But more than simple eccentricity sets her mother apart. Other mothers don’t force their daughters to be silent and motionless for hours, sometimes days, on end. Other mothers aren’t sorcerers.

After a suspicious death in their small town, Cordelia’s mother insists they leave in the middle of the night, riding away on Falada’s sturdy back, leaving behind all Cordelia has ever known. They arrive at the remote country manor of a wealthy older man, the Squire, and his unwed sister, Hester. Cordelia’s mother intends to lure the Squire into marriage, and Cordelia knows this can only be bad news for the bumbling gentleman and his kind, intelligent sister.

Hester sees the way Cordelia shrinks away from her mother, how the young girl sits eerily still at dinner every night. Hester knows that to save her brother from bewitchment and to rescue the terrified Cordelia, she will have to face down a wicked witch of the worst kind.]]> 327 T. Kingfisher 1250244072 Cat 0 to-read 4.06 2024 A Sorceress Comes to Call
author: T. Kingfisher
name: Cat
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/31
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo]]> 32620332
Monique is not exactly on top of the world. Her husband has left her, and her professional life is going nowhere. Regardless of why Evelyn has selected her to write her biography, Monique is determined to use this opportunity to jumpstart her career.

Summoned to Evelyn’s luxurious apartment, Monique listens in fascination as the actress tells her story. From making her way to Los Angeles in the 1950s to her decision to leave show business in the �80s, and, of course, the seven husbands along the way, Evelyn unspools a tale of ruthless ambition, unexpected friendship, and a great forbidden love. Monique begins to feel a very real connection to the legendary star, but as Evelyn’s story nears its conclusion, it becomes clear that her life intersects with Monique’s own in tragic and irreversible ways.]]> 389 Taylor Jenkins Reid 1501139231 Cat 4
This character-driven novel incorporates celebrity gossip columns designed to mimic the period, which is a lot of fun. (And "the period" stretches from the late 1950s to the present day). As a Hollywood diva aficionado, I also loved that Reid used Hugo's character to address the shapeshifting form of the iconic actress, from the days of studio pictures to the French new wave. Through Marilyn Monroe's career provides a loose corollary (from The Seven Year Itch to The Misfits) for this trajectory from mainstream romantic comedy to gritty '60s cinema, Evelyn Hugo's imaginary career really combines the allure of multiple celebrities and allows the reader to think about the shifting expectations of roles for women--and particularly about how they will display or represent their sexuality--across those decades. Evelyn's discussion of portraying sexual pleasure on screen, for example, in one of her late career roles reminded me very much of Jane Fonda in Coming Home. Reid depicts a major generational shift in the movies and female stardom that tracked with the sexual revolution, and she uses her plot and characters here to indicate that this new sexual frankness was nonetheless burdened with continued homophobia both on screen and in life.

As another reviewer on ŷ noted, I'm not sure we needed all seven husbands, as nice a touch as the nod to Elizabeth Taylor is. But the novel celebrates queerness and found family and revels in Hugo's ruthlessness, even as elements of the weepy (a classic women's movie genre!) soften the ending. Should also say that the plot is very well constructed--some elements i saw coming, others were well set-up, and I still didn't anticipate them. Hence the compulsive readability!]]> 4.39 2017 The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo
author: Taylor Jenkins Reid
name: Cat
average rating: 4.39
book published: 2017
rating: 4
read at: 2024/08/21
date added: 2024/08/27
shelves:
review:
This novel was compulsively readable. My daughter recommended it, and I'm so glad that she did. It is fairly didactic and intended for a wide audience, so there are some very intentional teacherly moments in it (like a direct definition of "bisexuality"). But since its hint of preachiness is counterbalanced by its gossipy tone and plot structure, as well as by the compelling romance at its heart, I could live with those occasional moments of ethical exposition, especially given that its self-interested protagonist Evelyn Hugo is an anti-hero who could make Taylor Swift proud.

This character-driven novel incorporates celebrity gossip columns designed to mimic the period, which is a lot of fun. (And "the period" stretches from the late 1950s to the present day). As a Hollywood diva aficionado, I also loved that Reid used Hugo's character to address the shapeshifting form of the iconic actress, from the days of studio pictures to the French new wave. Through Marilyn Monroe's career provides a loose corollary (from The Seven Year Itch to The Misfits) for this trajectory from mainstream romantic comedy to gritty '60s cinema, Evelyn Hugo's imaginary career really combines the allure of multiple celebrities and allows the reader to think about the shifting expectations of roles for women--and particularly about how they will display or represent their sexuality--across those decades. Evelyn's discussion of portraying sexual pleasure on screen, for example, in one of her late career roles reminded me very much of Jane Fonda in Coming Home. Reid depicts a major generational shift in the movies and female stardom that tracked with the sexual revolution, and she uses her plot and characters here to indicate that this new sexual frankness was nonetheless burdened with continued homophobia both on screen and in life.

As another reviewer on ŷ noted, I'm not sure we needed all seven husbands, as nice a touch as the nod to Elizabeth Taylor is. But the novel celebrates queerness and found family and revels in Hugo's ruthlessness, even as elements of the weepy (a classic women's movie genre!) soften the ending. Should also say that the plot is very well constructed--some elements i saw coming, others were well set-up, and I still didn't anticipate them. Hence the compulsive readability!
]]> Ordinary Love 214503905 THERE'S NO SUCH THING AS AN ORDINARY LOVE STORY

'Almost unbearably beautiful. Ordinary Love is extraordinary' Emilia Hart, bestselling author of Weyward

'Profoundly moving' Emily St. John Mandel, bestselling author of Station Eleven

When Emily catches sight of Gennifer Hall at a party, she is transported back to the moment they fell in love as teenagers. Their connection was electric, and they thought it was forever.

Twenty years later, Gen is an Olympic runner, the career she strived for, while Emily is living a picture-perfect Manhattan townhouse, two young children and a wealthy husband, Jack. But Jack's controlling behaviour is spiralling, and Emily has lost sight of who she once was.

Now, despite Emily's fracturing marriage and the pressures of Gen's career, they are drawn back together by a magnetic attraction. After years of heartbreak, missed chances and misunderstandings, will they finally get a second chance at first love?]]> 0 Marie Rutkoski 034914687X Cat 0 to-read 4.15 2025 Ordinary Love
author: Marie Rutkoski
name: Cat
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/24
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Light Eaters: How the Unseen World of Plant Intelligence Offers a New Understanding of Life on Earth]]> 196774338
The Light Eaters is a deep immersion into the drama of green life and the complexity of this wild and awe-inspiring world that challenges our very understanding of agency, consciousness, and intelligence. In looking closely, we see that plants, rather than imitate human intelligence, have perhaps formed a parallel system. What is intelligent life if not a vine that grows leaves to blend into the shrub on which it climbs, a flower that shapes its bloom to fit exactly the beak of its pollinator, a pea seedling that can hear water flowing and make its way toward it? Zoë Schlanger takes us across the globe, digging into her own memories and into the soil with the scientists who have spent their waking days studying these amazing entities up close.

What can we learn about life on Earth from the living things that thrive, adapt, consume, and accommodate simultaneously? More important, what do we owe these life forms once we come to understand their rich and varied abilities? Examining the latest epiphanies in botanical research, Schlanger spotlights the intellectual struggles among the researchers conceiving a wholly new view of their subject, offering a glimpse of a field in turmoil as plant scientists debate the tenets of ongoing discoveries and how they influence our understanding of what a plant is.

We need plants to survive. But what do they need us for—if at all? An eye-opening and informative look at the ecosystem we live in, this book challenges us to rethink the role of plants—and our own place—in the natural world.]]> 304 Zoë Schlanger 0063073854 Cat 5
To give a sense of what's so brilliant and nuanced (and funny!) in Schlanger's prose, perhaps my favorite moment in the book is when Schlanger criticizes the scientific convention of calling plants caring for their offspring "maternal" care. She points out that the fact that the plants can shift between sexual roles in reproduction makes them more like the characters in Ursula Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness and would make "parental" care a more apt designation. Quickly and elegantly, Schlanger not only explains a scientific concept (plant reproduction); she also debunks the cis-hetero politics of scientific description; and she points her reader to a brilliant ecological storyteller who in turn advanced a more fluid and culturally contingent view of gender:

"Parental care" might be a more accurate moniker, unless you are willing to take a more nuanced view of the fluidity of plant sexuality; indeed, when the plant is dealing with its own fertilized ovule, one could say it is busying itself with the maternal part of its life phase. I like to imagine bisexual plants as something like the androgynous beings from Ursula K. Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness, who are capable of both siring and gestating children at turns, being a mother in some instances and a father in other. They quite pity the human visitor who can only do one. (Schlanger 216)

I was moved too by Schlanger's framing of plant science as her antidote to climate change despair--not that the former can remedy the latter, but rather than the revolution in our understanding of the former could give us a new way in to imagining our entangled relationship with the world around us. ]]> 4.28 2024 The Light Eaters: How the Unseen World of Plant Intelligence Offers a New Understanding of Life on Earth
author: Zoë Schlanger
name: Cat
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/08/18
date added: 2024/08/20
shelves:
review:
I loved this book. It was so well-organized around the ways that scientists are coming to understand plant agency and intelligence: their pheromonal communications; their ability to hear predators; their cooperation with kin; their capacity for mimicry, which might suggest a capacity similar to vision that is connected to the multiple eye-like structures in their surface sells, or which could betoken collaboration with bacteria. Schlanger really understands what is at stake here in understanding the whole plant body as a system that processes and responds to external stimuli and in granting that system the kind of respect more characteristic of Indigenous cultures than Western hierarchies of being. Her geeky enthusiasm is infectious, while her smart, stylish writing helps to make competing theories of plant consciousness clear--as well as the hesitation in the scientific community about using language that would anthropomorphize plants. Schlanger also understands the range of sources that are needed to tell this story, from interviews with working botanists to published studies to philosophies of science to theories of agential matter and ecological personhood (Jane Bennett, Donna Haraway, and others). It's an accomplished book that advocates for the importance of a paradigm shift from the inert way that many have imagined plants.

To give a sense of what's so brilliant and nuanced (and funny!) in Schlanger's prose, perhaps my favorite moment in the book is when Schlanger criticizes the scientific convention of calling plants caring for their offspring "maternal" care. She points out that the fact that the plants can shift between sexual roles in reproduction makes them more like the characters in Ursula Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness and would make "parental" care a more apt designation. Quickly and elegantly, Schlanger not only explains a scientific concept (plant reproduction); she also debunks the cis-hetero politics of scientific description; and she points her reader to a brilliant ecological storyteller who in turn advanced a more fluid and culturally contingent view of gender:

"Parental care" might be a more accurate moniker, unless you are willing to take a more nuanced view of the fluidity of plant sexuality; indeed, when the plant is dealing with its own fertilized ovule, one could say it is busying itself with the maternal part of its life phase. I like to imagine bisexual plants as something like the androgynous beings from Ursula K. Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness, who are capable of both siring and gestating children at turns, being a mother in some instances and a father in other. They quite pity the human visitor who can only do one. (Schlanger 216)

I was moved too by Schlanger's framing of plant science as her antidote to climate change despair--not that the former can remedy the latter, but rather than the revolution in our understanding of the former could give us a new way in to imagining our entangled relationship with the world around us.
]]> <![CDATA[Group Living and Other Recipes: A Memoir]]> 177772457 A spirited and timely exploration of group living that encourages readers to reconsider the meaning of family and home.


Lola Milholland grew up in the nineties, the child of iconoclastic hippies. Her mom—energetic and intense at work and at play, whether at her job marketing for an agricultural co-op or paddling down a river, fat spliff in hand—had spent her life revolting against the strictures of her American and Filipino upbringing. Her dad, a child of the eastern Oregon desert, was a jovial documentary filmmaker and historian who loved to collect ephemera. Both threw open the doors of the Holman House, their rambling home in Portland, Oregon, to long-term visitors and unusual guests in need of a place to stay. Years later, after college and after her parents� separation, Milholland returned home. There, she joined her brother and his housemates—an eccentric group of stop-motion animators and accomplished cooks—in choosing to further the experiment of communal living into a new generation.


Group Living and Other Recipes tells the story of the residents of the Holman House—of transcendent meals and ecstatic parties, of colorful characters coming together in moments of deep tenderness and inevitable irritation, of a shared life that is appealing, humorous, confounding, and, just maybe, utopian—with a wider exploration of group living as a way of life. From spending time at her aunt and uncle’s intentional community in Washington State to finding her footing as a student in Japan in the kitchen with her host family to mushroom hunting in the forests of the Pacific Northwest, Milholland offers an expansive and vibrant reevaluation of the structures at the very center of our lives.


Thoughtful, quirky, candid, and wise, Group Living and Other Recipes introduces a gifted memoirist and thinker, making a convincing case that �now is always the right time to reimagine home and family.�

]]> 320 Lola Milholland 1954118570 Cat 0 to-read 3.66 2024 Group Living and Other Recipes: A Memoir
author: Lola Milholland
name: Cat
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Word for World is Forest (Hainish Cycle, #5)]]> 8580931
Desperation causes the Athsheans, led by Selver, to retaliate against their captors, abandoning their strictures against violence. But in defending their lives, they have endangered the very foundations of their society. For every blow against the invaders is a blow to the humanity of the Athsheans. And once the killing starts, there is no turning back.

This is the 1972 novella that first appeared in the "Again, Dangerous Visions" anthology. (An expanded novel version also exists.)]]> 189 Ursula K. Le Guin Cat 3 4.21 1972 The Word for World is Forest (Hainish Cycle, #5)
author: Ursula K. Le Guin
name: Cat
average rating: 4.21
book published: 1972
rating: 3
read at: 2024/08/15
date added: 2024/08/16
shelves:
review:
This is not my favorite Le Guin; it is very on-the-nose, less exploratory and descriptive than some of her work. Colonel Bradford, the military man who shamelessly justifies the horrifying exploits of the Terran colonists, reads as a mustache-twirling villain, though to give Le Guin her brilliant due, the men advocating violence, dispossession, and racism in public life right now are not at all subtle either. It packs a punch, though as an environmental allegory about settler-colonialism and racism, and I am eager to teach it in my fall US literature and ecology course. Le Guin riffs on the reverberations of colonial violence in the Vietnam War, particularly in depicting death and destruction by fire (which recalls napalm); she celebrates Indigenous epistemologies (the "Dreamtime" of Selver and his fellow Athsheans) and social structures; and she connects language (see the title) with the devaluation of human and non-human life (the Terrans justify enslaving and killing the Athsheans by calling them "creechies," a slur that seems to be drawn from "creature"). I can't wait to discuss this with my students. The novel both advocates anti-colonial resistance and mourns the influence of imperialism on Indigenous cultures.
]]> <![CDATA[The Forest: A Fable of America in the 1830s (Bollingen Series)]]> 61686210
“One of the richest books ever to come my way.”―Annie Proulx, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Shipping News

“This is a wonderful book. . . . An extraordinary achievement.”―Edmund de Waal, New York Times bestselling author of The Hare with Amber Eyes

Set amid the glimmering lakes and disappearing forests of the early United States, The Forest imagines how a wide variety of Americans experienced their lives. Part truth, part fiction, and featuring both real and invented characters, the book follows painters, poets, enslaved people, farmers, and artisans living and working in a world still made largely of wood. Some of the historical characters―such as Thomas Cole, Margaret Fuller, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Fanny Kemble, Edgar Allan Poe, and Nat Turner―are well-known, while others are not. But all are creators of private and grand designs.

The Forest unfolds in brief stories. Each episode reveals an intricate lost world. Characters cross paths or go their own ways, each striving for something different but together forming a pattern of life. For Alexander Nemerov, the forest is a description of American society, the dense and discontinuous woods of nation, the foliating thoughts of different people, each with their separate shade and sun. Through vivid descriptions of the people, sights, smells, and sounds of Jacksonian America, illustrated with paintings, prints, and photographs, The Forest brings American history to life on a human scale.

Published in association with the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC]]> 336 Alexander Nemerov 0691244286 Cat 2 3.62 2023 The Forest: A Fable of America in the 1830s (Bollingen Series)
author: Alexander Nemerov
name: Cat
average rating: 3.62
book published: 2023
rating: 2
read at: 2024/08/15
date added: 2024/08/16
shelves:
review:
I loved the concept of this book, weaving together art, literature, historical incident, and life writing from the 1830s in order to capture this moment as America begins to "modernize" (in terms of industry and deforestation) and also to enter into a period of artistic and literary ferment. These economic and cultural processes are deeply entangled with the idea of the New World as a wooded continent. While the vignettes that make up this book suggest Nemerov's likely power as a lecturer--his ability to set up a suggestive scene for his students and to help them imagine another historical moment and its geographical terrain in order to elicit particular response from an image--they fell short for me. Because the language is meant to be lyrical, suggestive, even prophetic at times, it sometimes reads as purple prose. It's very interesting to look at the notes after reading these very dream-like anecdotes. This novelistic form is meant to weave together various strands into what feels like a chiaroscuro whole, but for me, it never quite came together in that way, and the ambiguity and brevity became frustrating rather than elucidating across the volume.
]]> <![CDATA[The Country of the Pointed Firs and Other Stories]]> 174198 232 Sarah Orne Jewett 0451527577 Cat 4 Winesburg, Ohio, connecting rural communities, thwarted lives, and intimate reading--as the narrator and the reader seem to see the signs of desire gone astray or dreams deferred that other townspeople don't, it is much less obviously character-driven than the tales in Winesburg, Ohio. If Anderson gives us portraits, Jewett provides landscape paintings, which, while still peopled, give a rocky coast and a turbulent sea that cannot be reduced to metaphorical renderings of psychology. The chapters or stories compiled in this book about rural Maine don't detail much plot; in fact, they read like a travelogue from the perspective of a summer visitor. But Jewett constantly compares the people in her stories to their environments and to their non-human neighbors, and she refuses any easy or obvious diagnosis of why they are how they are or judgment, as it feels like their particularly adaptedness to this place, even when it's colored by grief and sorrow, also makes them somehow remarkable or admirable to the protagonist and narrator. I'm looking forward to reading again more slowly and to what my students make of it when so little "happens."]]> 3.88 1910 The Country of the Pointed Firs and Other Stories
author: Sarah Orne Jewett
name: Cat
average rating: 3.88
book published: 1910
rating: 4
read at: 2024/08/10
date added: 2024/08/16
shelves:
review:
I'm teaching this book in my fall course on US literature and ecology. I assigned it because I read intriguing scholarship about it, particularly Sarah Ensor's article about "Spinster Ecology," but I had never read it before. I look forward (or do I?) to how the students respond to it because while in many ways it anticipates what Sherwood Anderson accomplishes in Winesburg, Ohio, connecting rural communities, thwarted lives, and intimate reading--as the narrator and the reader seem to see the signs of desire gone astray or dreams deferred that other townspeople don't, it is much less obviously character-driven than the tales in Winesburg, Ohio. If Anderson gives us portraits, Jewett provides landscape paintings, which, while still peopled, give a rocky coast and a turbulent sea that cannot be reduced to metaphorical renderings of psychology. The chapters or stories compiled in this book about rural Maine don't detail much plot; in fact, they read like a travelogue from the perspective of a summer visitor. But Jewett constantly compares the people in her stories to their environments and to their non-human neighbors, and she refuses any easy or obvious diagnosis of why they are how they are or judgment, as it feels like their particularly adaptedness to this place, even when it's colored by grief and sorrow, also makes them somehow remarkable or admirable to the protagonist and narrator. I'm looking forward to reading again more slowly and to what my students make of it when so little "happens."
]]> <![CDATA[Slow Noodles: A Cambodian Memoir of Love, Loss, and Family Recipes]]> 173404032 Slow Noodles will resonate with readers who loved the food and emotional truth of Michelle Zauner'sCrying in H Mart, and it has the staying power of Loung Ung's First They Killed My Father.

Take a well-fed nine-year-old with a big family and a fancy education. Fold in 2 revolutions, 2 civil wars, and one wholesale extermination. Subtract a reliable source of food, life savings, and family members, until all are gone. Shave down childhood dreams for approximately two decades, until only subsistence remains.

In Slow Noodles, Chantha Nguon recounts her life as a Cambodia refugee who lost everything and everyone—her house, her country, her parents, her siblings, her friends—everything but the memories of her mother’s kitchen, the tastes and aromas of the foods her mother made before the dictator Pol Pot tore her country apart in the 1970s, killing millions of her compatriots. Nguon’s irrepressible spirit and determination come through in this emotional and poignantbut also lyrical and magical memoir that includes over 20 recipes for Khmer dishes like chicken lime soup, banh sung noodles, pâté de foie, curries, spring rolls, and stir-fries. For Nguon, recreating these dishes becomes an act of resistance, of reclaiming her place in the world, of upholding the values the Khmer Rouge sought to destroy, and of honoring the memory of her beloved mother.

From her idyllic early years in Battambang to hiding as a young girl in Phnom Penh as the country purges ethnic Vietnamese like Nguon and her family, from her escape to Saigon to the deaths of mother and sister there, from the poverty and devastation she experiences in a war-ravaged Vietnam to her decision to flee the country. We follow Chantha on a harrowing river crossing into Thailand—part of the exodus that gave rise to the name “boat people”—and her decades in a refugee camp there, until finally, denied passage to the West, she returns to a forever changed Cambodia. Nguon survives by cooking in a brothel, serving drinks in a nightclub, making and selling street food, becoming a suture-nurse treating refugees abused by Thai authorities, and weaving silk. Through it all, Nguonrelies on her mother’s “slow noodles� approach to healing and to cooking, one that prioritizes time and care over expediency.Haunting and evocative, Slow Noodles is a testament to the power of culinary heritage to spark the rebirth of a young woman’s hopes for a beautiful life.ձ> 304 Chantha Nguon 1643753495 Cat 0 to-read 4.33 2024 Slow Noodles: A Cambodian Memoir of Love, Loss, and Family Recipes
author: Chantha Nguon
name: Cat
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/12
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[My Beloved Monster: Masha, the Half-wild Rescue Cat Who Rescued Me]]> 155685403
Caleb Carr has had special relationships with cats since he was a young boy in a turbulent household, famously peopled by the founding members of the Beat Generation, where his steadiest companions were the adopted cats that lived with him both in the city and the country. As an adult, he has had many close feline companions, with relationships that have outlasted most of his human ones. But only after building a three-story home in rural, upstate New York did he enter into the most extraordinary of all of his cat Masha, a Siberian Forest cat who had been abandoned as a kitten, and was languishing in a shelter when Caleb met her. She had hissed and fought off all previous carers and potential adopters, but somehow, she chose Caleb as her savior.

For the seventeen years that followed, Caleb and Masha were inseparable. Masha ruled the house and the extensive, dangerous surrounding fields and forests. When she was hurt, only Caleb could help her. When he suffered long-standing physical ailments, Masha knew what to do. Caleb’s life-long study of the literature of cat behavior, and his years of experience with previous cats, helped him decode much of Masha’s inner life. But their bond went far beyond academic studies and experience. The story of Caleb and Masha is an inspiring and life-affirming relationship for readers of all backgrounds and interests—a love story like no other.
ձ> 344 Caleb Carr 0316503606 Cat 5
The memoir is structured so brilliantly around risks, dread, and danger; often the chapters end with the anticipation of new struggles that Masha (the Siberian cat of the title) and Carr will face together. This plotting and structure is so impressive, introducing the pleasures of suspense to memoir, which often feels like a more static, portrait-based genre (but not in this case!). You get a rich sense of setting--Carr's rambling house in upstate New York and its forested surroundings--and an even richer sense of the cat's character and Carr's devotion to her. Carr's language brilliantly captures cat moods, postures, reactions, and desires.

The book is also about pain, chronic illness, and disability and the way that pain, degeneration, and mortality traverse human and non-human experiences. In the hitch in a cat's step or Carr's abdominal spasms, this pairs sees vulnerability in one another that they don't--for the most part--share with other people, and they watch out for and comfort one another, even in the most harrowing of circumstances (and they get pretty harrowing!). Carr and Masha see one another through the legacies of abuse, traces of trauma in the body; medical interventions; and the necessity of letting go.

Masha is the most important being in Carr's life, and his passion for cats extends to the spiritual plane; he ends the book hoping for their eventual reunion (and when I finished reading, tears pouring down my face, my husband told me that indeed Carr died in May). This is a book about vulnerability and scarring but also about interspecies devotion and the joy of sharing space and time with a beloved, the delight of intimate knowledge and quotidian coexistence.

So beautifully written and deeply felt without ever feeling maudlin or contrived. An intensely lonely human who finds his life transfigured by a marvelously wild cat.]]> 4.11 2024 My Beloved Monster: Masha, the Half-wild Rescue Cat Who Rescued Me
author: Caleb Carr
name: Cat
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/08/06
date added: 2024/08/06
shelves:
review:
I cannot sufficiently express how much I loved this book. It is a tough read in many ways. Carr's experiences of childhood abuse--and his ongoing and intense health problems as a result--are grim, as are the tales of cat suffering and loss that intersect with those familial stories. Carr is not a sentimentalist; he is fiercely attuned to the particularity of feline expression, embodiment, and senses. And his deep love for Masha comes through in his eccentric habits (battling the cat playfully and bearing the scratches to show it); his precise observations; and their shared head butts, slow blinks, and snuggles in the middle of nights spent in pain and uncertainty.

The memoir is structured so brilliantly around risks, dread, and danger; often the chapters end with the anticipation of new struggles that Masha (the Siberian cat of the title) and Carr will face together. This plotting and structure is so impressive, introducing the pleasures of suspense to memoir, which often feels like a more static, portrait-based genre (but not in this case!). You get a rich sense of setting--Carr's rambling house in upstate New York and its forested surroundings--and an even richer sense of the cat's character and Carr's devotion to her. Carr's language brilliantly captures cat moods, postures, reactions, and desires.

The book is also about pain, chronic illness, and disability and the way that pain, degeneration, and mortality traverse human and non-human experiences. In the hitch in a cat's step or Carr's abdominal spasms, this pairs sees vulnerability in one another that they don't--for the most part--share with other people, and they watch out for and comfort one another, even in the most harrowing of circumstances (and they get pretty harrowing!). Carr and Masha see one another through the legacies of abuse, traces of trauma in the body; medical interventions; and the necessity of letting go.

Masha is the most important being in Carr's life, and his passion for cats extends to the spiritual plane; he ends the book hoping for their eventual reunion (and when I finished reading, tears pouring down my face, my husband told me that indeed Carr died in May). This is a book about vulnerability and scarring but also about interspecies devotion and the joy of sharing space and time with a beloved, the delight of intimate knowledge and quotidian coexistence.

So beautifully written and deeply felt without ever feeling maudlin or contrived. An intensely lonely human who finds his life transfigured by a marvelously wild cat.
]]> <![CDATA[Run Towards the Danger: Confrontations with a Body of Memory]]> 58284103 Run Towards the Danger explores memory and the dialogue between her past and her present

These are the most dangerous stories of my life. The ones I have avoided, the ones I haven't told, the ones that have kept me awake on countless nights. As these stories found echoes in my adult life, and then went another, better way than they did in childhood, they became lighter and easier to carry.

Sarah Polley's work as an actor, screenwriter, and director is celebrated for its honesty, complexity, and deep humanity. She brings all those qualities, along with her exquisite storytelling chops, to these six essays. Each one captures a piece of Polley's life as she remembers it, while at the same time examining the fallibility of memory, the mutability of reality in the mind, and the possibility of experiencing the past anew, as the person she is now but was not then. As Polley writes, the past and present are in a "reciprocal pressure dance."

Polley contemplates stories from her own life ranging from stage fright to high-risk childbirth to endangerment and more. After struggling with the aftermath of a concussion, Polley met a specialist who gave her wholly new advice: to recover from a traumatic injury, she had to retrain her mind to strength by charging towards the very activities that triggered her symptoms. With riveting clarity, she shows the power of applying that same advice to other areas of her life in order to find a path forward, a way through. Rather than live in a protective crouch, she had to run towards the danger.

In this extraordinary book, Polley explores what it is to live in one's body, in a constant state of becoming, learning, and changing.]]> 272 Sarah Polley 0593300351 Cat 5 Adventures of Baron Munchhausen; and finally, her struggle with post-concussive syndrome, which leads to the title of this book, based on her doctor's instructions about how to get over debilitating migraines and sensory overwhelm.

The chapters are both very hard to read and also brilliantly put together--as literary essays as well as feminist forays into memory, testimony, body, and recovery. Polley is unsparing of herself and generous to others. She is careful in her language and rigorous in her questions. Shamefacedly, I must admit that I was a fan of her as a child actor in Avonlea (she repeatedly mocks the wholesome girls who consumed the saccharine Disney show that she so loathed working on). I think she is such a powerful filmmaker (especially The Stories We Tell) and will never recover from her performance in The Sweet Hereafter. It's just incredible to me what a multi-talented woman she is--add brilliant essayist to that list. I'm eager to see her adaptation of Miriam Toew's Women Talking, and I admire Polley's description of her own commitment to a livable and supportive movie set after her own horrible childhood experiences.

In recent years, feminist scholarship has embraced the corporeal, so often glossed over in the high theory years when discourse was all, and Polley's memoir resonates with that work as well as with recent accounts of trauma like The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma. A powerful and brave book--both disturbing and inspiring, both intensely personal and intellectually rigorous. ]]> 4.29 2022 Run Towards the Danger: Confrontations with a Body of Memory
author: Sarah Polley
name: Cat
average rating: 4.29
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2024/07/31
date added: 2024/08/03
shelves:
review:
This is a gutting book, brilliantly written. I am blown away by Polley whose wry wit and elegant syntax do nothing to lessen the explosive impact of her clear-eyed account of patriarchy, exploitation, misogyny, trauma, and embodiment. Each of the chapters of this memoir concerns a traumatic experience from Polley's life, each rooted in the physicality of the body, each connected to broader power structures that privilege not only the agency but also the narrative authority of men. In one chapter, Polley writes about her neglectful father (who sexualizes and prematurely adultifies her), her scoliosis, and her stagefright; in another, of her repressed memories of sexual assault; in a third, her experiences with childbirth and placenta previa; another, her frightening, dangerous, and disablin experiences in Terry Gilliam's Adventures of Baron Munchhausen; and finally, her struggle with post-concussive syndrome, which leads to the title of this book, based on her doctor's instructions about how to get over debilitating migraines and sensory overwhelm.

The chapters are both very hard to read and also brilliantly put together--as literary essays as well as feminist forays into memory, testimony, body, and recovery. Polley is unsparing of herself and generous to others. She is careful in her language and rigorous in her questions. Shamefacedly, I must admit that I was a fan of her as a child actor in Avonlea (she repeatedly mocks the wholesome girls who consumed the saccharine Disney show that she so loathed working on). I think she is such a powerful filmmaker (especially The Stories We Tell) and will never recover from her performance in The Sweet Hereafter. It's just incredible to me what a multi-talented woman she is--add brilliant essayist to that list. I'm eager to see her adaptation of Miriam Toew's Women Talking, and I admire Polley's description of her own commitment to a livable and supportive movie set after her own horrible childhood experiences.

In recent years, feminist scholarship has embraced the corporeal, so often glossed over in the high theory years when discourse was all, and Polley's memoir resonates with that work as well as with recent accounts of trauma like The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma. A powerful and brave book--both disturbing and inspiring, both intensely personal and intellectually rigorous.
]]> <![CDATA[The Priory of the Orange Tree (The Roots of Chaos, #1)]]> 40275288
The House of Berethnet has ruled Inys for a thousand years. Still unwed, Queen Sabran the Ninth must conceive a daughter to protect her realm from destruction � but assassins are getting closer to her door.

Ead Duryan is an outsider at court. Though she has risen to the position of lady-in-waiting, she is loyal to a hidden society of mages. Ead keeps a watchful eye on Sabran, secretly protecting her with forbidden magic.

Across the dark sea, Tané has trained to be a dragonrider since she was a child, but is forced to make a choice that could see her life unravel.

Meanwhile, the divided East and West refuse to parley, and forces of chaos are rising from their sleep.]]> 845 Samantha Shannon 1408883457 Cat 0 to-read 4.18 2019 The Priory of the Orange Tree (The Roots of Chaos, #1)
author: Samantha Shannon
name: Cat
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Elf Dog and Owl Head 62341474 A magical adventure about a boy and his dog—or a dog and her boy—and a forest of wonders hidden in plain sight.

Clay has had his fill of home life. A global plague has brought the world to a screeching halt, and with little to look forward to but a summer of video-calling friends, vying with annoying sisters for the family computer, and tuning out his parents� financial worries, he’s only too happy to retreat to the woods. From the moment the elegant little dog with the ornate collar appears like an apparition among the trees, Clay sees something uncanny in her. With this mysterious Elphinore as guide, he’ll glimpse ancient secrets folded all but invisibly into the forest. Each day the dog leads Clay down paths he never knew existed, deeper into the unknown. But they aren’t alone in their surreal adventures. There are traps and terrors in the woods, too, and if Clay isn’t careful, he might stray off the path and lose his way forever.]]> 240 M.T. Anderson 153622281X Cat 5
Anderson spent the pandemic in the company of his dog (), and she died soon thereafter. In the ending to this book, there is an elegiac note to the prose (even though it ends with a sense of ongoingness) that captures the grief of feeling that our animal companions are only lent to us for a brief time and may return to the land of fairy at any moment. The blend of fantasy elements (an owl-human hybrid, the dangerous kingdom of the elves and their hunt) with emotional truths lends both a rollicking sense of adventure and psychological poignancy to this in my view perfect book.]]> 3.87 2023 Elf Dog and Owl Head
author: M.T. Anderson
name: Cat
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2023/04/20
date added: 2024/08/03
shelves:
review:
I can't believe I didn't review this when it came out, and I devoured it in two days! This book is a gorgeous testimony to interspecies friendship and the particular magic that happens when you find a canine companion. This is the best pandemic book that I have read. The descriptions of Elphinore, the titular elf dog, capture her grace, receptivity, and drive to explore--all of the characteristics that make her company a welcome refuge for Clay who feels lonely and out of place in pandemic lockdown with his family.

Anderson spent the pandemic in the company of his dog (), and she died soon thereafter. In the ending to this book, there is an elegiac note to the prose (even though it ends with a sense of ongoingness) that captures the grief of feeling that our animal companions are only lent to us for a brief time and may return to the land of fairy at any moment. The blend of fantasy elements (an owl-human hybrid, the dangerous kingdom of the elves and their hunt) with emotional truths lends both a rollicking sense of adventure and psychological poignancy to this in my view perfect book.
]]> The Deep 42201962 Yetu holds the memories for her people.

Her people, the wajinru � water-dwelling descendants of pregnant African slave women thrown overboard by slavers � live idyllic lives in the deep. Their past, too traumatic to be remembered regularly, is forgotten by everyone, save one. Save the historian.

Yetu remembers for all the wajinru, and the memories � painful and wonderful, traumatic and terrible and miraculous, are destroying her. And so she flees to the surface, escaping the memories and the expectations and the responsibilities � and discovers a world the wajinru left behind long ago.

Yetu will learn more than she ever expected to about her own past � and about the future of her people. If they are all to survive, they’ll need to reclaim the memories, reclaim their identities � and own who they really are.

Inspired by the hit song by clipping. (comprised of Daveed Diggs, William Hutson, and Jonathan Snipes), The Deep will resonate long after the last page is turned.]]> 166 Rivers Solomon 1534439862 Cat 3
I both admire what this novel intends to achieve, and it was also somewhat literal for my taste. I came to it I think expecting something more like Alexis Pauline Gumbs's lyrical work in Black speculative fiction and theory or Nourbese Philip's Zong!. Because this novel was not as experimental or formally ambitious as those two, it foiled my expectations and felt a little bit flat as a result. I wonder if I had had a more realistic view of its genre and tone before diving in (as it were) if I would have appreciated it more.]]> 3.78 2019 The Deep
author: Rivers Solomon
name: Cat
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2019
rating: 3
read at: 2024/07/25
date added: 2024/08/03
shelves:
review:
I think that perhaps if I had listened to the musical inspirations for this book before reading it, I would have gotten more out of it. The fantasy concept is a powerful evocation of the terrible losses of the Middle Passage; the burden of intergenerational trauma; and the transformational power of Black survival. The concept is that pregnant Black women, thrown overboard from slave ships, give birth to infants who become fish-like hybrids, accustomed to the deep. Only one member of this Black piscine society remembers their horrifying history. The protagonist of this novel, Yetu, wants to flee her role, carrying that history for everyone else, and she leaves the rest of her people floundering in their memories in a telepathic rite when she briefly shares those memories with them. The novel is very suggestive: Solomon connects Yetu's plight with settler colonialism elsewhere; she meets a tattooed girl whose people were exterminated. The justified anger of the marine people leads to roiling storms and unsettled seas; Solomon thus connects our own age of climate change with the historical roots of the slave trade and plantation agriculture.

I both admire what this novel intends to achieve, and it was also somewhat literal for my taste. I came to it I think expecting something more like Alexis Pauline Gumbs's lyrical work in Black speculative fiction and theory or Nourbese Philip's Zong!. Because this novel was not as experimental or formally ambitious as those two, it foiled my expectations and felt a little bit flat as a result. I wonder if I had had a more realistic view of its genre and tone before diving in (as it were) if I would have appreciated it more.
]]> Nicked 200555176
"Miracles, marvels, saints, sinners, love, plague, and treachery! M. T. Anderson has laid out a medieval feast of a novel, stuffed with everything I could have wished for. If I could canonize him for it, I would. But I’ll settle for shouting about how much I love this book."—Kelly Link, author of The Book of Love

"M. T. Anderson is one of our greatest and most precious voices. His books aren't just brilliantly witty and vastly entertaining, they're fixed stars of wisdom and sanity in our increasingly unhinged universe. When lost, I use them to steer by."—Lev Grossman, author of The Magicians Trilogy

The year is 1087, and a pox is sweeping through the Italian city of Bari. When a lowly monk is visited by Saint Nicholas in his dreams, he interprets the vision as a call to serve the sick. But his superiors, and the power brokers they serve, have different plans for the tender-hearted Brother Nicephorus.

Enter Tyun, a charismatic treasure hunter renowned for “liberating� holy relics from their tombs. The seven-hundred-year-old bones of Saint Nicholas are rumored to weep a mysterious liquid that can heal the sick, Tyun says. For the humble price of a small fortune, he will steal the bones and deliver them to Bari, curing the plague and restoring glory to the fallen city. And Nicephorus, the “dreamer,� will be his guide.

What follows is a heist for the ages, as Nicephorus is swept away on strange tides, and alongside even stranger bedfellows, to commit sacrilegious theft. Based on real historical accounts, Nicked is a swashbuckling saga, a medieval novel noir, a meditation on the miraculous, and a monastic meet-cute, filled with wide-eyed wonder at the world that awaits beyond our own borders.]]> 223 M.T. Anderson 0593701607 Cat 4
Anderson is a deft prose stylist, and he interweaves the legends of St. Nicholas with the story of a monk who dreams of the saint and then gets dragooned into a mission to steal his body, along with an unscrupulous thief who makes a living repatriating the supposed bodies of saints for a hefty reward. The narration is complex (without ever being unclear) and accomplished, as Anderson subtly renders contemporary perspectives, reminding us of his role as storyteller, in medieval/prophetic style, but he also shapes the unimaginable world of medieval history by treating their beliefs as true--most prominently in making a "dog man" a main character in the book and never questioning that he is physically a humanoid dog (or a canine human?). There is a lot of grief threaded through the madcap hijinks; one man on the expedition recalls the violent loss of his beloved horse, his one true companion, in a battle with the Turks.

The true accomplishment of the novel, in my view, is the conclusion, which deals with faith and betrayal, embodiment and spirit, idealism and experience. These passages are stunningly written and deal, not with the transfiguring power of religion but rather the sustaining (if fleeting) power of intimacy. I've never read anything quite like this book, and while there were sections in the middle that flagged--or at least meandered--for me, in spite of its relatively short length, that originality bears out Anderson's brilliance and versatility as a writer. (Also, the pun in the title is perfection.)]]> 3.67 2024 Nicked
author: M.T. Anderson
name: Cat
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/08/01
date added: 2024/08/03
shelves:
review:
M. T. Anderson is one of my favorite authors, so when his first novel for adults was announced, I eagerly placed it on my to-read list, and I was not disappointed. This novel is a bizarre (in a good way) medieval heist and queer love story, riffing on historical records of an attempt to kidnap the corpse of St. Nicholas and repatriate him to another city beset by pestilence. (Sidenote: my family was watching the Decameron on Netflix while I was reading this novel, so my cultural intake was all Black Death!)

Anderson is a deft prose stylist, and he interweaves the legends of St. Nicholas with the story of a monk who dreams of the saint and then gets dragooned into a mission to steal his body, along with an unscrupulous thief who makes a living repatriating the supposed bodies of saints for a hefty reward. The narration is complex (without ever being unclear) and accomplished, as Anderson subtly renders contemporary perspectives, reminding us of his role as storyteller, in medieval/prophetic style, but he also shapes the unimaginable world of medieval history by treating their beliefs as true--most prominently in making a "dog man" a main character in the book and never questioning that he is physically a humanoid dog (or a canine human?). There is a lot of grief threaded through the madcap hijinks; one man on the expedition recalls the violent loss of his beloved horse, his one true companion, in a battle with the Turks.

The true accomplishment of the novel, in my view, is the conclusion, which deals with faith and betrayal, embodiment and spirit, idealism and experience. These passages are stunningly written and deal, not with the transfiguring power of religion but rather the sustaining (if fleeting) power of intimacy. I've never read anything quite like this book, and while there were sections in the middle that flagged--or at least meandered--for me, in spite of its relatively short length, that originality bears out Anderson's brilliance and versatility as a writer. (Also, the pun in the title is perfection.)
]]> Anxious People 49127718 A poignant, charming novel about a crime that never took place, a would-be bank robber who disappears into thin air, and eight extremely anxious strangers who find they have more in common than they ever imagined

Looking at real estate isn't usually a life-or-death situation, but an apartment open house becomes just that when a failed bank robber bursts in and takes a group of strangers hostage. The captives include a recently retired couple who relentlessly hunt down fixer-uppers to avoid the painful truth that they can't fix up their own marriage. There's a wealthy banker who has been too busy making money to care about anyone else and a young couple who are about to have their first child but can't seem to agree on anything, from where they want to live to how they met in the first place. Add to the mix an eighty-seven-year-old woman who has lived long enough not to be afraid of someone waving a gun in her face, a flustered but still-ready-to-make-a-deal real estate agent, and a mystery man who has locked himself in the apartment's only bathroom, and you've got the worst group of hostages in the world.

Each of them carries a lifetime of grievances, hurts, secrets, and passions that are ready to boil over. None of them is entirely who they appear to be. And all of them—the bank robber included—desperately crave some sort of rescue. As the authorities and the media surround the premises, these reluctant allies will reveal surprising truths about themselves and set in a motion a chain of events so unexpected that even they can hardly explain what happens next.

Humorous, compassionate, and wise, Anxious People is an ingeniously constructed story about the enduring power of friendship, forgiveness, and hope—the things that save us, even in the most anxious of times.

Includes short story - The Last Round of Golf]]> 336 Fredrik Backman 198216963X Cat 4 A Man Called Ove with a wry, even melancholy wit that prevents the basically sentimental novel from becoming cloying. Backman has fun with retrospective narration and multiple perspectives and police interviews as a group of hostages comes to terms with their own lives and relationships while a bank robber navigates a financial and familial crisis. Sometimes the emotional solutions to the problems that each character faces are a bit tidy for my taste, but many lines in the novel made me laugh out loud, and I appreciate the novel's message about shared vulnerability and the need for connection.]]> 4.17 2019 Anxious People
author: Fredrik Backman
name: Cat
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at: 2024/07/17
date added: 2024/08/03
shelves:
review:
This book was very enjoyable. Heartwarming in the vein of A Man Called Ove with a wry, even melancholy wit that prevents the basically sentimental novel from becoming cloying. Backman has fun with retrospective narration and multiple perspectives and police interviews as a group of hostages comes to terms with their own lives and relationships while a bank robber navigates a financial and familial crisis. Sometimes the emotional solutions to the problems that each character faces are a bit tidy for my taste, but many lines in the novel made me laugh out loud, and I appreciate the novel's message about shared vulnerability and the need for connection.
]]> <![CDATA[The Garden Against Time: In Search of a Common Paradise]]> 200869482
But the story of the garden doesn’t always enact larger patterns of privilege and exclusion. It’s also a place of rebel outposts and communal dreams. From the improbable queer utopia conjured by Derek Jarman on the beach at Dungeness to the fertile vision of a common Eden propagated by William Morris, new modes of living can and have been attempted amidst the flower beds, experiments that could prove vital in the coming era of climate change.

The result is a humming, glowing tapestry, a beautiful and exacting account of the abundant pleasures and possibilities of not as a place to hide from the world but as a site of encounter and discovery, bee-loud and pollen-laden.]]> 336 Olivia Laing 0393882004 Cat 0 to-read 3.87 2024 The Garden Against Time: In Search of a Common Paradise
author: Olivia Laing
name: Cat
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/15
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Ring Shout 49247242 In America, demons wear white hoods.

In 1915, The Birth of a Nation cast a spell across America, swelling the Klan's ranks and drinking deep from the darkest thoughts of white folk. All across the nation they ride, spreading fear and violence among the vulnerable. They plan to bring Hell to Earth. But even Ku Kluxes can die.

Standing in their way is Maryse Boudreaux and her fellow resistance fighters, a foul-mouthed sharpshooter and a Harlem Hellfighter. Armed with blade, bullet, and bomb, they hunt their hunters and send the Klan's demons straight to Hell. But something awful's brewing in Macon, and the war on Hell is about to heat up.

Can Maryse stop the Klan before it ends the world?]]> 185 P. Djèlí Clark 1250767024 Cat 0 to-read 3.96 2020 Ring Shout
author: P. Djèlí Clark
name: Cat
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Last Devil to Die (Thursday Murder Club, #4)]]> 62226126
An old friend in the antiques business has been killed, and a dangerous package he was protecting has gone missing.

As the gang springs into action they encounter art forgers, online fraudsters and drug dealers, as well as heartache close to home.

With the body count rising, the package still missing and trouble firmly on their tail, has their luck finally run out? And who will be the last devil to die?]]> 421 Richard Osman 0241512441 Cat 4 The Maltese Falcon, and to balance the poignancy of the main characters' journey in this installment, Osman introduces some comic drug dealers and art forgers. I like how he allows Joyce to grow in this one as well, showing her cleverness as well as her strength in a crisis; other characters may have underestimated her because of her flirtatious and even whimsical manner. I hear he's taking a break (and writing another mystery concept) before returning to this series, but I'll definitely be on board for number 5.]]> 4.44 2023 The Last Devil to Die (Thursday Murder Club, #4)
author: Richard Osman
name: Cat
average rating: 4.44
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/06/27
date added: 2024/07/05
shelves:
review:
I love this series, and this novel is the most elegiac and deft in addressing memory loss and the grief it causes both partner and patient. The central mystery is delightfully similar to The Maltese Falcon, and to balance the poignancy of the main characters' journey in this installment, Osman introduces some comic drug dealers and art forgers. I like how he allows Joyce to grow in this one as well, showing her cleverness as well as her strength in a crisis; other characters may have underestimated her because of her flirtatious and even whimsical manner. I hear he's taking a break (and writing another mystery concept) before returning to this series, but I'll definitely be on board for number 5.
]]> Ripley's Game (Ripley, #3) 3425503 The Talented Mr. Ripley. Having accrued considerable wealth through a long career of crime—forgery, extortion, serial murder—Ripley still finds his appetite unquenched and longs to get back in the game.


In Ripley's Game, first published in 1974, Patricia Highsmith's classic chameleon relishes the opportunity to simultaneously repay an insult and help a friend commit a crime—and escape the doldrums of his idyllic retirement. This third novel in Highsmith's series is one of her most psychologically nuanced—particularly memorable for its dark, absurd humor—and was hailed by critics for its ability to manipulate the tropes of the genre. With the creation of Ripley, one of literature's most seductive sociopaths, Highsmith anticipated the likes of Norman Bates and Hannibal Lecter years before their appearance.]]> 288 Patricia Highsmith 0393332128 Cat 3 to-read The Talented Mr. Ripley.

Not sure whether I will go on to read #4, but I've enjoyed finding out Highsmith's vision of how Ripley continues as a paragon of taste, perpetually drawn into murder as a kind of parlor game. ]]> 3.84 1974 Ripley's Game (Ripley, #3)
author: Patricia Highsmith
name: Cat
average rating: 3.84
book published: 1974
rating: 3
read at: 2024/07/04
date added: 2024/07/05
shelves: to-read
review:
This one felt less engaging than the two previous titles in the Ripley series. I relished a few of the book's premises: the idea that Ripley would put a man in the midst of a criminal conspiracy more or less as a vengeful joke because he seemed dismissive of Ripley in a social gathering, and the interrogation of what a man would be willing to do for money if he thought he was going to die sooner rather than later. The mafia plot is not terribly interesting, and I suspect that Highsmith's own distaste for Italian Americans may come through in Ripley's dialogue about why killing mafia men is justified. I was interested in the burgeoning friendship between pathetic Jonathan and gleefully cold and unrepentant (can you modify those particular adjectives with the adverb "gleefully"? In spite of the paradox, I'm going for it) Tom Ripley. While each installment of the Ripley series has gotten less queer than the last one, I did think that the way these two men come together works structurally like a love story and the way that Highsmith poses both of them against self-righteous wife Simone (who previously was idealized) underscores the undesirability of femininity and a code of masculine ethics and fraternity that I do find really interesting in Highsmith's work. Simone's moral outrage ends up strident like Marge's affection for Dickie in The Talented Mr. Ripley.

Not sure whether I will go on to read #4, but I've enjoyed finding out Highsmith's vision of how Ripley continues as a paragon of taste, perpetually drawn into murder as a kind of parlor game.
]]> Beautyland 127282939 From the acclaimed author of Parakeet, Marie-Helene Bertino’s Beautyland is a wise, tender novel about a woman who doesn't feel at home on Earth.

At the moment when Voyager 1 is launched into space carrying its famous golden record, a baby of unusual perception is born to a single mother in Philadelphia. Adina Giorno is tiny and jaundiced, but she reaches for warmth and light. As a child, she recognizes that she is different: She possesses knowledge of a faraway planet. The arrival of a fax machine enables her to contact her extraterrestrial relatives, beings who have sent her to report on the oddities of Earthlings.

For years, as she moves through the world and makes a life for herself among humans, she dispatches transmissions on the terrors and surprising joys of their existence. Then, at a precarious moment, a beloved friend urges Adina to share her messages with the world. Is there a chance she is not alone?

Marie-Helene Bertino’s Beautyland is a novel of startling originality about the fragility and resilience of life on our Earth and in our universe. It is a remarkable evocation of the feeling of being in exile at home, and it introduces a gentle, unforgettable alien for our times.]]> 327 Marie-Helene Bertino 0374109281 Cat 0 to-read 4.08 2024 Beautyland
author: Marie-Helene Bertino
name: Cat
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/05
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Paris Novel 195430688
Stella reached for an oyster, tipped her head and tossed it back. It was cool and slippery, the flavor so briny it was like diving into the ocean... Oysters, she thought, where have they been all my life?

When her estranged mother dies, Stella is left with an unusual a one-way plane ticket and a note reading Go to Paris . But Stella is hardly cut out for adventure; a childhood trauma has kept her confined to the strict routines of her comfort zone. When her boss encourages her to take time off, Stella resigns herself to honoring her mother’s last wishes.

Alone in a foreign city, Stella falls into old habits, living cautiously and frugally. Then she stumbles across a vintage store where she tries on a fabulous Dior dress. The shopkeeper insists that this dress was meant for Stella and, for the first time in her life, Stella does something impulsive. She buys the dress and together they embark on an adventure.

Her first iconic brasserie Les Deux Magots, where Stella tastes her first oysters, and then meets an octogenarian art collector who decides to take her under his wing. As Jules introduces her to a veritable who’s who of the 1980s Paris literary, art, and culinary worlds, Stella begins to understand what it might mean to live a larger life.

As weeks—and many decadent meals—go by, Stella ends up living as a “tumbleweed� at famed bookstore Shakespeare & Company, uncovers a hundred-year-old mystery in a Manet painting, and discovers a passion for food that may be connected to her past. A feast for the senses, this novel is a testament to living deliciously, taking chances, and finding your true home.]]> 288 Ruth Reichl 0812996305 Cat 3
I love Ruth Reichl, and I think her memoirs are truly powerful and accomplished interweavings of personal stories and reflections on food, pleasure, and what it can mean, how it can bring people together. This novel shares features of those memoirs: a difficult and sometimes unloving mother, the evocative descriptions of food, a narrative of (lightly) feminist ambition and solidarity. Overall, though, it is shaped by wish fulfillment and fantasy in a way that a memoir obviously is not: the main character Stella gets a bequest in her mother's will, requiring she go to Paris; she wears a gorgeous dress that seems made for her, which sets her off on a Cinderella-like journey to self-transformation; she meets a series of male mentors who bolster her up where her mother tore her down; she dines sumptuously and extensively thanks to one of those male mentors who happens to both be a good guy (helping the Resistance during World War II) and also a wealthy descendant of French aristocrats; by the end, a love interest is even magically provided.

It is more or less silly, but Reichl's voice remains engaging, and if you like Paris and name-dropping (I know Richard Olney! I know James Baldwin! I know Shakespeare and company!) and can abide plotting as confectionary and the protagonist as fairy tale princess, then this novel is for you. (I really enjoyed it too--even though all of the characters are extremely thin--barely illusions of people--and even the geography of Paris is not too vivid. The food is much more specific and sensuous. Reichl is a damn good food writer. Perhaps not as exciting a novelist.)]]> 3.67 2024 The Paris Novel
author: Ruth Reichl
name: Cat
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/06/29
date added: 2024/06/30
shelves:
review:
This novel is a soufflé: a delight to read, airy and empty, and thus has to be enjoyed quickly--leaving a mere trace of sweetness behind.

I love Ruth Reichl, and I think her memoirs are truly powerful and accomplished interweavings of personal stories and reflections on food, pleasure, and what it can mean, how it can bring people together. This novel shares features of those memoirs: a difficult and sometimes unloving mother, the evocative descriptions of food, a narrative of (lightly) feminist ambition and solidarity. Overall, though, it is shaped by wish fulfillment and fantasy in a way that a memoir obviously is not: the main character Stella gets a bequest in her mother's will, requiring she go to Paris; she wears a gorgeous dress that seems made for her, which sets her off on a Cinderella-like journey to self-transformation; she meets a series of male mentors who bolster her up where her mother tore her down; she dines sumptuously and extensively thanks to one of those male mentors who happens to both be a good guy (helping the Resistance during World War II) and also a wealthy descendant of French aristocrats; by the end, a love interest is even magically provided.

It is more or less silly, but Reichl's voice remains engaging, and if you like Paris and name-dropping (I know Richard Olney! I know James Baldwin! I know Shakespeare and company!) and can abide plotting as confectionary and the protagonist as fairy tale princess, then this novel is for you. (I really enjoyed it too--even though all of the characters are extremely thin--barely illusions of people--and even the geography of Paris is not too vivid. The food is much more specific and sensuous. Reichl is a damn good food writer. Perhaps not as exciting a novelist.)
]]> <![CDATA[The Tree Collectors: Tales of Arboreal Obsession]]> 198137716
The Japanese practice of forest bathing, shinrin-yoku, changes the levels of stress and pleasure hormones in the body, decreasing cortisol and increasing serotonin. And if being around one tree feels good, imagine how a hundred trees would feel. In her first botanical nonfiction in more than a decade, Amy Stewart brings us captivating stories of people who spend their lives collecting trees and asks what drives one to collect something as enormous, majestic, and deeply-rooted as a tree?

In her gentle, intimate, slyly humorous way, Stewart brings fifty of these people to life, organizing their stories into categories. There are the community builders--like Shyam Sunder Paliwal who, after the death of his daughter, began a movement in his Rajasthan village to plant 111 trees whenever a girl was born--who do the remarkable work of knitting people together under an arboreal canopy. There are seekers who have taken their passion for trees around the world, or even into space. There are visionaries--the former poet laureate, W.S. Merwin, who planted a tree a day for over three decades, until he had turned a barren estate into a palm sanctuary. And there are healers--like Joe Hamilton, who plants trees on land passed down to him by his formerly enslaved great-grandfather--who have found a way to heal their own lives, the lives of others, or even wounds of the past, by planting trees.

Vivid watercolor portraits of these extraordinary people, populate this lively compendium along with with sidetrips to investigate more about trees, famous tree collections, necessary terms, and even "tips for unauthorized forestry." This book will be a gift for the hundreds of thousands of readers who have come to Amy's previous nature books and a delightful, informative, and often poignant treat for a whole new audience.]]> 336 Amy Stewart 0593446852 Cat 0 to-read 4.22 The Tree Collectors: Tales of Arboreal Obsession
author: Amy Stewart
name: Cat
average rating: 4.22
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/06/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Hunting Party 37642030 Everyone's invited...everyone's a suspect...

For fans of Ruth Ware and Tana French, a shivery, atmospheric, page-turning novel of psychological suspense in the tradition of Agatha Christie, in which a group of old college friends are snowed in at a hunting lodge . . . and murder and mayhem ensue.

All of them are friends. One of them is a killer.

During the languid days of the Christmas break, a group of thirtysomething friends from Oxford meet to welcome in the New Year together, a tradition they began as students ten years ago. For this vacation, they’ve chosen an idyllic and isolated estate in the Scottish Highlands—the perfect place to get away and unwind by themselves.

They arrive on December 30th, just before a historic blizzard seals the lodge off from the outside world.

Two days later, on New Year’s Day, one of them is dead.

The trip began innocently enough: admiring the stunning if foreboding scenery, champagne in front of a crackling fire, and reminiscences about the past. But after a decade, the weight of secret resentments has grown too heavy for the group’s tenuous nostalgia to bear. Amid the boisterous revelry of New Year’s Eve, the cord holding them together snaps.

Now one of them is dead . . . and another of them did it.

Keep your friends close, the old adage goes. But just how close is too close?]]> 406 Lucy Foley 0008297126 Cat 0 to-read 3.59 2018 The Hunting Party
author: Lucy Foley
name: Cat
average rating: 3.59
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/06/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A Flat Place: Moving Through Empty Landscapes, Naming Complex Trauma]]> 119028182
Does the concept of "flat" have an undeservedly bad rap? There are centuries� worth of adoration for rolling hills and dramatic, mountainous landscapes. In contrast, flat landscapes are forgettable and seemingly unworthy of poetic or artistic attention.

Noreen Masud suffers from complex post-traumatic stress the product of a profoundly disrupted and unstable childhood. It flattens her emotions, blanks out parts of her memory, and colours her world with anxiety. Undertaking a pilgrimage around Britain's flatlands, seeking solace and belonging, she weaves her impressions of the natural world with poetry, folklore and history, and with recollections of her own early life.

Masud's British-Pakistani heritage makes her a partial outsider in these both coloniser and colonised, inheritor and dispossessed. Here violence lies beneath the fantasy of pastoral innocence, and histories of harm are interwoven with nature's power to heal. Here, as in her own family history, are many stories that resist the telling. She pursues these paradoxes fearlessly across the flat, haunted spaces she loves, offering a startlingly strange, vivid and intimate account of the land beneath her feet.

Masud combines memoir, nature writing, and literary reflection to explore what can be drawn from these powerful places, and to understand her own experience of complex trauma and post-traumatic stress, as well as grief and loss. A Flat Place is a book that drives to the heart of what it means to experience place � bodily and psychologically � and the healing properties of literature and landscape.]]> 256 Noreen Masud 1685890245 Cat 0 to-read 4.15 2023 A Flat Place: Moving Through Empty Landscapes, Naming Complex Trauma
author: Noreen Masud
name: Cat
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/06/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Guest List 52656911
The bride � The plus one � The best man � The wedding planner � The bridesmaid � The body

On an island off the coast of Ireland, guests gather to celebrate two people joining their lives together as one. The groom: handsome and charming, a rising television star. The bride: smart and ambitious, a magazine publisher. It’s a wedding for a magazine, or for a celebrity: the designer dress, the remote location, the luxe party favors, the boutique whiskey. The cell phone service may be spotty and the waves may be rough, but every detail has been expertly planned and will be expertly executed.

But perfection is for plans, and people are all too human. As the champagne is popped and the festivities begin, resentments and petty jealousies begin to mingle with the reminiscences and well wishes. The groomsmen begin the drinking game from their school days. The bridesmaid not-so-accidentally ruins her dress. The bride’s oldest (male) friend gives an uncomfortably caring toast.

And then someone turns up dead. Who didn’t wish the happy couple well? And perhaps more important, why?]]> 319 Lucy Foley Cat 4 3.82 2020 The Guest List
author: Lucy Foley
name: Cat
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2024/06/13
date added: 2024/06/14
shelves:
review:
This was so much fun! Love the Gothic Irish peat bog island setting. It's pure Agatha Christie but with more booze, sex, and cocaine. Foley takes Christie's patented closed-room mystery and uses it to show up the creepiness of weddings: their rituals, their conspicuous consumption, their hedonism, the unfamiliarity (and yet farflung social connectedness) of the guests. Her targets here are bullying and rape culture, and she uses her characters and plot to detail poignantly the fall-out of masculine violence, facilitated and supported by institutions, professions, and the media. A quick and suspenseful read. Looking forward to checking out more by Foley!
]]> Good Different 60759260
Selah knows her rules for being normal.

She always, always sticks to them. This means keeping her feelings locked tightly inside, despite the way they build up inside her as each school day goes on, so that she has to run to the bathroom and hide in the stall until she can calm down. So that she has to tear off her normal-person mask the second she gets home from school, and listen to her favorite pop song on repeat, trying to recharge. Selah feels like a dragon stuck in a world of humans, but she knows how to hide it.

Until the day she explodes and hits a fellow student.

Selah's friends pull away from her, her school threatens expulsion, and her comfortable, familiar world starts to crumble.

But as Selah starts to figure out more about who she is, she comes to understand that different doesn’t mean damaged. Can she get her school to understand that, too, before it’s too late?]]> 288 Meg Eden Kuyatt 1338816101 Cat 4
My quibbles with the novel are very small ones; overall, I was quite moved by it and wish I could give copies to all of her teachers from this past year. My two hesitations are first that the poems feel mostly poem-like in the way they are laid out on the page, not through an internal lyricism. (I would contrast this with Jason Reynold's verse novel Long Way Down, which I find more artful in its use of poetry.) And second, the messages throughout the book (about autistic girls, sensory overwhelm, school accommodations, and identifying neurodivergence within families rather than merely individuals) are very on-the-nose. This is a deliberately didactic book--and a much needed one for autistic tweens, their families, friends, and teachers!--and I tend to prefer more reliance on the reader's capacity to glean subtext.

I described the plot of the book to my husband and daughter at dinner, and he asked her if she'd been ghost writing middle grade novels unbeknownst to us. She's an all-YA, all-the-time gal now (much like the protagonist of this novel, she loves fantasy fiction), but I'd love to know her impressions of it too.]]> 4.47 2023 Good Different
author: Meg Eden Kuyatt
name: Cat
average rating: 4.47
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/06/12
date added: 2024/06/14
shelves:
review:
I don't know that I can write a review that would speak to other people, but I want to record my thoughts anyway. It was astonishing to me how much this verse novel spoke to my daughter's middle school experiences. So many details: the protagonist Selah going to a private school where the uniforms and rules used to feel like an appealing level of security and become confining (because conformity underlies this kind of order); the shift in girls' social dynamics to talk all about crushes, which leaves Selah cold; the derision from uninformed teachers about doodling and various fidgets; the passion for fantasy fiction and visual culture and the finding of a community through fandom; the pursuit of poetry as a medium for expressing the interiority that is difficult to convey to NT people; and the turn to self-advocacy and the need to inform others about the urgency of accommodation. I suspect that the intense echoes between my daughter's experience and Kuyatt's novel both speaks to the fact that Kuyatt is an autistic author and also that this impasse at middle-school age for neurodivergent girls is not that unusual, particularly because of the failings of middle school education and the way that ableist adults imagine the transition between childhood (elementary school) and increased autonomy (high school). I love that the trigger for Selah getting in trouble at school is unwanted hair braiding. It's such a girly assumption that she will want to have her hair braided (and of course brings on intense sensory discomfort).

My quibbles with the novel are very small ones; overall, I was quite moved by it and wish I could give copies to all of her teachers from this past year. My two hesitations are first that the poems feel mostly poem-like in the way they are laid out on the page, not through an internal lyricism. (I would contrast this with Jason Reynold's verse novel Long Way Down, which I find more artful in its use of poetry.) And second, the messages throughout the book (about autistic girls, sensory overwhelm, school accommodations, and identifying neurodivergence within families rather than merely individuals) are very on-the-nose. This is a deliberately didactic book--and a much needed one for autistic tweens, their families, friends, and teachers!--and I tend to prefer more reliance on the reader's capacity to glean subtext.

I described the plot of the book to my husband and daughter at dinner, and he asked her if she'd been ghost writing middle grade novels unbeknownst to us. She's an all-YA, all-the-time gal now (much like the protagonist of this novel, she loves fantasy fiction), but I'd love to know her impressions of it too.
]]> <![CDATA[The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store]]> 65678550
Chicken Hill was where Moshe and Chona Ludlow lived when Chona ran the Heaven & Earth Grocery Store, which served the neighborhood's quirky collection of blacks and European immigrants, helped by her husband, Moshe, a Romanian-born theater owner who integrated the town's first dance hall. When the state came looking for a deaf black child, claiming that the boy needed to be institutionalized, Chicken Hill's residents—roused by Chona's kindess and the courage of a local black worker named Nate Timblin—banded together to keep the boy safe.

As the novel unfolds, it becomes clear how much the people of Chicken Hill have to struggle to survive at the margins of white Christian America and how damaging bigotry, hypocrisy, and deceit can be to a community. When the truth is revealed about the skeleton, the boy, and the part the town’s establishment played in both, McBride shows that it is love and community—heaven and earth—that ultimately sustain us.]]> 385 James McBride 0593422945 Cat 4 Sula, and so too is his attention to the infrastructure that materializes the effects of classism and racism reminiscent of her treatment of the tunnel in that book. But McBride is more Dickensian than Morrisonian in his style; perhaps E. L. Doctorow is the more apposite comparison, as McBride uses his sprawling cast of characters to provide a microcosm of American in this historical moment where the tension is growing between (Black) uplift and (Jewish) assimilation and the potentiality of solidarity and resistance. Through sweeping narration, McBride alludes to the present moment from the past that the novel is set in, underscoring the relationship between capitalism, racism, violence, and the vulnerability of children then and now. But even though the novel is didactic, it's on-the-nose messaging is leavened by the author's keen wit and his delight in rapscallions (like the opportunistic Fatty who proves one of my favorite characters). And I also think that his centering of disability in the novel--both as a focal point of oppression and cruelty and also as an origin point for empathy, ingenuity, and the rejection of white supremacy (as well as other social ideals based in the norming of the body and the hierarchalization of "types" of people)--makes it particularly powerful.

It's a brisk read because of his tight plotting. It also pays dividends to readers who might have missed a character or two in the opening chapters (there are a lot of characters! the microcosm of society angle is strong here) to recognize them with delight upon their return. McBride turns away from the grimness that is often Morrison's signature to make a more palatable ending for his readers, while still harboring that sense of the evils we still live with that are described in this novel, particularly the supposed school for the disabled that is actually a prison (shades of The Nickel Boys) here. Without trying to spoil anything, I'm fascinated by the way that McBride celebrates the South in this novel, treating it as the center of African syncretic culture in the U.S., reversing the Great Migration and its false narrative of progress.

The villains are rather mustache-twirling, and it's not hard to see where the ethics of this tale lie, but I found it both heartwarming and also historically revealing, especially about the intersections of Black and Jewish experiences (and connections between Black and Jewish people). I suspect this will be a popular book club title, and I'm very glad that is the case.]]> 3.83 2023 The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store
author: James McBride
name: Cat
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/06/08
date added: 2024/06/08
shelves:
review:
This is a big-hearted, beautiful book, which uses historical fiction to point out the web of interrelations between racism, anti-Semitism, ableism, nativism, and white supremacy and the overlap of multiple immigrant and racial histories in the geography of Pennsylvania. McBride is indebted to Toni Morrison; his depiction of the Hill where both Black and Jewish people live is reminiscent of her depiction of the Bottom in Sula, and so too is his attention to the infrastructure that materializes the effects of classism and racism reminiscent of her treatment of the tunnel in that book. But McBride is more Dickensian than Morrisonian in his style; perhaps E. L. Doctorow is the more apposite comparison, as McBride uses his sprawling cast of characters to provide a microcosm of American in this historical moment where the tension is growing between (Black) uplift and (Jewish) assimilation and the potentiality of solidarity and resistance. Through sweeping narration, McBride alludes to the present moment from the past that the novel is set in, underscoring the relationship between capitalism, racism, violence, and the vulnerability of children then and now. But even though the novel is didactic, it's on-the-nose messaging is leavened by the author's keen wit and his delight in rapscallions (like the opportunistic Fatty who proves one of my favorite characters). And I also think that his centering of disability in the novel--both as a focal point of oppression and cruelty and also as an origin point for empathy, ingenuity, and the rejection of white supremacy (as well as other social ideals based in the norming of the body and the hierarchalization of "types" of people)--makes it particularly powerful.

It's a brisk read because of his tight plotting. It also pays dividends to readers who might have missed a character or two in the opening chapters (there are a lot of characters! the microcosm of society angle is strong here) to recognize them with delight upon their return. McBride turns away from the grimness that is often Morrison's signature to make a more palatable ending for his readers, while still harboring that sense of the evils we still live with that are described in this novel, particularly the supposed school for the disabled that is actually a prison (shades of The Nickel Boys) here. Without trying to spoil anything, I'm fascinated by the way that McBride celebrates the South in this novel, treating it as the center of African syncretic culture in the U.S., reversing the Great Migration and its false narrative of progress.

The villains are rather mustache-twirling, and it's not hard to see where the ethics of this tale lie, but I found it both heartwarming and also historically revealing, especially about the intersections of Black and Jewish experiences (and connections between Black and Jewish people). I suspect this will be a popular book club title, and I'm very glad that is the case.
]]> <![CDATA[Dispersals: On Plants, Borders, and Belonging]]> 185767232
A seed slips beyond a garden wall. A tree is planted on a precarious border. A shrub is stolen from its culture and its land. What happens when these plants leave their original homes and put down roots elsewhere?

In fourteen essays, Dispersals explores the entanglements of the plant and human from species considered invasive, like giant hogweed; to those vilified but intimate, like soy; and those like kelp, on which our futures depend. Each of the plants considered in this collection are somehow perceived as being ‘out of place’—weeds, samples collected through imperial science, crops introduced and transformed by our hand. Combining memoir, history, and scientific research in poetic prose, Jessica J. Lee meditates on the question of how both plants and people come to belong, why both cross borders, and how our futures are more entwined than we might imagine.]]> 288 Jessica J. Lee 1646221788 Cat 3 to-read Soil: The Story of a Black Mother's Garden and The Nutmeg's Curse: Parables for a Planet in Crisis more powerful.) I did really enjoy her essay on "mauve" and the love of Englishness as embodied by heather conveyed both through generations of her family and through art (color-by-number cottage and hedgerow paintings and the novels of the Brontës). I thought this essay explored ambivalence, colonialism, and aesthetics with poignant irresolution.]]> 4.09 2024 Dispersals: On Plants, Borders, and Belonging
author: Jessica J. Lee
name: Cat
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2024/06/05
shelves: to-read
review:
I love the title of the book, and Lee does a beautiful job thinking through the colonial legacies of the way that seeds and plants circulate through the world and also how her own mixed-race identity and her experiences of immigration (both her parents' and her own) lead her to challenge both the language and the assumptions that go behind contemporary fetishization of "native" plants and anxiety about "invasives." Her memoir reflections about her mother's koi pond and her own window box herb garden are quite lovely. I think because this area--botany, cultural/racial identity, and environmental activism--is a scholarly obsession of mine at the moment, the ideas driving the collection felt very familiar and thus the collection did not inspire me as much as I was hoping it might. (I found Soil: The Story of a Black Mother's Garden and The Nutmeg's Curse: Parables for a Planet in Crisis more powerful.) I did really enjoy her essay on "mauve" and the love of Englishness as embodied by heather conveyed both through generations of her family and through art (color-by-number cottage and hedgerow paintings and the novels of the Brontës). I thought this essay explored ambivalence, colonialism, and aesthetics with poignant irresolution.
]]> <![CDATA[Storyteller: The Authorized Biography of Roald Dahl]]> 8805331
Granted unprecedented access to the Dahl estate's extraordinary archives—personal correspondence, journals and interviews with family members and famous friends—Donald Sturrock draws on a wealth of previously unpublished materials that informed Dahl's writing and his life. It was a life filled with incident, drama and adventure: from his harrowing experiences as an RAF fighter pilot and his work in wartime intelligence, to his many romances and turbulent marriage to the actress Patricia Neal, to the mental anguish caused by the death of his young daughter Olivia. Tracing a brilliant yet tempestuous ascent toward notoriety, Sturrock sheds new light on Dahl's need for controversy, his abrasive manner and his fascination for the gruesome and the macabre.

A remarkable biography of one of the world's most exceptional writers, Storyteller is an intimate portrait of an intensely private man hindered by physical pain and haunted by family tragedy, and a timely reexamination of Dahl's long and complex literary career.]]> 655 Donald Sturrock 1416550828 Cat 5 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, but this is my first time reading it consecutively all the way through, and it rewards that effort handsomely. I'm both fascinated by all of Dahl's connections to unexpected literary and cultural figures--Lillian Hellman, Ian Fleming, even Bob Altman!--and I'm also impressed with the way that Sturrock is able to explore the deliberately provocative, infantile, and even cruel side of Dahl's personality, as he behaved tyrannically with his family and would suddenly and starkly change his tune with former professional allies, deeming them enemies. Though the biography carries the "authorized" label, it does not read like an extended puff piece. Sturrock captures both what made Dahl larger-than-life and also the harm this outsized personality could wreak on his associates, his ex-wife Patricia Neal, and his children.

Sturrock also uses a strong chapter structure to convey the texture of Dahl's life, from his work for Shell in Dar Es Salaam to his service in the RAF (including a disastrous plane crash) and his spy work in the United States during the war. Dahl's many literary frustrations as he pursued a career as a macabre story writer for adults gives way to unanticipated success as a children's author. His family life was shadowed by a serious of losses and traumas: a collision that left his infant son Theo's skull shattered, the death of his daughter Olivia from encephalitis from measles, and Patricia Neal's debilitating stroke, the recovery from which Dahl oversaw with an iron fist that lead her to nickname him "Rotten Roald." I will admit that for me, the biography really took off in this section because even before tragedy strikes, Dahl's condescending expectations for his wife provide bracing evidence of the patriarchy at work in the 1950s (one of his dearest friends suggested in a letter that a wife should be thinking of her husband eighty percent of the time and that he should not have to prompt her to do so). His literary life also becomes more interesting as former agent Sheila St. Lawrence convinces him that he would have a gift for writing for children.

Sturrock also does a beautiful job evoking how the landscape of the house and property in Great Missenden influenced Dahl's artistry and the view of himself. It makes me very much want to visit Dahl's writing hut, which he retreated to like a womb (or, in Sturrock's analogy, a cockpit that allowed him to fly to imaginative heights reminiscent of his beloved flying in the RAF).]]> 3.89 2010 Storyteller: The Authorized Biography of Roald Dahl
author: Donald Sturrock
name: Cat
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2010
rating: 5
read at: 2024/06/05
date added: 2024/06/05
shelves:
review:
I've been consulting this book for years as I've written about Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, but this is my first time reading it consecutively all the way through, and it rewards that effort handsomely. I'm both fascinated by all of Dahl's connections to unexpected literary and cultural figures--Lillian Hellman, Ian Fleming, even Bob Altman!--and I'm also impressed with the way that Sturrock is able to explore the deliberately provocative, infantile, and even cruel side of Dahl's personality, as he behaved tyrannically with his family and would suddenly and starkly change his tune with former professional allies, deeming them enemies. Though the biography carries the "authorized" label, it does not read like an extended puff piece. Sturrock captures both what made Dahl larger-than-life and also the harm this outsized personality could wreak on his associates, his ex-wife Patricia Neal, and his children.

Sturrock also uses a strong chapter structure to convey the texture of Dahl's life, from his work for Shell in Dar Es Salaam to his service in the RAF (including a disastrous plane crash) and his spy work in the United States during the war. Dahl's many literary frustrations as he pursued a career as a macabre story writer for adults gives way to unanticipated success as a children's author. His family life was shadowed by a serious of losses and traumas: a collision that left his infant son Theo's skull shattered, the death of his daughter Olivia from encephalitis from measles, and Patricia Neal's debilitating stroke, the recovery from which Dahl oversaw with an iron fist that lead her to nickname him "Rotten Roald." I will admit that for me, the biography really took off in this section because even before tragedy strikes, Dahl's condescending expectations for his wife provide bracing evidence of the patriarchy at work in the 1950s (one of his dearest friends suggested in a letter that a wife should be thinking of her husband eighty percent of the time and that he should not have to prompt her to do so). His literary life also becomes more interesting as former agent Sheila St. Lawrence convinces him that he would have a gift for writing for children.

Sturrock also does a beautiful job evoking how the landscape of the house and property in Great Missenden influenced Dahl's artistry and the view of himself. It makes me very much want to visit Dahl's writing hut, which he retreated to like a womb (or, in Sturrock's analogy, a cockpit that allowed him to fly to imaginative heights reminiscent of his beloved flying in the RAF).
]]> <![CDATA[Untangled: Guiding Teenage Girls Through the Seven Transitions into Adulthood]]> 25614847
Look for Under Pressure, the companion guide to coping with stress and anxiety among girls, available now.

In this sane, highly engaging, and informed guide for parents of daughters, Dr. Damour draws on decades of experience and the latest research to reveal the seven distinct—and absolutely normal—developmental transitions that turn girls into grown-ups, including Parting with Childhood, Contending with Adult Authority, Entering the Romantic World, and Caring for Herself. Providing realistic scenarios and welcome advice on how to engage daughters in smart, constructive ways, Untangled gives parents a broad framework for understanding their daughters while addressing their most common questions, including

� My thirteen-year-old rolls her eyes when I try to talk to her, and only does it more when I get angry with her about it. How should I respond?
� Do I tell my teen daughter that I’m checking her phone?
� My daughter suffers from test anxiety. What can I do to help her?
� Where’s the line between healthy eating and having an eating disorder?
� My teenage daughter wants to know why I’m against pot when it’s legal in some states. What should I say?
� My daughter’s friend is cutting herself. Do I call the girl’s mother to let her know?

Perhaps most important, Untangled helps mothers and fathers understand, connect, and grow with their daughters. When parents know what makes their daughter tick, they can embrace and enjoy the challenge of raising a healthy, happy young woman.

BOOKS FOR A BETTER LIFE AWARD WINNER

“Finally, there’s some good news for puzzled parents of adolescent girls, and psychologist Lisa Damour is the bearer of that happy news. [ Untangled ] is the most down-to-earth, readable parenting book I’ve come across in a long time.� � The Washington Post

“Anna Freud wrote in 1958, ‘There are few situations in life which are more difficult to cope with than an adolescent son or daughter during the attempt to liberate themselves.� In the intervening decades, the transition doesn’t appear to have gotten any easier which makes Untangled such a welcome new resource.� � The Boston Globe]]> 352 Lisa Damour 0553393057 Cat 5
Damour also points out that lots of girls are encouraged to be kind but not to be assertive and that it is important for our daughters to self-advocate and to have the capacity to express displeasure, make decisions for themselves (even if it's not what peers or romantic partners want), etc. I was very impressed with the book as a whole, though my twelve-year-old daughter teased me that I couldn't remember the seven transitions after I finished (I could only come up with five). I will say that even though the book mentions LGTBQ+ identities, it's a rather brief portion of the book, and Damour mostly assumes that girls will get romantically involved with boys. That could be more robust. Similarly, while she talks about how ADHD might affect homework (there's a great section on how not to get involved in duking it out over homework with your kid), Damour wrote this book when there was perhaps less awareness and activism around neurodivergence, so it would be interesting to think about how some of these stages differ or perhaps even are intensified by our neurotypes.

In any case, I valued Damour's philosophy--so often, it's best to do nothing even when this digital age makes parents much more aware of their children's social lives!--and the admiration with which she treats adolescence, a stage so often demonized. ]]> 4.52 2016 Untangled: Guiding Teenage Girls Through the Seven Transitions into Adulthood
author: Lisa Damour
name: Cat
average rating: 4.52
book published: 2016
rating: 5
read at: 2024/06/03
date added: 2024/06/04
shelves:
review:
A helpful guide to some of the emotional and social changes that come with puberty and beyond. Damour shares pragmatic advice that boils down to respecting your child and recognizing her increasing autonomy while also marking out clear limits (which even teenagers want). I love Damour's central metaphor of the pool, where parents are the walls of the pool, which the tween or teen will occasionally swim back to and hold on to, but which they will also push off of in order to swim in the wider world. Damour emphasizes that at the same time that parents should try not to take meanness and mood swings from their child too seriously (though she is careful to describe situations that should be taken seriously at the end of each chapter), they can and should also insist that their child be polite to them. I loved the section about emotional literacy (that's not the phrase she used) and reflection: that parents can talk about their own emotional regulation process, that putting together the immediate reaction to a situation with the narrativizing of the coping process (or empathizing process) is part of becoming an empathetic adult who can deal compassionately with other people.

Damour also points out that lots of girls are encouraged to be kind but not to be assertive and that it is important for our daughters to self-advocate and to have the capacity to express displeasure, make decisions for themselves (even if it's not what peers or romantic partners want), etc. I was very impressed with the book as a whole, though my twelve-year-old daughter teased me that I couldn't remember the seven transitions after I finished (I could only come up with five). I will say that even though the book mentions LGTBQ+ identities, it's a rather brief portion of the book, and Damour mostly assumes that girls will get romantically involved with boys. That could be more robust. Similarly, while she talks about how ADHD might affect homework (there's a great section on how not to get involved in duking it out over homework with your kid), Damour wrote this book when there was perhaps less awareness and activism around neurodivergence, so it would be interesting to think about how some of these stages differ or perhaps even are intensified by our neurotypes.

In any case, I valued Damour's philosophy--so often, it's best to do nothing even when this digital age makes parents much more aware of their children's social lives!--and the admiration with which she treats adolescence, a stage so often demonized.
]]> <![CDATA[The Bullet That Missed (Thursday Murder Club, #3)]]> 58957615
Then a new foe pays Elizabeth a visit. Her mission? Kill or be killed. Suddenly the cold case has become red hot.

While Elizabeth wrestles with her conscience (and a gun), Joyce, Ron, and Ibrahim chase down the clues with help from old friends and new. But can the gang solve the mystery and save Elizabeth before the murderer strikes again?

From an upmarket spa to a prison cell complete with espresso machine to a luxury penthouse high in the sky, this third adventure of the Thursday Murder Club is full of the cleverness, intrigue, and irresistible charm that readers have come to expect from Richard Osman's bestselling series.]]> 413 Richard Osman 0241512425 Cat 4
While not precisely being a "cozy" (there's very little except Alan the dog that is cutesy in these books, blessedly), these novels are a delight. Eager to read the next (and alas, for now, last) one!]]> 4.32 2022 The Bullet That Missed (Thursday Murder Club, #3)
author: Richard Osman
name: Cat
average rating: 4.32
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2024/06/03
date added: 2024/06/03
shelves:
review:
The friendship between Elizabeth and Joyce strengthens, and Elizabeth contemplates what it means to have a best friend at the same time that she feels the terrible momentum of Stephen's dementia. Osman impresses me so much in taking aging seriously while taking murder mysteries lightly. This one felt a little bit clunkier exposition-wise and with a few more career criminals and spies; I suppose I have a slight bias towards more local Agatha-Christie-type mystery plots, though obviously Elizabeth's spy background is going to mean that the mysteries trend more towards international shenanigans and organized crime exploits.

While not precisely being a "cozy" (there's very little except Alan the dog that is cutesy in these books, blessedly), these novels are a delight. Eager to read the next (and alas, for now, last) one!
]]> <![CDATA[The Man Who Died Twice (Thursday Murder Club, #2)]]> 55457493
Elizabeth has received a letter from an old colleague, a man with whom she has a long history. He's made a big mistake, and he needs her help. His story involves stolen diamonds, a violent mobster, and a very real threat to his life.

As bodies start piling up, Elizabeth enlists Joyce, Ibrahim and Ron in the hunt for a ruthless murderer. And if they find the diamonds too? Well, wouldn't that be a bonus?

But this time they are up against an enemy who wouldn't bat an eyelid at knocking off four septuagenarians. Can The Thursday Murder Club find the killer (and the diamonds) before the killer finds them?]]> 422 Richard Osman Cat 5 4.36 2021 The Man Who Died Twice (Thursday Murder Club, #2)
author: Richard Osman
name: Cat
average rating: 4.36
book published: 2021
rating: 5
read at: 2024/05/27
date added: 2024/06/03
shelves:
review:
These books are delightful. I love the way that Osman keeps fleshing out Elizabeth's backstory. In this installment, he also explores Ibrahim's depression as he contemplates his own frailty and end of life, and he introduces a delightful rapport between Ibrahim and Ron's grandson Kendrick. A rich cast of characters and a satisfying whodunnit. I'm really hooked on this series.
]]> Chain-Gang All-Stars 61190770
Loretta Thurwar and Hamara "Hurricane Staxxx" Stacker are the stars of Chain-Gang All-Stars, the cornerstone of CAPE, or Criminal Action Penal Entertainment, a highly-popular, highly-controversial, profit-raising program in America's increasingly dominant private prison industry. It's the return of the gladiators and prisoners are competing for the ultimate prize: their freedom.

In CAPE, prisoners travel as Links in Chain-Gangs, competing in death-matches for packed arenas with righteous protestors at the gates. Thurwar and Staxxx, both teammates and lovers, are the fan favorites. And if all goes well, Thurwar will be free in just a few matches, a fact she carries as heavily as her lethal hammer. As she prepares to leave her fellow Links, she considers how she might help preserve their humanity, in defiance of these so-called games, but CAPE's corporate owners will stop at nothing to protect their status quo and the obstacles they lay in Thurwar's path have devastating consequences.

Moving from the Links in the field to the protestors to the CAPE employees and beyond, Chain-Gang All-Stars is a kaleidoscopic, excoriating look at the American prison system's unholy alliance of systemic racism, unchecked capitalism, and mass incarceration, and a clear-eyed reckoning with what freedom in this country really means.]]> 367 Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah 0593317335 Cat 0 to-read 4.13 2023 Chain-Gang All-Stars
author: Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
name: Cat
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/05/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A Good Girl's Guide to Murder (A Good Girl's Guide to Murder, #1)]]> 40916679
Pretty and popular high school senior Andie Bell was murdered by her boyfriend, Sal Singh, who then killed himself. It was all anyone could talk about. And five years later, Pip sees how the tragedy still haunts her town.

But she can't shake the feeling that there was more to what happened that day. She knew Sal when she was a child, and he was always so kind to her. How could he possibly have been a killer?

Now a senior herself, Pip decides to reexamine the closed case for her final project, at first just to cast doubt on the original investigation. But soon she discovers a trail of dark secrets that might actually prove Sal innocent . . . and the line between past and present begins to blur. Someone in Fairview doesn't want Pip digging around for answers, and now her own life might be in danger.]]> 433 Holly Jackson 1405293187 Cat 4 4.30 2019 A Good Girl's Guide to Murder (A Good Girl's Guide to Murder, #1)
author: Holly Jackson
name: Cat
average rating: 4.30
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at: 2024/05/17
date added: 2024/05/18
shelves:
review:
My daughter really enjoyed this one, so I thought I would check it out! Great suspense, fun use of the senior-thesis-style project to justify Pippa’s investigation and shape the various chapter formats like interview transcripts. The podcast Serial meets the teen show Veronica Mars. Small town life disguises darkness barely beneath the surface: rape culture abounds and xenophobia and racism shape the legal system as well as public opinion. A plucky heroine who is smart, confident, and determined. My main criticism is that I wish the publisher hadn’t felt they needed to translate an English book into an American idiom for U.S. teens. The traces of the book’s UK origins remain in name choices (“Pip� is the protagonist!) and the ethnic dynamics (while the prejudice that the Singhs face still makes sense in a US context, my guess is that an American writer would be more likely to use a Black or clearly Muslim family to play this role). But it’s been mildly made over to turn an English village into suburban Connecticut. I wonder if US teens are really so shortsighted that they couldn’t relate to a mystery or a community in England.
]]> <![CDATA[The Thursday Murder Club (Thursday Murder Club, #1)]]> 57991307 Alternate cover edition can be found here

In a peaceful retirement village, four unlikely friends meet up once a week to investigate unsolved murders.

But when a brutal killing takes place on their very doorstep, the Thursday Murder Club find themselves in the middle of their first live case. Elizabeth, Joyce, Ibrahim and Ron might be pushing eighty but they still have a few tricks up their sleeves.

Can our unorthodox but brilliant gang catch the killer before it's too late?]]> 361 Richard Osman 1984880985 Cat 4 3.84 2020 The Thursday Murder Club (Thursday Murder Club, #1)
author: Richard Osman
name: Cat
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2024/05/14
date added: 2024/05/16
shelves:
review:
Very enjoyable mystery which imbues its septuagenarian and octogenarian characters with intelligence, determination, and a sense of humor that makes them worthy detectives. As one of my dear friends pointed out, grief and mourning subtly shapes the lives and emotions of all of the characters, and in this way, Osman honors the inescapability of mortality and loss interlaced with aging and steers clear of a saccharine view of the retirement village. I will certainly read more installments of this series!
]]> <![CDATA[Ripley Under Ground (Ripley, #2)]]> 3845356 Ripley Under Ground (1970), he lives in a beautiful French villa, surrounded by a world-class art collection and married to a pharmaceutical heiress. All seems serene in Ripley's world until a phone call from London shatters his peace. An art forgery scheme he set up a few years ago is threatening to unravel: a nosy American is asking questions and Ripley must go to London to put a stop to it. In this second Ripley novel, Patricia Highsmith offers a mesmerizing and disturbing tale in which Ripley will stop at nothing to preserve his tangle of lies.]]> 288 Patricia Highsmith 0393332136 Cat 4
In this installment, Ripley acquires a wife, a French pharmaceutical heiress who accepts his bad behavior with a worldly (and, as Ripley puts it “amoral�) equanimity. He is also focused on a miserable artist named Bernard who has been (at Ripley's prompting) carrying out a largely successful fraud imitating the painting style of his late friend Derwatt, a true genius whose death is not widely publicized, so Bernard and his gallery cronies can profit from the copies that are supposed originals from the still-living painter in Mexico. Ripley feels compassion for Bernard in a fairly incomprehensible way, particularly as Bernard's hostility to Ripley mounts. This obsession and pity (sometimes punctuated with anger) really worked for me as a psychological doubling device: Ripley feels sympathy for a man who experiences (terribly) all the guilt, remorse, and self-hatred that Ripley is incapable of feeling himself.]]> 3.68 1970 Ripley Under Ground (Ripley, #2)
author: Patricia Highsmith
name: Cat
average rating: 3.68
book published: 1970
rating: 4
read at: 2024/05/11
date added: 2024/05/11
shelves:
review:
I often teach The Talented Mr. Ripley, and I loved the Andrew Scott series, so I finally resolved to continue with the series (if only to be able to answer my students� queries about what happens next!). This installment did not disappoint. There are some fascinating meditations on forgery, celebrating imitation and deception as a greater mode of art in some sense. This underscores not only Ripley’s gift for mimicry and copying (both in a bureaucratic and a theatrical sense) but also Highsmith’s accomplishment in a popular genre with recognizable conventions of suspense (and of course her novels of murder and intrigue are anything but conventional). Ripley meditates on the difference between genius (and the aura of the artwork in Walter Benjamin’s sense when he contrasts the singular work of art with the age of mechanical reproduction that can supply that image everywhere) and the talent of the imitator who is not a genius and yet labors to capture the essence of that talent.

In this installment, Ripley acquires a wife, a French pharmaceutical heiress who accepts his bad behavior with a worldly (and, as Ripley puts it “amoral�) equanimity. He is also focused on a miserable artist named Bernard who has been (at Ripley's prompting) carrying out a largely successful fraud imitating the painting style of his late friend Derwatt, a true genius whose death is not widely publicized, so Bernard and his gallery cronies can profit from the copies that are supposed originals from the still-living painter in Mexico. Ripley feels compassion for Bernard in a fairly incomprehensible way, particularly as Bernard's hostility to Ripley mounts. This obsession and pity (sometimes punctuated with anger) really worked for me as a psychological doubling device: Ripley feels sympathy for a man who experiences (terribly) all the guilt, remorse, and self-hatred that Ripley is incapable of feeling himself.
]]> <![CDATA[Bite by Bite: Nourishments and Jamborees]]> 195853505 From the New York Times bestselling author of World of Wonders, a lyrical book of short essays about food offering a banquet of tastes, smells, memories, associations, and little-known facts about nature

In Bite by Bite, poet and essayist Aimee Nezhukumatathil explores the way food and drink evokes our associations and remembrances � a subtext or layering, a flavor tinged with joy, shame, exuberance, grief, desire, or nostalgia.

Here, Nezhukumatathil restores some of our astonishment and wonder about food through her encounter with a range of foods and food traditions. From shave ice to lumpia, mangoes to pecans, rambutan to vanilla, she investigates how food marks our experiences and identities; the boundaries between heritage and memory; and the ethics and environmental pressures around gathering and consuming food.

Bite by Bite offers a rich and textured kaleidoscope of vignettes and visions into the world of food and nature, drawn together by intimate and funny personal reflections and Fumi Nakamura’s gorgeous imagery and illustration.]]> 224 Aimee Nezhukumatathil 0063282267 Cat 5 World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, and Other Astonishments, so you can imagine my delight when I found out her next book would be about food. Its exquisite illustrations and essays do not disappoint. Nezhukumatathil draws on her family cuisines as the daughter of Filipino and Indian immigrants; some of the finest chapters are those focused on mango, jackfruit, kaong (a fruit I was not familiar with), and halo halo. She uses each food to spark an anecdote from her past or to reflect on intermingled legacies of pain and pleasure: squirming with embarrassment when her mother made lumpia for a sleepover birthday party featuring pizza (young Aimee ended up eating the lumpa and refusing the shame of assimilation ideologies); harvesting cherries while a threatening man attempted to pick her up; eating waffles with her sons while reeling from reports of a school shooting; celebrating the aromatics of vanilla beans while telling the story of the enslaved boy who figured out how to pollinate them (and the story of the white man who tried to claim his accomplishment); counterposing a watermelon festival and its community ethics with the terrible beauty of a cottonfield in the Deep South; describing the conviviality of a Southern crawfish boil and also the subtle bitterness of this crustaceans' taste because of the cortisol they produce when they are boiled alive (Nezhukumatathil no longer eats them). Throughout the essay, you can feel both Nezhukumatathil's deep love for her family--her parents, her sister, her husband, her sons--and for found family (Asian American friends, fellow poets, and more); one of the profound insights of her treatment of food is that food and flavor are in part how we create these bonds and memories, but each "bite," as her title captures, also vanishes. Like Proust's madeleine, food both creates the emotional and sensorial intensity of the past and memorializes that each moment passes, that we can recall them through flavor and scent and yet never relive them. Nezhukumatathil is keenly aware of her sons growing up, and I feel like this melancholy but celebratory tenor permeates every essay. Sweetness and sorrow go hand in hand. A gorgeous book from an important writer.]]> 4.03 2024 Bite by Bite: Nourishments and Jamborees
author: Aimee Nezhukumatathil
name: Cat
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/05/07
date added: 2024/05/08
shelves:
review:
I love World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, and Other Astonishments, so you can imagine my delight when I found out her next book would be about food. Its exquisite illustrations and essays do not disappoint. Nezhukumatathil draws on her family cuisines as the daughter of Filipino and Indian immigrants; some of the finest chapters are those focused on mango, jackfruit, kaong (a fruit I was not familiar with), and halo halo. She uses each food to spark an anecdote from her past or to reflect on intermingled legacies of pain and pleasure: squirming with embarrassment when her mother made lumpia for a sleepover birthday party featuring pizza (young Aimee ended up eating the lumpa and refusing the shame of assimilation ideologies); harvesting cherries while a threatening man attempted to pick her up; eating waffles with her sons while reeling from reports of a school shooting; celebrating the aromatics of vanilla beans while telling the story of the enslaved boy who figured out how to pollinate them (and the story of the white man who tried to claim his accomplishment); counterposing a watermelon festival and its community ethics with the terrible beauty of a cottonfield in the Deep South; describing the conviviality of a Southern crawfish boil and also the subtle bitterness of this crustaceans' taste because of the cortisol they produce when they are boiled alive (Nezhukumatathil no longer eats them). Throughout the essay, you can feel both Nezhukumatathil's deep love for her family--her parents, her sister, her husband, her sons--and for found family (Asian American friends, fellow poets, and more); one of the profound insights of her treatment of food is that food and flavor are in part how we create these bonds and memories, but each "bite," as her title captures, also vanishes. Like Proust's madeleine, food both creates the emotional and sensorial intensity of the past and memorializes that each moment passes, that we can recall them through flavor and scent and yet never relive them. Nezhukumatathil is keenly aware of her sons growing up, and I feel like this melancholy but celebratory tenor permeates every essay. Sweetness and sorrow go hand in hand. A gorgeous book from an important writer.
]]> The Hunter (Cal Hooper, #2) 174156145
Cal Hooper took early retirement from Chicago PD and moved to rural Ireland looking for peace. He’s found it, more or he’s built a relationship with a local woman, Lena, and he’s gradually turning Trey Reddy from a half-feral teenager into a good kid going good places. But then Trey’s long-absent father reappears, bringing along an English millionaire and a scheme to find gold in the townland, and suddenly everything the three of them have been building is under threat. Cal and Lena are both ready to do whatever it takes to protect Trey, but Trey doesn’t want protecting. What she wants is revenge.

A nuanced, atmospheric tale that explores what we’ll do for our loved ones, what we’ll do for revenge, and what we sacrifice when the two collide.]]> 467 Tana French 0593493435 Cat 5 The Searcher on here, although I read it, and perhaps not coincidentally, I then also didn't remember it at all. Kudos to French for incorporating the "previously on Cal Moves to Ireland" seamlessly and subtly, so that I was quickly brought up to speed without feeling like I was bludgeoned with exposition. French creates a real sense of menace about superficially bucolic small-town life. The skin-deep jocularity of a brutal character like Mart comes through beautifully; one suspects that French's experience as an actor has given her a particularly deft ear for dialogue. The best part, though, which leads me to hide this review because of spoilers, even though I'm going to be vague and circumlocutory, is the resolution of the plot, which I didn't see coming though it was right there before my eyes. French reminds the reader of their own narrative expectations and the sexism that shapes our reception of characters. I missed the murderer in plain sight because I had diminished her to a victim in my own imagination. A brilliant twist and renovation of genre expectations.]]> 3.95 2024 The Hunter (Cal Hooper, #2)
author: Tana French
name: Cat
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/04/29
date added: 2024/05/05
shelves:
review:
Somehow I never reviewed The Searcher on here, although I read it, and perhaps not coincidentally, I then also didn't remember it at all. Kudos to French for incorporating the "previously on Cal Moves to Ireland" seamlessly and subtly, so that I was quickly brought up to speed without feeling like I was bludgeoned with exposition. French creates a real sense of menace about superficially bucolic small-town life. The skin-deep jocularity of a brutal character like Mart comes through beautifully; one suspects that French's experience as an actor has given her a particularly deft ear for dialogue. The best part, though, which leads me to hide this review because of spoilers, even though I'm going to be vague and circumlocutory, is the resolution of the plot, which I didn't see coming though it was right there before my eyes. French reminds the reader of their own narrative expectations and the sexism that shapes our reception of characters. I missed the murderer in plain sight because I had diminished her to a victim in my own imagination. A brilliant twist and renovation of genre expectations.
]]> <![CDATA[The Name of the Wind (The Kingkiller Chronicle, #1)]]> 186074
The intimate narrative of his childhood in a troupe of traveling players, his years spent as a near-feral orphan in a crime-ridden city, his daringly brazen yet successful bid to enter a legendary school of magic, and his life as a fugitive after the murder of a king form a gripping coming-of-age story unrivaled in recent literature.

A high-action story written with a poet's hand, The Name of the Wind is a masterpiece that will transport readers into the body and mind of a wizard.]]> 662 Patrick Rothfuss 075640407X Cat 0 to-read 4.52 2007 The Name of the Wind (The Kingkiller Chronicle, #1)
author: Patrick Rothfuss
name: Cat
average rating: 4.52
book published: 2007
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/05/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Natural History 60165427 Natural History, Andrea Barrett completes the beautiful arc of intertwined lives of a family of scientists, teachers, and innovators that she has been weaving through multiple books since her National Book Award–winning collection, Ship Fever. The six exquisite stories in Natural History are set largely in a small community in central New York state and portray some of her most beloved characters, spanning the decades between the Civil War to the present day. In “Henrietta and Her Moths,� a woman tends to an insect nursery as her sister’s life follows a different path. In “Open House,� a young man grapples with a choice between a thrilling life spent discovering fossils and a desire to remain close to home. And in the magnificent title novella, “Natural History,� Barrett deepens the connection between her characters, bringing us through to the present day and providing an unforgettable capstone.


Told with Barrett’s characteristic elegance, passion for science, and wonderful eye for the natural world, the psychologically astute and moving stories gathered in this collection evoke the ways women’s lives and expectations—in families, in work, and in love—have shifted across a century and more. Building upon one another, these tales brilliantly culminate to reveal how the smallest events of the past can have large reverberations across the generations, and how potent, wondrous, and strange the relationship between history and memory can be.]]> 208 Andrea Barrett 1324035196 Cat 5 Ship Fever: Stories, but I remember devouring it (even though now I revisit my review and see a temperate four-star rating?) and feeling a sense of delighted recognition in encountering the author's style. This doesn't happen often, but every once in a while, an author's voice will make me feel like I've encountered someone both like-minded and heightened enough (not pretentiously--just creatively) that I'm giddily dizzy from the view. I've garbled metaphors there, but suffice it to say that the impression of the author from Ship Fever stayed with me like a friend. And I was not disappointed in this collection, which I won't hesitate to give five stars. Barrett interlaces the stories of a small-town science teacher in upstate New York with the intergenerational adventures of her family. The perspectives shift and so too does the historical context, but never does Barrett lose her sense of the indelible decisions people make through momentary impulse or of the secret passions that sculpt a lifetime that seems controlled on the surface. Barrett uses her love of scientific investigation--and particularly of women in science--to intensify her metaphors of experiment and delving beneath the surface. In one of the most memorable scenes, a child tries to see if she could slice into her baby sister like a chrysalis. I think that might well describe Barrett's approach to character in her fiction, and if that sounds off-putting, it shouldn't. She approaches her characters' metamorphoses with love and awe. I deeply enjoyed these interlacing stories.]]> 3.73 2022 Natural History
author: Andrea Barrett
name: Cat
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2024/04/16
date added: 2024/04/21
shelves:
review:
I'm not sure why I picked up Ship Fever: Stories, but I remember devouring it (even though now I revisit my review and see a temperate four-star rating?) and feeling a sense of delighted recognition in encountering the author's style. This doesn't happen often, but every once in a while, an author's voice will make me feel like I've encountered someone both like-minded and heightened enough (not pretentiously--just creatively) that I'm giddily dizzy from the view. I've garbled metaphors there, but suffice it to say that the impression of the author from Ship Fever stayed with me like a friend. And I was not disappointed in this collection, which I won't hesitate to give five stars. Barrett interlaces the stories of a small-town science teacher in upstate New York with the intergenerational adventures of her family. The perspectives shift and so too does the historical context, but never does Barrett lose her sense of the indelible decisions people make through momentary impulse or of the secret passions that sculpt a lifetime that seems controlled on the surface. Barrett uses her love of scientific investigation--and particularly of women in science--to intensify her metaphors of experiment and delving beneath the surface. In one of the most memorable scenes, a child tries to see if she could slice into her baby sister like a chrysalis. I think that might well describe Barrett's approach to character in her fiction, and if that sounds off-putting, it shouldn't. She approaches her characters' metamorphoses with love and awe. I deeply enjoyed these interlacing stories.
]]> <![CDATA[Can't We Talk about Something More Pleasant?]]> 18594409 #1 New York Times Bestseller

2014 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST

In her first memoir, Roz Chast brings her signature wit to the topic of aging parents. Spanning the last several years of their lives and told through four-color cartoons, family photos, and documents, and a narrative as rife with laughs as it is with tears, Chast's memoir is both comfort and comic relief for anyone experiencing the life-altering loss of elderly parents.

When it came to her elderly mother and father, Roz held to the practices of denial, avoidance, and distraction. But when Elizabeth Chast climbed a ladder to locate an old souvenir from the "crazy closet"—with predictable results—the tools that had served Roz well through her parents' seventies, eighties, and into their early nineties could no longer be deployed.

While the particulars are Chast-ian in their idiosyncrasies—an anxious father who had relied heavily on his wife for stability as he slipped into dementia and a former assistant principal mother whose overbearing personality had sidelined Roz for decades—the themes are universal: adult children accepting a parental role; aging and unstable parents leaving a family home for an institution; dealing with uncomfortable physical intimacies; managing logistics; and hiring strangers to provide the most personal care.

An amazing portrait of two lives at their end and an only child coping as best she can, Can't We Talk about Something More Pleasant will show the full range of Roz Chast's talent as cartoonist and storyteller.]]> 228 Roz Chast 1608198065 Cat 5 4.15 2014 Can't We Talk about Something More Pleasant?
author: Roz Chast
name: Cat
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2014
rating: 5
read at: 2024/04/07
date added: 2024/04/21
shelves:
review:
As an only child who will be responsible for her aging parents, this book spoke to me. The title draws attention to how little we talk about these financial, logistical, and medical problems as a society. Chast is unshrinking about her own anxieties and frustrations navigating the process of dying with her parents. She juxtaposes personal photos with comic daydreams--like one particularly memorable frame when she imagines what it would be like if the twilight years were actually pleasant (endless ice cream). Her parents both come across as zany and also as complex people, and her own ambivalence takes center stage in her rendering. She uses the form of the comic strip to introduce the "pleasant" (or at least the pleasure) of laughter to ameliorate what is finally such a hard thing: managing the failing bodies of people who have had a near-mythic impact on your own and finally facing their mortality (and yours). But in the end, Chast doesn't try to dodge mourning with humor or caricature. Her visual style changes, and so too does the mood of the book. I found the conclusion both beautiful and moving, and I know I will carry this with me as I face my own versions of these struggles.
]]> Wash Day Diaries 58739572 From writer Jamila Rowser and artist Robyn Smith comes a captivating graphic novel love letter to the beauty and endurance of Black women, their friendships, and their hair.

Wash Day Diaries tells the story of four best friends—Kim, Tanisha, Davene, and Cookie—through five connected short story comics that follow these young women through the ups and downs of their daily lives in the Bronx.

The book takes its title from the wash day experience shared by Black women everywhere of setting aside all plans and responsibilities for a full day of washing, conditioning, and nourishing their hair. Each short story uses hair routines as a window into these four characters' everyday lives and how they care for each other.

Jamila Rowser and Robyn Smith originally kickstarted their critically acclaimed, award-winning slice of life mini comic, Wash Day, inspired by Rowser's own wash day ritual and their shared desire to see more comics featuring the daily lived experiences of young Black women. Wash Day Diaries includes an updated, full color version of this original comic—which follows Kim, a 26-year-old woman living in the Bronx—as the book's first chapter and expands into a graphic novel with short stories about these vibrant and relatable new characters.

In expanding the story of Kim and her friends, the authors pay tribute to Black sisterhood through portraits of shared, yet deeply personal experiences of Black hair care. From self-care to spilling the tea at an hours-long salon appointment to healing family rifts, the stories are brought to life through beautifully drawn characters and different color palettes reflecting the mood in each story.

At times touching, quiet, triumphant, and laugh out loud funny, the stories of Wash Day Diaries pay a loving tribute to Black joy and the resilience of Black women.]]> 192 Jamila Rowser 1797205455 Cat 4 4.34 2022 Wash Day Diaries
author: Jamila Rowser
name: Cat
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2024/03/28
date added: 2024/04/21
shelves:
review:
A really warm depiction of a group of Black women friends, their love lives, and their family dilemmas. I loved the use of hair to structure the unfolding of narrative time and to reinforce tender relationships between the characters. Also, the color palette was sumptuous: purples, pinks, magentas, oranges, and yellows. Rowser handles topics like mental health stigma and racism within the Dominican community deftly and poignantly. A celebratory feel to the whole as Black women show up for each other.
]]> Penny: A Graphic Memoir 55102986
This colorful graphic novel features the philosophical and existential musings of a cat named Penny.

Told through a collection of stories, A Graphic Memoir wanders through her colorful imagination as she recalls her humble beginnings on the streets of New York and waxes poetic about the realities of her sheltered life living in an apartment with her owners.

Filled with ennui, angst, and vivid dreams, Penny proves that being a cat is more profound than we once thought. A unique blend of high art and humor, A Graphic Memoir perfectly portrays one cat's struggles between her animal instincts, her philosophical reflections, and the lush creature comforts of a life with human servants.

� DISTINCTIVE, BEAUTIFUL, AND Reading like a highbrow Garfield, this unique dose of sardonic wit and cat content combines humor and storytelling with Karl Stevens' very realistic illustration style. Fresh and imaginative, this graphic novel feels familiar and accessible, featuring one of the world's most beloved animals.
� IMPRESSIVE AND DECORATED Karl Stevens has written four graphic novels, and his comics have appeared regularly in the New Yorker, Village Voice , and Boston Phoenix . His work has been well received all around, and The Lodger was a Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalist.
� UNIQUE GIFT FOR CAT For cat lovers who have all the classic cat humor books, this is something new that's both unique but familiar, combining a new voice with stunning artwork in a fresh format. For anyone who wonders what their cat is thinking, this book is pitch-perfect, and the gorgeous artwork and package make it a delightful present.]]> 152 Karl Stevens 1452183058 Cat 4 3.85 2021 Penny: A Graphic Memoir
author: Karl Stevens
name: Cat
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2024/03/21
date added: 2024/04/21
shelves:
review:
I love the comic mismatch of the realistic visual renderings of Penny the cat; the existential ennui of Penny's perspectives on the human realm, and the psychedelic breaks introduced by catnip and naps. At some points in reading this book, I was laughing so loudly that my family members came to see what was so funny. I only give it four stars rather than five stars because it felt like it petered out towards the end. Overall, I would recommend to any cat lover with a sardonic streak (and don't those two qualities go hand in hand? [paw in hand?])
]]> Nimona 23131087
Nemeses! Dragons! Science! Symbolism! All these and more await in this brilliantly subversive, sharply irreverent epic from ND Stevenson. Featuring an exclusive epilogue not seen in the web comic, along with bonus conceptual sketches and revised pages throughout, this gorgeous full-color graphic novel is perfect for the legions of fans of the web comic and is sure to win ND many new ones.

Nimona is an impulsive young shapeshifter with a knack for villainy. Lord Ballister Blackheart is a villain with a vendetta. As sidekick and supervillain, Nimona and Lord Blackheart are about to wreak some serious havoc. Their mission: prove to the kingdom that Sir Ambrosius Goldenloin and his buddies at the Institution of Law Enforcement and Heroics aren't the heroes everyone thinks they are.

But as small acts of mischief escalate into a vicious battle, Lord Blackheart realizes that Nimona's powers are as murky and mysterious as her past. And her unpredictable wild side might be more dangerous than he is willing to admit.]]> 266 N.D. Stevenson 0062278223 Cat 5
I enjoyed it throughout, although this middle-aged reader found the tiny, handwritten-looking font inside the speech bubbles very close to unreadable.]]> 4.36 2015 Nimona
author: N.D. Stevenson
name: Cat
average rating: 4.36
book published: 2015
rating: 5
read at: 2024/03/31
date added: 2024/04/01
shelves:
review:
A beautiful use of genre conventions to question who are the good guys and who are the bad guys and to celebrate the power of shapeshifting, a metaphor (at least in part) for transgenderism. Through Nimona's story, Stevenson dramatizes the trauma that comes from society's choice to denigrate that illegibility--that refusal to stay within one corporeal category--as monstrous. The graphic novel values queer relationships and bodily difference/disability, and its voice is irreverent yet also quite serious. The ending is unsentimental and bittersweet.

I enjoyed it throughout, although this middle-aged reader found the tiny, handwritten-looking font inside the speech bubbles very close to unreadable.
]]> The Glass Palace 77103 The Glass Palace tells the story of Rajkumar, a poor boy lifted on the tides of political and social chaos, who goes on to create an empire in the Burmese teak forest. When soldiers force the royal family out of the Glass Palace and into exile, Rajkumar befriends Dolly, a young woman in the court of the Burmese Queen, whose love will shape his life. He cannot forget her, and years later, as a rich man, he goes in search of her. The struggles that have made Burma, India, and Malaya the places they are today are illuminated in this wonderful novel by the writer Chitra Divakaruni calls“a master storyteller.”]]> 486 Amitav Ghosh 0375758771 Cat 0 to-read 3.99 2000 The Glass Palace
author: Amitav Ghosh
name: Cat
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2000
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/03/30
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Network Effect (The Murderbot Diaries, #5)]]> 52381770
It worries about the fragile human crew who've grown to trust it, but only where no one can see.

It tells itself that they're only a professional obligation, but when they're captured and an old friend from the past requires urgent assistance, Murderbot must choose between inertia and drastic action.

Drastic action it is, then.

]]> 350 Martha Wells 1250229863 Cat 5 4.44 2020 Network Effect (The Murderbot Diaries, #5)
author: Martha Wells
name: Cat
average rating: 4.44
book published: 2020
rating: 5
read at: 2024/03/06
date added: 2024/03/25
shelves:
review:
The ART-Murderbot rapport is right up there with Holmes and Watson (or perhaps Holmes and Mycroft with a friendship/flirtatious bond rather than a fraternal one? Both ART and Murderbot are fairly brilliant). This is one of the best installments in the series, as Murderbot experiences grief and confusion while it tries to figure out the source of the disastrous situation it encounters in an erstwhile colony. Shades of invasion of the body snatchers plus rich complications of Murderbot's relationships and even reproduction.
]]> <![CDATA[Fugitive Telemetry (The Murderbot Diaries, #6)]]> 53205854 No, I didn’t kill the dead human. If I had, I wouldn’t dump the body in the station mall.

When Murderbot discovers a dead body on Preservation Station, it knows it is going to have to assist station security to determine who the body is (was), how they were killed (that should be relatively straightforward, at least), and why (because apparently that matters to a lot of people—who knew?)

Yes, the unthinkable is about to happen: Murderbot must voluntarily speak to humans!

Again!]]> 168 Martha Wells 1250765374 Cat 4 to-read 4.25 2021 Fugitive Telemetry (The Murderbot Diaries, #6)
author: Martha Wells
name: Cat
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2024/03/09
date added: 2024/03/25
shelves: to-read
review:
I really enjoyed how much this resembled hard-boiled detective fiction of another era, and the twist in the culprit reveal was delightful. There's a lot of set-up and exposition in here, which leads to me giving it four instead of five stars, but the tone is, as ever, deliciously deadpan and wry.
]]> <![CDATA[System Collapse (The Murderbot Diaries, #7)]]> 65211701 Am I making it worse? I think I'm making it worse.

Everyone's favorite lethal SecUnit is back.

Following the events in Network Effect, the Barish-Estranza corporation has sent rescue ships to a newly-colonized planet in peril, as well as additional SecUnits. But if there’s an ethical corporation out there, Murderbot has yet to find it, and if Barish-Estranza can’t have the planet, they’re sure as hell not leaving without something. If that something just happens to be an entire colony of humans, well, a free workforce is a decent runner-up prize.

But there’s something wrong with Murderbot; it isn’t running within normal operational parameters. ART’s crew and the humans from Preservation are doing everything they can to protect the colonists, but with Barish-Estranza’s SecUnit-heavy persuasion teams, they’re going to have to hope Murderbot figures out what’s wrong with itself, and fast.

Yeah, this plan is... not going to work.]]> 245 Martha Wells 1250826977 Cat 4 to-read 4.19 2023 System Collapse (The Murderbot Diaries, #7)
author: Martha Wells
name: Cat
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/03/25
date added: 2024/03/25
shelves: to-read
review:
Also very exposition-y (hence the four instead of five stars), but I particularly liked that Wells is teasing out the significance of Murderbot hacking their governor module (and passing that information to others). She also has a lovely subplot in here about the importance of narrative storytelling--both fiction and documentary--for empowering people. And I like the nod to Murderbot's PTSD and need for trauma therapy. There were a lot of chase scenes, and the geography of the colony with the remnant alien material is a bit belabored for my taste. But overall, I love Murderbot and hope this isn't the end (though the final line would make for a good ending if it is!).
]]> Secrets of the Octopus 179270378
This new book—written by the beloved author of the international bestseller The Soul of an Octopus and enhanced with vivid National Geographic photography—brings us closer than ever to these elusive creatures.

The companion to the highly-anticipated National Geographic television special, this beautifully illustrated book explores the alluring underwater world of the octopus—a creature that resembles an alien lifeform, but whose behavior has earned it a reputation as one of the most intelligent animals on the planet.

This magical journey into the world of the octopus will reveal how the large and capable brain of these creatures occupies their whole body–not just their heads—and they can actually adjust their genetic makeup to respond to the demands of the environment. It will allow readers to watch them change shape and color in order to camouflage themselves more effectively than any other species. And it will divulge how octopus mothers give their all in order to bring forth a new generation.

With this offering, acclaimed author Sy Montgomery—known, thanks to her bestselling book, as the “octopus whisperer”—returns to the species she knows and loves, offering current and compassionate stories about the scientists on the front lines of octopus research and conservation.

For all animal lovers—and especially those drawn to this magical marine being—this will be a book to relish, for both its fascinating imagery and its charming storytelling.]]> 192 Sy Montgomery 1426223722 Cat 0 to-read 4.42 2024 Secrets of the Octopus
author: Sy Montgomery
name: Cat
average rating: 4.42
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/03/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Lessons for Survival: Mothering Against "The Apocalypse"]]> 60741795 Award-winning author and critic Emily Raboteau uses the lens of motherhood to craft a powerfully moving meditation on race, climate, environmental justice―and what it takes to find shelter.

Lessons for Survival is a probing series of pilgrimages from the perspective of a mother struggling to raise her children to thrive without coming undone in an era of turbulent intersecting crises.

With camera in hand, Raboteau goes in search of birds, fluttering in the air or painted on buildings, and ways her children may safely play in city parks while avoiding pollution, pandemics, and the police. She ventures abroad to learn from Indigenous peoples, and in her own family and community discovers the most intimate meanings of resilience. Raboteau bears witness to the inner life of Black womenhood, motherhood, and to the brutalities and possibilities of cities, while celebrating the beauty and fragility of nature. This innovative work of reportage and autobiography stitches together multiple stories of protection, offering a profound sense of hope.]]> 304 Emily Raboteau 1250809762 Cat 0 to-read 4.06 2024 Lessons for Survival: Mothering Against "The Apocalypse"
author: Emily Raboteau
name: Cat
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/03/13
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Exit Strategy (The Murderbot Diaries, #4)]]> 35519109
Having traveled the width of the galaxy to unearth details of its own murderous transgressions, as well as those of the GrayCris Corporation, Murderbot is heading home to help Dr. Mensah—its former owner (protector? friend?)—submit evidence that could prevent GrayCris from destroying more colonists in its never-ending quest for profit.

But who’s going to believe a SecUnit gone rogue?

And what will become of it when it’s caught?]]> 163 Martha Wells Cat 5
I'm so glad this one didn't turn out to be the end of the series after all!]]> 4.38 2018 Exit Strategy (The Murderbot Diaries, #4)
author: Martha Wells
name: Cat
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2018
rating: 5
read at: 2024/03/05
date added: 2024/03/05
shelves:
review:
Murderbot returns to the beginning, as Dr. Mensah has been taken captive and needs their help. Come for the exciting fight scenes (all right, I'll admit it, I often lose track of what's happening in the exciting fight scenes because I don't tell to be battle-oriented, though Wells is impressive in shaping the fights around Murderbot's strategies and reactions, making them as engagingly as humanly [botly?] possible) and stay for the ambivalent (yet intense) emotions as Murderbot tries to figure out what they want for their destiny and what kinds of connections they can have with the humans they have fought for.

I'm so glad this one didn't turn out to be the end of the series after all!
]]> <![CDATA[Rogue Protocol (The Murderbot Diaries, #3)]]> 35519101
And Murderbot would rather those questions went away. For good.

]]> 158 Martha Wells 1250191785 Cat 5 Rogue Protocol shows our hero Murderbot confronting their past and also their feelings about the possibility that a human and a bot could have a meaningful connection that isn't employment or exploitation. ]]> 4.21 2018 Rogue Protocol (The Murderbot Diaries, #3)
author: Martha Wells
name: Cat
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2018
rating: 5
read at: 2024/03/01
date added: 2024/03/05
shelves:
review:
These books are just utter delights, and I will confess that they are starting to blur together for me (as I finished #4 today), so this review will be terse at best (but perhaps that is appropriate for our narrator?). Rogue Protocol shows our hero Murderbot confronting their past and also their feelings about the possibility that a human and a bot could have a meaningful connection that isn't employment or exploitation.
]]> Power 606098 248 Linda Hogan 0393319687 Cat 0 to-read 3.85 1998 Power
author: Linda Hogan
name: Cat
average rating: 3.85
book published: 1998
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/02/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Home: Habitat, Range, Niche, Territory (The Murderbot Diaries, #4.5)]]> 57623348 Home: Habitat, Range, Niche, Territory was originally given free to readers who pre-ordered Martha’s Murderbot novel, Network Effect, the fifth entry in the series. The events occur just after the fourth novella, Exit Strategy.

At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.]]> 19 Martha Wells 125083886X Cat 0 to-read 4.03 2020 Home: Habitat, Range, Niche, Territory (The Murderbot Diaries, #4.5)
author: Martha Wells
name: Cat
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/02/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Artificial Condition (The Murderbot Diaries, #2)]]> 36223860 alternate cover for ISBN 9781250186928

It has a dark past � one in which a number of humans were killed. A past that caused it to christen itself “Murderbot." But it has only vague memories of the massacre that spawned that title, and it wants to know more.

Teaming up with a Research Transport vessel named ART (you don’t want to know what the “A� stands for), Murderbot heads to the mining facility where it went rogue.

What it discovers will forever change the way it thinks.]]> 158 Martha Wells Cat 5 4.23 2018 Artificial Condition (The Murderbot Diaries, #2)
author: Martha Wells
name: Cat
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2018
rating: 5
read at: 2024/02/22
date added: 2024/02/25
shelves:
review:
Murderbot makes a friend!! A transport with an advanced intelligence system and a craving for episodic streaming content. This one reads like hard-boiled detective fiction as Murderbot both tries to uncover the story of the violence they were involved in before going rogue and also to maneuver an unwary group of young humans through negotiations with a ruthless corporation. Really satisfying--perhaps even more than the first one because of the banter between the transport and Murderbot.
]]> <![CDATA[All Systems Red (The Murderbot Diaries, #1)]]> 32758901 "As a heartless killing machine, I was a complete failure."

In a corporate-dominated space-faring future, planetary missions must be approved and supplied by the Company. For their own safety, exploratory teams are accompanied by Company-supplied security androids. But in a society where contracts are awarded to the lowest bidder, safety isn’t a primary concern.

On a distant planet, a team of scientists is conducting surface tests, shadowed by their Company-supplied ‘droid--a self-aware SecUnit that has hacked its own governor module and refers to itself (though never out loud) as “Murderbot.� Scornful of humans, Murderbot wants is to be left alone long enough to figure out who it is, but when a neighboring mission goes dark, it's up to the scientists and Murderbot to get to the truth.]]> 144 Martha Wells Cat 5 Aliens conspiracy atmosphere. Murderbot's desire to watch streaming content, avoid eye contact, and, in spite of all the weary predictions about their poor judgment, help the humans is just delightful.]]> 4.11 2017 All Systems Red (The Murderbot Diaries, #1)
author: Martha Wells
name: Cat
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2017
rating: 5
read at: 2024/02/19
date added: 2024/02/25
shelves:
review:
A wonderfully wry and perpetually uncomfortable cyborg narrator with just the right amount of Aliens conspiracy atmosphere. Murderbot's desire to watch streaming content, avoid eye contact, and, in spite of all the weary predictions about their poor judgment, help the humans is just delightful.
]]> <![CDATA[The Quickening: Creation and Community at the Ends of the Earth]]> 123207191 An astonishing, vital book about Antarctica, climate change, and motherhood from the author of Rising, finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in General Nonfiction.

In 2019, fifty-seven scientists and crew set out onboard the Nathaniel B. Palmer. Their destination: Thwaites Glacier. Their goal: to learn as much as possible about this mysterious place, never before visited by humans, and believed to be both rapidly deteriorating and capable of making a catastrophic impact on global sea-level rise.

In The Quickening, Elizabeth Rush documents their voyage, offering the sublime—seeing an iceberg for the first time; the staggering waves of the Drake Passage; the torqued, unfamiliar contours of Thwaites—alongside the workaday moments of this groundbreaking expedition. A ping-pong tournament at sea. Long hours in the lab. All the effort that goes into caring for and protecting human life in a place that is inhospitable to it. Along the way, she takes readers on a personal journey around a more intimate question: What does it mean to bring a child into the world at this time of radical change?

What emerges is a new kind of Antarctica story, one preoccupied not with flag planting but with the collective and challenging work of imagining a better future. With understanding the language of a continent where humans have only been present for two centuries. With the contributions and concerns of women, who were largely excluded from voyages until the last few decades, and of crew members of color, whose labor has often gone unrecognized. The Quickening teems with their voices—with the colorful stories and personalities of Rush’s shipmates—in a thrilling chorus.

Urgent and brave, absorbing and vulnerable, The Quickening is another essential book from Elizabeth Rush.]]> 424 Elizabeth Rush 1571313966 Cat 0 to-read 4.06 2023 The Quickening: Creation and Community at the Ends of the Earth
author: Elizabeth Rush
name: Cat
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/02/23
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Sun of Blood and Ruin (Sun of Blood and Ruin, #1)]]> 70240500
A new legend begins...

In sixteenth-century New Spain, witchcraft is punishable by death, indigenous temples have been destroyed, and tales of mythical creatures that once roamed the land have become whispers in the night. Hidden behind a mask, Pantera uses her magic and legendary swordplay skills to fight the tyranny of Spanish rule.

To all who know her, Leonora de Las Casas Tlazohtzin never leaves the palace and is promised to the heir of the Spanish throne. The respectable, law-abiding Lady Leonora faints at the sight of blood and would rather be caught dead than meddle in court affairs.

No one suspects that Leonora and Pantera are the same person. Leonora's charade is tragically good, and with magic running through her veins, she is nearly invincible. Nearly. Despite her mastery, she is destined to die young in battle, as predicted by a seer.

When an ancient prophecy of destruction threatens to come true, Leonora--and therefore Pantera--is forced to decide: surrender the mask or fight to the end. Knowing she is doomed to a short life, she is tempted to take the former option. But the legendary Pantera is destined for more than an early grave, and once she discovers the truth of her origins, not even death will stop her.]]> 384 Mariely Lares Cat 0 to-read 3.18 2024 Sun of Blood and Ruin (Sun of Blood and Ruin, #1)
author: Mariely Lares
name: Cat
average rating: 3.18
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/02/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Another Person 62642517
So Jina returns to Anjin University, and to the toxic culture that destroyed the lives of many female students including one, Ha Yuri, who died tragically and mysteriously not long before Jina left. Somewhere within Jina's memories is the truth about what happened to Yuri all those years ago. Told in alternative viewpoints, in sharp, intelligent and multi-layered prose, this powerful and necessary novel confronts issues of sexism and abuse on university campuses.]]> 288 Kang Hwagil 1782279350 Cat 0 to-read 3.68 2017 Another Person
author: Kang Hwagil
name: Cat
average rating: 3.68
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/02/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Praisesong for the Kitchen Ghosts: Stories and Recipes from Five Generations of Black Country Cooks]]> 123286433
People are always surprised that Black people reside in the hills of Appalachia. Those not surprised that we were there, are surprised that we stayed.

Years ago, when O. Henry Prize-winning writer Crystal Wilkinson was baking a jam cake, shefelt her late grandmother’s presence. She soon realized that she was not the only cook in herkitchen; there were her ancestors, too, stirring, measuring, and braising alongside her. These areher kitchen ghosts, five generations of Black women who settled in Appalachia and made a life,a legacy, and a cuisine.

An expert cook, Wilkinson shares nearly forty family recipes rooted deep in the past, full offlavor—delicious favorites including Corn Pudding, Chicken and Dumplings, GrannyChristine’s Jam Cake, and Praisesong Biscuits , brought to vivid life through stunningphotography. Together, Praisesong for the Kitchen Ghosts honors the mothers who came before,the land that provided for generations of her family, and the untold heritage of Black Appalachia.

As the keeper of her family’s stories and treasured dishes,Wilkinson shares her inheritance in Praisesong for the Kitchen Ghosts. She found their stories in her apron pockets, floating inside the steam of hot mustard greens and tucked into the sweet scent of clove and cinnamon in her kitchen. Part memoir, part cookbook, Praisesong for the Kitchen Ghosts weaves those stories together with recipes, family photos, and a lyrical imagination to present a culinary portrait of a family that has lived and worked the earth of the mountains for over a century.]]> 256 Crystal Wilkinson 0593236513 Cat 5 Love Child's Hotbed of Occasional Poetry: Poems & Artifacts, which is appropriate, since Wilkinson and Finney are friends and used to work together at the MFA program at University of Kentucky. By understanding intergenerational Black women's legacies through gardening, foraging, and cooking, Wilkinson at once pays homage to the ingenuity and expertise that went into survival both in and beyond enslavement, and she also nods to the labor and exhaustion that have been Black women's lot, never sacrificing the one to the other in her loving yet exacting appraisal. Wilkinson writes of loss--her mother's death, the family farm sold off, pandemic isolation--and uses the figure of ghosts to think through how grief and creativity, death and sustenance are connected. It's a beautiful book with an ecological as well as a Black feminist sensibility. I was very moved by the echoes between the recipes found there (pots of beans, skillet cornbread) and the recipes that graced my white Alabaman sharecropper grandmother's table, though my family's roots are in the red clay of Alabama instead of the mountains of Kentucky.]]> 4.36 2024 Praisesong for the Kitchen Ghosts: Stories and Recipes from Five Generations of Black Country Cooks
author: Crystal Wilkinson
name: Cat
average rating: 4.36
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/02/14
date added: 2024/02/15
shelves:
review:
I love the generic combinations of this book, which is at once a personal and familial memoir, a cookbook, and a speculative history. Its echoes of the family album or scrapbook remind me of Nikky Finney's Love Child's Hotbed of Occasional Poetry: Poems & Artifacts, which is appropriate, since Wilkinson and Finney are friends and used to work together at the MFA program at University of Kentucky. By understanding intergenerational Black women's legacies through gardening, foraging, and cooking, Wilkinson at once pays homage to the ingenuity and expertise that went into survival both in and beyond enslavement, and she also nods to the labor and exhaustion that have been Black women's lot, never sacrificing the one to the other in her loving yet exacting appraisal. Wilkinson writes of loss--her mother's death, the family farm sold off, pandemic isolation--and uses the figure of ghosts to think through how grief and creativity, death and sustenance are connected. It's a beautiful book with an ecological as well as a Black feminist sensibility. I was very moved by the echoes between the recipes found there (pots of beans, skillet cornbread) and the recipes that graced my white Alabaman sharecropper grandmother's table, though my family's roots are in the red clay of Alabama instead of the mountains of Kentucky.
]]> Warrior Girl Unearthed 61675933
Thankfully she has the other outcasts of the summer program, Team Misfit Toys, and even her twin sister Pauline. Together they ace obstacle courses, plan vigils for missing women in the community, and make sure summer doesn’t feel so lost after all.

But when she attends a meeting at a local university, Perry learns about the “Warrior Girl�, an ancestor whose bones and knife are stored in the museum archives, and everything changes. Perry has to return Warrior Girl to her tribe. Determined to help, she learns all she can about NAGPRA, the federal law that allows tribes to request the return of ancestral remains and sacred items. The university has been using legal loopholes to hold onto Warrior Girl and twelve other Anishinaabe ancestors� remains, and Perry and the Misfits won’t let it go on any longer.

Using all of their skills and resources, the Misfits realize a heist is the only way to bring back the stolen artifacts and remains for good. But there is more to this repatriation than meets the eye as more women disappear and Pauline’s perfectionism takes a turn for the worse. As secrets and mysteries unfurl, Perry and the Misfits must fight to find a way to make things right � for the ancestors and for their community.]]> 396 Angeline Boulley 1250766583 Cat 0 to-read 4.31 2023 Warrior Girl Unearthed
author: Angeline Boulley
name: Cat
average rating: 4.31
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/02/14
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A Prayer for the Crown-Shy (Monk & Robot, #2)]]> 40864030
They hope to find the answers they seek, while making new friends, learning new concepts, and experiencing the entropic nature of the universe.

Becky Chambers's new series continues to ask: in a world where people have what they want, does having more even matter?

They're going to need to ask it a lot.]]> 152 Becky Chambers Cat 4 4.40 2022 A Prayer for the Crown-Shy (Monk & Robot, #2)
author: Becky Chambers
name: Cat
average rating: 4.40
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2024/02/12
date added: 2024/02/12
shelves:
review:
This was lovely! I think this book would be perfect for a literature and the environment class, thinking through its use of utopia to imagine sustaining and respectful ecological and social relationships. Chambers gets into the nitty gritty of the biodegradable materials that her character use in their post-industrial landscape, and her robot, Mosscap, thinks carefully about what he is ethically entitled to do for repairs (or when his own extinction would be preferable), just as he mourns the fish that dies when they go fishing. The colorful salvage aesthetic that Chambers celebrates in her place-making takes precedence over the City, which other characters see as crucial to understanding humanity, but Mosscap and Dex feel estranged from. Through understated gender non-binarism, joyful and non-possessive sexual encounters, and polyamorous homesteads, Chambers quietly creates the view that trying not to do damage while meeting needs and desires in the world connects queerness and sustainability. Perhaps most moving of all is the conclusion of the book that insists on how essential friendship is to the uncomfortable (and ongoing) quest for impossible self-knowledge and self-acceptance. It's a slim and cozy book, but there is a lot in it, and both of the slender novels in the duology (for now...will there be a third?) are a pleasure to read.
]]> When Women Were Dragons 58783802 A rollicking feminist tale set in 1950s America where thousands of women have spontaneously transformed into dragons, exploding notions of a woman’s place in the world and expanding minds about accepting others for who they really are.

The first adult novel by the Newbery award-winning author of The Girl Who Drank the Moon.

Alex Green is a young girl in a world much like ours, except for its most seminal event: the Mass Dragoning of 1955, when hundreds of thousands of ordinary wives and mothers sprouted wings, scales, and talons; left a trail of fiery destruction in their path; and took to the skies. Was it their choice? What will become of those left behind? Why did Alex’s beloved aunt Marla transform but her mother did not? Alex doesn’t know. It’s taboo to speak of.

Forced into silence, Alex nevertheless must face the consequences of this astonishing event: a mother more protective than ever; an absentee father; the upsetting insistence that her aunt never even existed; and watching her beloved cousin Bea become dangerously obsessed with the forbidden.

In this timely and timeless speculative novel, award-winning author Kelly Barnhill boldly explores rage, memory, and the tyranny of forced limitations. When Women Were Dragons exposes a world that wants to keep women small—their lives and their prospects—and examines what happens when they rise en masse and take up the space they deserve.]]> 367 Kelly Barnhill 0385548222 Cat 4 Cat's Eye with its sense of how young girls can sometimes be complicit in their own oppression because of their tangled emotional needs. Barnhill has fun interpolating scientific documents, historical treatises, government transcripts, and other broader social views of the "dragoning" phenomenon. The allegory is multivalent--dragoning seems variously to represent women's rage, political engagement, divorce, queerness, neurodivergence, erotic bliss, and obviously can entangle several of these categories--which makes the novel more powerful and more entertaining, as you look for the resonances with Civil Rights activism, Stonewall, and more.

I only don't give the novel five stars because, even though the novel features an anecdote about Black Alabama factory workers turning into dragons during their strike, the novel as the whole features white feminism. Also, there's a bit of a Thelma and Louise problem to the male characterization: all of the men are very awful. (Apparently Barnhill was inspired by Christine Blasey Ford's testimony in the Kavanaugh hearing, so I can sympathetically understand why that is the case.) There's an odd sort of anti-climax to the conclusion of the novel that I'd love to discuss with others who have read it. While I was moved by the whole thing--and especially by the bodily descriptions of dragons--the end felt unfinished (which is maybe the point?). There are some utopian gestures (lesbian communes, group mothering, dragon-human cooperation), and there's also an indication that personal choice continues to matter (smacking of third wave feminism). But I didn't feel as swept away by the ending as by what came before.

Still, I highly recommend, especially if you have a weekend to devote to the reading. They got Lev Grossman and Bonnie Garmus to blurb the book, and those seem like exactly the right descriptors: sardonic fantasy and earnest historical-fiction feminism with some wish fulfillment thrown in for good measure.]]> 3.79 2022 When Women Were Dragons
author: Kelly Barnhill
name: Cat
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2024/02/10
date added: 2024/02/11
shelves:
review:
I loved this one! I picked this up in the middle of the night, sick with a cold and too sniffly to sleep, and I read the entire thing the next day, which gives you some sense of its power. Barnhill imagines a Cold War America where a mass group of women turned into dragons in 1955; the government is set on expunging the records of this, and domestic life resumes as usual (albeit with a lot more burnt holes in walls and logical gaps in people's explanations for their families and the absences in them). Her psychological portrait of the protagonist, Alex Green, is compelling and nuanced; it reminded me in some ways of Margaret Atwood's Cat's Eye with its sense of how young girls can sometimes be complicit in their own oppression because of their tangled emotional needs. Barnhill has fun interpolating scientific documents, historical treatises, government transcripts, and other broader social views of the "dragoning" phenomenon. The allegory is multivalent--dragoning seems variously to represent women's rage, political engagement, divorce, queerness, neurodivergence, erotic bliss, and obviously can entangle several of these categories--which makes the novel more powerful and more entertaining, as you look for the resonances with Civil Rights activism, Stonewall, and more.

I only don't give the novel five stars because, even though the novel features an anecdote about Black Alabama factory workers turning into dragons during their strike, the novel as the whole features white feminism. Also, there's a bit of a Thelma and Louise problem to the male characterization: all of the men are very awful. (Apparently Barnhill was inspired by Christine Blasey Ford's testimony in the Kavanaugh hearing, so I can sympathetically understand why that is the case.) There's an odd sort of anti-climax to the conclusion of the novel that I'd love to discuss with others who have read it. While I was moved by the whole thing--and especially by the bodily descriptions of dragons--the end felt unfinished (which is maybe the point?). There are some utopian gestures (lesbian communes, group mothering, dragon-human cooperation), and there's also an indication that personal choice continues to matter (smacking of third wave feminism). But I didn't feel as swept away by the ending as by what came before.

Still, I highly recommend, especially if you have a weekend to devote to the reading. They got Lev Grossman and Bonnie Garmus to blurb the book, and those seem like exactly the right descriptors: sardonic fantasy and earnest historical-fiction feminism with some wish fulfillment thrown in for good measure.
]]> <![CDATA[A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking]]> 54369251
But Mona’s life is turned upside down when she finds a dead body on the bakery floor. An assassin is stalking the streets of Mona’s city, preying on magic folk, and it appears that Mona is his next target. And in an embattled city suddenly bereft of wizards, the assassin may be the least of Mona’s worries…]]> 306 T. Kingfisher 1614505241 Cat 4 Ursula Vernon was asked by her publisher to invent a pen name, so that her YA and adult's fiction would not be confused with her lighter fare for younger audiences. To me, this still seems light--frothy like an active sourdough starter!--though there is a darker undercurrent as the protagonist Mona figures out that she can't count on her government to save her and that often the people lauded as heroes gain this status because of other people's mistakes and oversights that put them out on a limb in real danger. Even though I like this political angle and the agency that Kingfisher gives her fourteen-year-old heroine, I mainly like the playful touches: the cannibalistic sourdough starter as covert assassin, a sassy gingerbread man as Mona's second in command, giant dough golems (shades of Ghostbuster's Staypuft marshmallow man). Dark enough to be compelling, imaginative, even silly enough to be a very quick read.]]> 4.02 2020 A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking
author: T. Kingfisher
name: Cat
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2024/02/11
date added: 2024/02/11
shelves:
review:
I really enjoyed this one! Apparently children's author Ursula Vernon was asked by her publisher to invent a pen name, so that her YA and adult's fiction would not be confused with her lighter fare for younger audiences. To me, this still seems light--frothy like an active sourdough starter!--though there is a darker undercurrent as the protagonist Mona figures out that she can't count on her government to save her and that often the people lauded as heroes gain this status because of other people's mistakes and oversights that put them out on a limb in real danger. Even though I like this political angle and the agency that Kingfisher gives her fourteen-year-old heroine, I mainly like the playful touches: the cannibalistic sourdough starter as covert assassin, a sassy gingerbread man as Mona's second in command, giant dough golems (shades of Ghostbuster's Staypuft marshmallow man). Dark enough to be compelling, imaginative, even silly enough to be a very quick read.
]]> Bright Young Women 101124639
The survivors, including key witness Pamela Schumacher, will be forever changed by this night. They have all become victims. But they tell their perspectives here, they remain masters of their stories. And they hunt the perpetrator on their own - against resistance from the justice system and the police; against public opinion, which idolizes the serial killer.]]> 384 Jessica Knoll 1501153226 Cat 0 to-read 3.99 2023 Bright Young Women
author: Jessica Knoll
name: Cat
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/02/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Manningtree Witches 55274918
In Manningtree, depleted of men since the wars began, the women are left to their own devices. At the margins of this diminished community are those who are barely tolerated by the affluent villagers - the old, the poor, the unmarried, the sharp-tongued. Rebecca West, daughter of the formidable Beldam West, fatherless and husbandless, chafes against the drudgery of her days, livened only by her infatuation with the clerk John Edes. But then newcomer Matthew Hopkins, a mysterious, pious figure dressed from head to toe in black, takes over The Thorn Inn and begins to ask questions about the women of the margins. When a child falls ill with a fever and starts to rave about covens and pacts, the questions take on a bladed edge.

The Manningtree Witches plunges its readers into the fever and menace of the English witch trials, where suspicion, mistrust and betrayal ran amok as the power of men went unchecked and the integrity of women went undefended. It is a visceral, thrilling book that announces a bold new talent.]]> 295 A.K. Blakemore 1783786434 Cat 0 to-read 3.80 2021 The Manningtree Witches
author: A.K. Blakemore
name: Cat
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/02/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Morningside 179546766
There’s the world you can see. And then there’s the one you can’t. Welcome to the Morningside.

After being expelled from their ancestral home, Silvia and her mother finally settle at the Morningside, a crumbling luxury tower in Island City where Silvia’s aunt Ena serves as the superintendent. Silvia feels unmoored in her new life because her mother has been so diligently secretive about their family's past. Silvia knows almost nothing about the place where she was born and spent her early years, nor does she know why she and her mother had to leave. But in Ena there is an a person willing to give the young girl glimpses into the folktales of her demolished homeland, a place of natural beauty and communal spirit that is lacking in Silvia's lonely and impoverished reality.

Enchanted by Ena’s stories, Silvia begins seeing the world with magical possibilities and becomes obsessed with the mysterious older woman who lives in the penthouse of the Morningside. Bezi Duras is an enigma to everyone in the building. She has her own elevator entrance and leaves only to go out at night and walk her three massive hounds, often not returning until the early morning. Silvia’s mission to unravel the truth about this woman’s life, and her own haunted past, may end up costing her everything.

Startling, inventive, and profoundly moving, The Morningside is a novel about the stories we tell—and the stories we refuse to tell—to make sense of where we came from and who we hope we might become.]]> 287 Téa Obreht 1984855506 Cat 0 to-read 3.55 2024 The Morningside
author: Téa Obreht
name: Cat
average rating: 3.55
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/02/01
shelves: to-read
review:

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