Category: Books

2024 Media Favorites

I try to track the media I consume – I like being able to look back on what went into my brain, and remember if I enjoyed it or not. I don’t have a very cohesive method of tracking, just random scribbles in my journal. I do make longer entries for live performances, though. Here are some things that I consumed that really stood out in 2024. I don’t know if these are my absolute favorites – I find I didn’t take really good notes last year, but these were things that stayed with me (I know these lists are usually posted in January or December even, but.. here you go…)

BOOKS
I read 59 books this year, mostly fiction. I think I’ve re-discovered that I like reading paper copies of books over ebooks. Certainly over reading books on my phone. I get distracted too easily when I read books on my phone.

I DNF books a lot. Not because I don’t like them, but because something more interesting comes along and other things fall to the wayside. I tend to “hate-read” books that I don’t like because I really want to see what happens. I should maybe let that go.

Favorite Reads 2024 :
Ministry of Time by Kalaine Bradley – Time travel isn’t usually my thing. But apparently if you mix time travel with a very attractive Victorian explorer, workplace politics, and political thriller and wrap that in a story that asks questions about what really is “progress”, I guess that ends up being my jam.

Landslide by Susan Conley – I loved this book set in Maine, about a mother of two teenage boys in trying to cope when her husband is injured in a fishing accident off the coast of Nova Scotia. It’s the kind of book that quietly pierces to the core of the beauty and heartbreak of every day life.

Green Island by Shawna Yang Ryan – This book – about Taiwan under martial law, about being an immigrant in America, about how a family deals with trauma and hardship – this book felt very deeply personal to me. These were the times that my parents lived in.

The Adventures of Amina el-Sarifi – Middle aged female pirate gathering a team together to carry out one last heist while battling magical creatures. There is a lot of that description that isn’t my usual jam, but 40 year old bad ass heroines certainly are.

Untangled: Guiding Teenage Girls Through the Seven Transitions to Adulthood by Lisa Damour – Forget that cringey title, this books was super insightful for me in thinking about how to relate to my tween.

Audiobooks:
The Monsters We Defy by Lesley Penelope read by Shyana Small – I loved this audiobook so much that I borrowed the e-book from the library to read it again. I’m not one into fantasy, but the historical aspects set in 1920s DC provided a good gateway for me to sink into this story.

Ten Things That Never Happened by Alexis Hal, read by Will Watt – I really enjoy Alexis Hall’s books for their mix of humor and quirky yet human characters. Will Watt’s narration of this book upped that all for me. This cozy rom com of a book was like my favorite Richard Curtis movie in audiobook form.

PODCASTS:
I’d say next to books podcasts are the media I consume most. I tend to like podcasts that are long conversations about the human condition, or deep dives into something super niche. I do also listen to a lot of parenting podcasts.

House Calls with Vivek Murthy – I am so sad that Murthy, who was Surgeon General under Obama and Biden, will no longer be producing this podcast, what with him losing his job and all. When I think of podcasts that dissect the essence of what makes us human and how we connect to each other, this podcast is right there. I loved his interview with astronaut Kayla Barron – it’s probably my single most favorite podcast episode this year. In addition to the fascinating details on how one becomes and astronaut, Barron has so many wise words to say about life on earth. I had previously mentioned that she frames the ordinary with the extraordinary. (Fixing the treadmil… in space!) She also said something that has stuck with me about building diverse teams, and that is it’s not about diversity for the sake of diversity, it’s about bringing diversity of thought to a project. That’s so important to remember in the current anti-DEI times. Murthy’s interview with poet Ada Limon is also fantastic – it gave me a lot to think about how I spend my days. You’re going to have to find this podcast on your player because it is no longer available on the Health and Human Services website. wump wump.

Sold a Story: This series actually came out in 2022, though I found it still really relevant. It’s an investigative journalism series that looks at how children are being taught to read in America, specifically how a method that had no scientific backing was being used throughout schools.

Nice White Parents: A 5 episode podcast from 2020 that looks at how parents can shape public schools, and not necessarily for the benefit of everyone.

This is So Awkward – Cara Natterson and Vanessa Kroll Bennett are the experts I turn to when I feel like I’m failing at parenting a tween (now teenager). They provide the perfect blend of science and compassion for navigating this stage of parenting.

28-ish Days Later – podcast from the BBC that looks at the menstural cycle from both a biological and historical perspective. I especially appreciated the sentiment that our periods don’t make women weaker – after all what is stronger than being able to deal with having a different body every single day as we cycle though physical and emotional states?

MOVIES: I think I went to see two, maybe three, movies in the theatre last year. We watch movies at home, but mostly for family movie night. I find I don’t have a lot of bandwidth for watching movies on my own. As a result, most of our movie watching is not at all current.

Babes – My friend and I went to a midweek matinee of this movie last spring, when things were kind of slow at work. We laughed so so so hard at this movie. It stars Ilana Glazer and Michelle Buteau in a story about two best friends whose relationship is tested when the perpetually single one accidentally becomes pregnant. There are pregnancy jokes, pumping jokes, parenting jokes, BFF jokes… All of which fell in the “funny because it’s true” category. Was the movie stunningly original? Probably not, but that doesn’t make it any less wonderful. Why haven’t more people seen this movie????

Family Movie Night: Pizza and movie night is a staple at our place. Usually on a Friday night or a Saturday night. Some of our (MY) favorites this year that we watched with the kids (who were 12, 7, and 4):
-Night at the Museum – action and excitement
-Next Goal Wins – heartwarming soccer movie. Also Michael Fassbender is dreamy.
-Greatest Showman – we watch this at least twice a year, singing along loudly
-Barbie – subversive bubble gum fun, that had me in tears at the end.
-Mitchells vs. the Machines – Animated movies aren’t my default pick for movie night – I’m trying to watch more live action things. But this movie was delightful and heart-warming.

TELEVISION
Family TV Night: This year we really leaned into family TV night rather than family movie night. What with everyone’s activities, a 30 or 60 minute episode of something was just the right length to fit in between basketball practice and bedtime. Favorite shows we watched:
-Gallivant. WHY WHY WHY was there only two seasons of this family friendly, funny, entertaining show?
-Glee. Some of the subject matter was awkward to explain, but the musical numbers had us all bobbing along.
-Bad Batch, The Acolyte, and really anything in the Star Wars Universe. When we don’t know what to watch, Star Wars
-Star Trek: The Next Generation. When we were vacationing on an Island in Maine, we watched ST:TNG non stop for three days. It didn’t feel as dated as I thought it would.
-The Summer Olympics. So exciting to watch.
-Bluey. I don’t know why it took us this long to get into Bluey. The episodes are short and feel so true to life, perfect way to unwind before bedtime. (Like the one where the kids drop their ice cream cone and declare to dad, “It’s not fair!” and Dad says, “That’s about as fair as it gets, actually.” Made me howl with laughter.)
-Brooklyn 99 and Modern Family. When we just want to spend 22 minutes laughing.

Grown Up Show for Me: I don’t watch a whole lot of TV – mostly because I often would rather read a book at night to wind down. But I do like watching TV as I clean the kitchen, and occasionally I’ll watch something with the Husband. I for sure don’t watch all the shows that are hip or trendy or buzzy. To be honest, I feel like a lot of the stuff that everyone is watching is too violent or gritty or serious or sad for me. Like I’ll scroll through Hulu and every show seems to feature people glaring and sullen. When I do watch something, it’s usually a half hour comedy. We don’t have Netflix, but we do have Hulu, Disney, Max, Peacock, and Prime. Sometimes I feel like I’m missing out by not having Netflix, but I figure there will always be something to watch on the services that we do have, so my sense of FOMO is kind of unnecessary. Some of my favorite shows I watched in 2024:


-Starstruck (Max)- So funny and sweet and relatable, this show is about Jess who has a one night stand with a huge movie star and the fall out from that. I don’t usually like protagonists who are screw ups, but there is something so fresh and honest about Jess that I ended up loving her. I’m half way through the last season and I can’t bring myself to finish watching it because I don’t want it to end.

-Sort Of (Max)- Gender fluid Sabi navigates the dynamics within their Pakistani family and their job as a nanny. This is a show about learning to accept yourself and those around you.

-Acapulco (Apple) – Cute show, told in flashbacks, about young Maximo who starts out as a pool boy at a luxury Mexican resort and rises through the ranks. I like this show for it’s feel-good, sunny humour and the 80s playlists.

-English Teacher (FX/Hulu) – Really funny and sharp comedy about a gay teacher in Austin trying to fight the system and sometimes giving up.

LIVE PERFORMANCES
High School/Middle School Musicals. I didn’t do theatre in middle school or high school. (Shocking, I know, considering it’s now what I do for my job.), so I didn’t really grow up going to school plays. Turns out the high schools in our area do really great shows. This year we saw Beauty and the Beast and A Year with Frog and Toad at the high school as well as middle school productions of Annie and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. They were all delightful. There is something special about going to see a show where you know the kids onstage and where you’ll run into people you know in the audience, a show where things probably won’t be perfect, but everyone is having a once in a life time experience. The high school is doing Secret Garden this spring – I CAN’T WAIT!!!

Silent Night – is this cheating if it’s a show I worked on myself?. I love this opera so much. The music, the story, the bagpipes. I feel so lucky that I got to work on it again this year, and that I got to hear this exquisite score played over the course of four performances.

The Play That Goes Wrong – I think sometimes we go to the theatre to be moved to tears. I know certainly that’s true for opera – we want to see the soprano die and everyone to be devastated. But this play, about an amateur production of a murder mystery where everything goes wrong, made me laugh and laugh and laugh so hard. From identifying with the Stage Manager who loses track of the place and forgets to run a sound cue, to the actors forgetting their lines, to the doorknobs that keep falling off the set. This was an exquisitely timed masterpiece of comedy. Some of the technical aspects were amazing.

ART and MUSEUMS
Mary Cassatt at the Philadelphia Museum of Art – I’ve always been a fan of Cassatt’s art, and this exhibit was a wonderful exploration of her process.

National Museum of Taiwan History in Tainan – My cousin recommended this museum to us, and I’m really glad we made time to go while we were in Taiwan. It was a really well laid out and comprehensive look at Taiwan from it’s early days as a trading port through all the various states of occupation, to present day history.

Museum of Islamic Art in Kuala Lumpur – Stunning art and fascinating history. It was eye opening to see the intersection of Muslim and Asian cultures.

Lobster Museum in Swann’s Island, Maine – Okay so this was basically some guy’s attic collection of lobster men memorabilia that the town decided to put into a building, but I loved it.

Dorothea Lange: Seeing People at the National Gallery of Art – The title says it all – haunting portraits taken by Lange throughout the years. Some well known and iconic, and some that were new to me. The pictures taken in Japanese internment camps were especially poignant.

Pattens and Paradox: The Quilts of Amish Women at the American Art Museum – I learned so much about the art of quilts from this exhibit, which also make me think about the women who made quilts and the intersection between art and functionality and folk art and high art.

MUSIC – Looking at this list, I’m realizing one thing that’s missing is music. I don’t listen to a lot of music in a curated way. That is to say I don’t tend to listen to specific artists or albums. If I want to listen to something I’ll often just listen to the radio and see what serendiptiy brings, or I’ll type some inspirational words, like “Happy dinner” or “Bluegrass excercise” into Spotify or Apple Music and see what play lists come up. I think this is partly because I am surrounded by music at work, so music isn’t the first thing I turn to in my liesure time. Even still I do get a lot of enjoyment from music. This year, I re-discovered the joy of big romantic sweeping musicals (Scarlet Pimpernel, Titanic, etc.), and of just listening to the classical music station when I needed to decompress. As a family we listen to a lot of Disney songs and musicals (SIX is a favorite), and whatever the husband has playing on Pandora (his mix is pretty eclectic, but always has a strong beat and a good tune). Do I feel like I need to change my music habits? Not really. I do feel like I’m out of the pop culture loop, but hey I can’t keep up with everything.

That’s it for my 2024 Media favorites. What about you? Any favorite books/podcasts/movies/tv shows/music/art/ etc. that you discovered in 2024? What music do you recommend for me?
Any goals and aspirations for your media consumption in 2025?

Books Read – December 2024

Last book wrap up for 2024. I have a “Media Consumption Favorites 2024” post coming, but figured I should also recap that last month of reading as well.

First, though, and interesting book-ish post – this article by John Kenney from the Washington Post “It’s a New Year. let’s resolve to rethink what ‘self-help’ means.” The article, coming at the start of a new year, a time for resolutions and bids for improvement, ponders the place of self-help literature in our lives.

John Kenney makes a case that the words that help us grow aren’t just the words in books in the self-help section.
“That is not to say,” he writes, “we don’t need guides, mentors, a bit of direction now and again. I’m just not convinced a book needs the label ‘self-help’ to do that. I find “The Catcher in the Rye” a superb self-help book. It helped me learn empathy and tenderness. Any book by Alice McDermott is a self-help book, helping me to see deeply into the interior life of a strange. Poet Mary Oliver is quite good at self-help.”

And so on Kenney writes, listing examples of how art – books, music, movies, etc. – is sometimes the best form of “self-help” because they help us realize the “self” part of “self-help”.

This article struck me because it paralleled something that I was kicking around in my head regarding podcasts. I was scrolling though my podcast feed a few weeks ago. Feeling like my life was particularly scattered, I was looking for a podcast that might help me put order in my life. I am certainly a “mood” listener of podcasts – I turn to podcasts when I’m looking for information or inspiration or motivation. This is probably why I subscribe to a lot of productivity podcasts – podcasts populated by people who seem to have things figured out – how to wring the most out of life, how to perfectly organize, declutter, schedule, parent, work, manage, and life hack one’s way to a frictionless fulfilling existence.

“This is what I need,” I thought, “inspiration to optimize my life so that I can get it back on track again.”

So I would put one of the productivity podcasts on, hoping to get tips and ideas for how to gather my life back together into some semblance of order. But after a few minutes, I would have to turn the podcast off. Turns out listening to people talk about how they’ve optimized their existence did not inspire me to do the same myself; it merely stressed me out and made me feel like I just wasn’t doing enough. (Ironic that being told “you are enough” makes me feel like I’m not quite enough…) I’m not disparaging self-help/self-improvement podcasts – I think Happier is full of fun and useful tips – I wouldn’t subscribe to so many if I didn’t find value in the advice and words. But for some reason, when life was at it’s most harried, these podcasts weren’t quite right for me.

“But these podcasters are giving me the key to a better life!” I thought to myself.

What I realized, though, is when I’m feeling restless and unmoored and unfocussed, the podcasts that help me are the ones that dig a little deeper than time blocking or outsourcing. It’s the podcasts that contemplate what it’s like to be human that help me through. Podcasts like On Being and House Calls with Dr. Vivek Murthy. I think what I’m learning is that I can’t life hack my way through life if I don’t know why I’m hacking my way through life. Podcasts like On Being remind me that we have capacities for kindness and thoughtfulness, and for doing good and strong things. They remind me that life is full of humans trying to figure things out, and that I’m one of those humans. I love a good list of life hacks and strategies, but listening to podcasts which roll out the advice when I’m feeling fragile and scattered is putting the cart before the horse. Productivity podcasts speak to the “human doing”, but before I can “do” I must “be.” I need to first remind myself that I’m a vulnerable capable, oh so lucky to be alive human being.

Anyhow on to books I read in December 2024:

You Were Made to Be Mine by Julie Anne Long – This is book 5 of Long’s Palace of Rogues series, a series of historical romance novels set in a boarding house in London called the Grand Palace on the Thames. In this book, former spy Christian Hawkes is sent to retrieve a runway fiancée. Said fiancée, Aurelie Capet has fled to London where she is posing as a genteel widow. I didn’t like this one as much as book 4 (After Dark with the Duke – I really loved that book) – I tend to like my romance novels to lean more towards character driven than plot driven, and this one had a lot of intrigue- still, there was much to recommend it – good writing, hero and heroines who weren’t complete nincompoops and had chemistry in spades, a colourful cast of side characters, and some really angsty swoony dialogue. Julie Anne Long is kind of where it is for me right now in terms of writing tension filled scenes between two people who are attracted to each other. The big caveat for me, though (and spoiler alert here) is that I don’t love it when books use sexual assault as a plot point. Not because I don’t want to acknowledge that truly awful things can and do happen to women (and men), but more that sometimes I think sexual assault is used as a convenient way to inflict trauma and cause misunderstanding, and then I feel as if everything gets resolved in an unbelievingly pat way, particularly in romance novels.

How to Tame a Wild Rogue by Julie Anne Long – book 6 of the Palace of Rogues series. I’ve been on Julie Anne Long binge lately, clearly. This book is about Lorcan St. Leger, a privateer who is stuck in London during a storm. He runs into Daphne Worth trying to climb out a window to escape her employer, and they end up pretending to be married in order to takes the last suite of rooms at the Grand Palace on the Thames. Boom. Forced proximity, fake marriage. All the tropes. Character heavy and just enough plot to keep things moving, but not so much plot that I have to keep track of things. I liked this book so much, for all the reasons I enjoy Julie Anne Long’s books. They are so well written – funny and touching and smart – the characters are really good people, no one is making choices that make me want to throw the book across the room, and I’m always rooting for them to figure out that they love each other. Tension in spades. This one is up there with After Dark with the Duke as my favorite in this series.

Counsel Culture by Kim Hye-Jin, translated by Jamie Chang – This was a book, translated from Korean about a therapist and television personality whose career goes up in flames when she makes a scripted negative comment that leads to devastating consequences. I picked this up while browing the library shelves, looking for a thin book to read. This is kind of a slight book, following the main character as she floats through life in the lonely aftermath of everything. The book was a little meandering for my tastes. It was fine, but lacked momentum. There is, however, an excellent plotline involving feral cats. I also find it intriguing that most of the reviews of this book on goodreads are not in English.

Green Island by Shawna Yang Ryan – I read this book while in Taiwan because when I travel I like to read books of the places I’m going. This novel by Taiwanese American writer Shawna Yang Ryan follows the Tsai family beginning with the birth of the narrator on the day of the 2/28 massacre of 1947, follows her family as they fled Taipei following her father’s arrest, and details how her father finally returns to them and the aftermath of his return. The story then takes the narrator (who I didn’t realize didn’t have a name until I started writing this.) to Berkeley California where she settles with her husband, but where they cannot escape the reaches of the KMT government. This book felt very personal to me. The 2/28 massacres were an uprising where the people of Taiwan revolted against the occupying KMT government from China. The uprising was violently squashed and martial law was declared. This is the Taiwan that my parents grew up in; my father’s brother was jailed for five year by the KMT. He was fifteen when they arrested him. On our trip to Taiwan, I asked my mother what it was like living under Martial Law and she said, “You had to keep living life. What else could you do? But you never knew when someone was going to be arrested. You’d go to a party and later on find out that the police came for your friends because they were at that party.” Which is all to say, I don’t think I can be objective about this book because it’s the story of my family – Of growing up in an occupied country. Of immigrating across the ocean for better opportunities. Of raising kids in a country so different from the one you grew up in. Of working tirelessly for Taiwan’s independence. Still, I think this is a well written and compelling book. It reads partially like a memoir, partially like a political thriller. If you are interested in Taiwanese history, I would recommend this book.

On My Proverbial Night Stand:
We’ll Prescribe You A Cat by Syou Ishida- I saw this book in Taiwan and the premise made me laugh. It’s charming so far

The Love Songs of W.E.B. DuBois by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers – My big (700 pg.) read this winter. It’s moving very quickly, though.

Riddles of the Sphinx by Anna Shechtman- Not the book I thought i was going to be. I want it to be more crossword puzzle history and less memoir.

The Phoenix Bride by Natasha Siegel- Book set in 17th century London about a grieving widow and the Jewish physician trying to help her. I picked up from the library solely based on the beautiful cover.

What the Dead Know: Learning about Life as a New York City Death Investigator by Barbara Butcher – listening to this on audio. It’s riveting. I just try not to listen to it at night.

and with the kids:
Bob by Rebecca Stead and Wendy Mass- reading it out loud together. Charming and mysterious story about (no so) imaginary friends.

Books Read November 2024

Only three books read in November, which is not terrible considering what a packed month November was. But, I have cross the threshold of 50 books this year – I think I might be closer to 60 books for this year, depending on how December shakes out.

Hopefully I’ll get to do a 2024 reading recap of favorite reads soon – I always want to do this every year, and never find the time….

The Unlikely Thru-Hiker: An Appalachian Trail Journey by Derick Lugo – Whenever I read about someone doing some kind of thru hiking achievement, it makes me want to also take five months of my life to do the same thing. Especially when it’s someone like Lugo who, when he set out to hike the AT, had very little experience hiking, and no experience at all camping. I always think, “Hey if he can do it so can I!” The “Unlikely” part of the title refers to the fact that Lugo is Black and there are very few Black people thru hiking the AT, something that led to the occasional comment to him while on the trail. Lugo’s memoir is a pretty fast and easy read – his recounts his time on the AT with humor and a sense of ease – I would almost called relaxed, even when he isn’t sure he is going to make it. Lugo doesn’t focus on the hardships of the trail – though he does go into details about those – rather he focuses on the kindness and friendships he encounters as he makes his way from Georgia to Maine. This book is also a good reminder for me why time outside is so important with this:
”Out here, I’m able to have long and complete thoughts. When I”m in the city, if a creative idea pops into my head… there always seems to be interruptions. I’m often up late working on them because one, the new ideas keep me up like a hungry newborn baby, and two, that’s the time when I have the fewest distractions. But out here in the great outdoors, nothing is pressing, nothing is more important than walking on the trail. Out here all I do is hik and think, think and hike.”

The Impossible Us by Sarah Lotz – This novel came up on a list on the site Five Books: “The Best Romance Books with a Twist.” The premise of this book is that Nick writes and angry email that accidentally ends up in Bee’s inbox. The two start corresponding, growing more and more attracted to each other. When they finally agree to meet, however, it becomes clear that something is a little off. Turns out Nick and Bee exist in parallel universes, only able to communicate via email because of some time/space glitch. There were times when I thought Nick and Bee, while likeably and charming characters, were making some truly terrible and selfish life choices, but over all there was a lot I liked about this book – the epistolary nature of it, the angsty impossible relationship, the humors writing, the details of the paralleled universes – in Nick’s universe, men can take a vasectomy subsidy when they no longer want to have kids. Bee lives in our universe and Nick is flabergasted about the whole Trump is President thing. (The book came out in 2022, and there was one bit where Bee says something to the effect of “Don’t worry, Trump is leaving office” which I think landed quite differently in mid-November for me than Lotz clearly expected/hoped it to.) The other thing, though – and this might be a bit of a spoiler – is that this book is marketed as a romance novel, and it really wasn’t in that there wasn’t really a Happily Ever After ending. Or not one that feels like it’s part of the story the novel is telling. So actually this book made me think a lot about what exactly a romance novel is and why so much of the genre hinges on the HEA ending.

Waiting for the Flood by Alexis Hall, read by Will Watt – I was looking for a cozy romance novel on audiobook for my commute, I had loved Will Watt reading Hall’s Ten Things That Never Happened (Still love that book, Engie!). So when I saw this book, the same author/reader paring, I immediately borrowed it. It’s actually a short novella that tells the story of how heartbroken Edwin, mourning a breakup, meets and falls in love with emergency aid worker Adam during a gigantic rainstorm. It’s a really sweet story, and I love how Watt blends the humor and vulnerability of the characters. There was another book included with this audiobook, Chasing the LIght about the man who broke Edwin’s heart, but I didn’t finish that one yet.

Bibliophile Diverse Spines by Jamie’s Harper and Jane Mount– This was a visually beautiful book:

This is a book created with the hope of encouraging people to pick upmore books by diverse authors. It features book lists by genre as well as reading recommendations from BIPOC writers themselves. Actually this book is where I found out about The Unlikely Thru Hiker. I don’t know if I would count this as a book I “read” because I didn’t pick it up and read every word cover to cover. Rather, I would leaf through it every so often, jotting down ideas of books to read, putting things on hold when they sounded good. I got so many good book recs from this book that I didn’t want to ever return it. I would highly recommend this book if you like beautiful illustrations, but even more so if you are looking to read more books by undereepresented voices.

On My Proverbial Book Shelf:

Green Island by Shawna Yang Ryan – novel about a family in Taiwan that is torn apart by the brutal 2/28 uprising of 1947, an anti-government rebellion against the Chinese government occupying the Island. My parents have often talked about this massacre, a brutal suppression of the Taiwanese people that has been often described officially as merely an “incident”, if it is even talked about at all.

The Harmony Silk Factory by Tash Aw – novel set in 1940s Malaysia when it was under British rule.

My Season of Scandal by Julie Anne Long – Part of the Palace of Rogues series that I’ve been binging this month.

Books Read, October 2024 – NaBloPoMo #15

It’s Elementary by Elise Bryant – Mystery novel about a single mom who is guilted into heading the PTA’s diversity committee at her 7 year old’s elementary school. And then the principal goes missing. It’s light and frothy and some of it made me laugh out loud. BUT the main character starts a relationship with the school counselor and I kept thinking how wildly inappropriate that was and by the end of the book, it kind of made it hard to enjoy the book. Even still, this line, where the main character bristles at the idea of being a Young mom, made me snort with laughter:

“I’m grown, just like you! I use Sensodyne, and I have enough white hairs that I can’t keep casually plucking them without looking like a “before” in one of those women’s hair loss Instagram ads I keep getting, and I’m pretty sure my back hurts more than it doesn’t hurt now, and I’m wearing Old Navy Pixie pants. There is nothing more grown than Old Navy Pixie pants!”

― Elise Bryant, It’s Elementary, p. 30

Somewhere Beyond the Sea by T.J. Klune – sequel to The House on the Cerulean Sea. I LOVED The House on the Cerulean Sea, a book about a government worker who is tasked with investigating a school for magical children. This sequel is… fine. It was nice to re-visit the characters, but this book lacked the urgency and plot drive of the first book. There was no tension in this book – it was pretty much magical kids and those who love them vs. big bad government, and some of the book felt very preachy.

A Love Song for Ricki Wilde by Tia Williams – A whimsical romance featuring a florist who leaves her wealthy upbringing in Atlanta to open up a flower shop in Brooklyn where meets a mysterious stranger. In a parallel plot, the book follows Ezra, a jazz pianist whose star is rising during the Harlem Renaissance. The book involves some time travel, which isn’t usually my thing, but I really liked the mix of historical and contemporary settings here. The plot kept me turning the pages, though I thought the resolution of the various elements fell a little predictable and rushed.

There were some really thoughtful contemplations about modernity. In a way it reminded me of Ministry of Time and some of the ideas in that book. For example:

“I like vinyl, so I didn’t evolve past record players. Not a fan of Google. If I had my druthers, I’d only research in libraries. But I do enjoy Alexa telling me the weather every morning. Washing machines, AC, photocopiers, and LASIK surgery? A-plus inventions. Tinder, automatic transmission, Roombas, CGI? Dumb.” He shrugged. *I’m not that impressed by freezers. They made milkmen obsolete. I miss hearing them deliver those glass bottles at the crack of dawn; it signals a new day has started!” he exclaimed. “Social media? None of my business. Websites frustrate me, mostly. What are these cookies I’m always being asked to accept? TV’s probably my favorite twentieth-century development. I always have the newest model, and these days, it’s all so good: prestige, reality, sitcoms, cartoons. I mean, have you seen Succession? P-Valley? And, obviously, I keep up with music. All kinds. Good music’s good music; genre’s just the bag you carry it in.””

― Tia Williams, A Love Song for Ricki Wilde, p. 243

No Two Persons by Erica Baumeister, read by Cassandra Campbell, Stephen Graybill, Carol Jacobanis, Rachel L. Jacobs, Barrie Kreinik, Max Meyers, George Newbern, Jesse Vilinsky, Braden Wright, Gabra Zackman – This book tells the story of a novel and how it comes into the lives of nine different people. The first chapter tells the story of how the novel Theo comes to be written and then each chapter focusses on on person whose life is impacted by the novel. Even though the stories are slightly interconnected, each chapter is more like a self contained short story. This book really believes in the mythology of how powerful books can be. I don’t think I bought into the idea as much as the author did, but I did find each story absorbing.

On my proverbial Nightstand: I’m not finding a lot of time to read these days, but I do have a few things with bookmarks in them. Interestingly theses are all hard copy of books. I’ve been finding that I’m more able to focus these days on hard copy books so I haven’t been reading on my phone these days.

The Unlikely Thru-Hiker – Adventures on the Appalacian Trail.

The Impossible Us – It’s been a page-turner. In the alternate universe Trump does not become president. I don’t know if the author realizes how much that tiny plot detail reverberates right now.

This is So Awkward: Modern Puberty Explained – Insightful.

Books Read September 2024

Last week of October, and finally got around to writing up the books I read last month. Not a lot of books read, but I was determined to finish that Bronte biography, and I did!

Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi – I picked up this book at a Little Free Library and it just sat in my shelf until a lot of you told me to read it. What a beautiful powerful book. I wish every chapter were its own book. I think that might be one reason I didn’t love love this book- I just wanted more of each story and the format almost felt like it was a short story collection. Interestingly enough, I just listened to an author interview where the author talks about how short story collections don’t have to end with a big satisfying bow the way novels do. I think once I accepted this book as a collection of connected short stories, I enjoyed it more.

History of Women in 101 Objects: A Walk Through Female History by Annabelle Hirsch, read by Read by Gillian Anderson, Katy Hessel, Anita Rani, Jackie Kay, Len Pennie, Annabelle Hirsch, Shirley Manson, Rebecca Solnit, Sandi Toksvig, Marina Hyde, Naomi Shimada, and a Full Cast– This book looks at history, specifically Female History, through the lens of objects . Some objects are very pedestrian (like the Miele vacuum cleaner, the bikini), some less so (a 16th century glass dildo…) Some chapters drew my interest more than others, but as a whole it was a fascinating way to walk through history. I would say this audio book kind of felt like a podcast on occasion because each chapter was so short and varied.

Pride of Bagdhad by Brian K. Vaughan and Niko Henrichon– This is a graphic novel based on a true incident where lions escaped from the zoo during the bombing of Baghdad. In this book, the lions wander the city looking for food and trying to grapple with what it means to be free and have the ability to interact with other animals. I borrowed this when I was on my graphic novel kick a few months ago. I think my problem with graphic novels, though, is the writing/dialogue can sometimes read somewhat stilted for me. Maybe that’s the nature of unfurling a story panel by panel? Despite that, though, I thought this book was beautiful, and the story really sad. There were times when I turned the page and then gasped at the stunning images or story.

Life is Hard: How Philosophy Can Help Us Find Our Way by Kieran Setiya – I had read Setiya’s Midlife: A Philosophical Guide and found it gave me a lot to ponder in regards to what is fulfilling and the purpose of setting goals. My big take away from that book is that learn to enjoy activities for the sake of doing the activities rather than achieving goals because you don’t know when life will end. I didn’t find Life Is Hard as compelling or as focused. Each chapter looks at one things that might give use despair (Infirmity, Loneliness, Grief, Failure, Injustice, Absurdity, and Hope. That last is kind of a spoiler for what the book ultimately says) Setiya looks at ways that philosophers and thinkers have examined these problems and reconciled how to live with them. The book is a little dense, but there were some quotes that I liked:

“…being happy is not the same as living well. If you want to be happy, dwelling on adversity may or may not be of use. Bur mere happiness should not be your goal.” – I agree that happiness is overrated.

“Projects fail and people fail in them. But we have come to speak as if a person can be a failure as though failure were an identity, not an event. When you define your life by way of a single enterprise, a narrative arc, its outcome will come to define you.” I love this idea of failure as an event, not a identity. People are not failures. So important to remember.

“Hope coexists with quiescence. If there’s courage in hoping, it’s the courage to face the fear of disappointment that hope creates. When things turn out badly, hope is more harrowing than despair.” I feel like this is very apt to our current times as we count down the days to the election.

The Brontes: Wild Genius on the Moors: the Story of Three Sisters by Juliet Barker – After two years of steady reading, I’ve finally finished this door stop of a book. I found so much of this book fascinating – it vividly captured the tedium of living in remote rural England. (I guess most of England was remote and rural at the time.) I mean this was before the internet and electricity! Interestingly, though, the lives of the Brontes seemed a combination of loneliness and connection. They were often far from friends, but the letters flew back and forth with great frequency and there were frequent visits and community events. It made me think of how we fill our time so differently now. I loved how much of a person’s personality shines through in their letter writing. Reading the excerpts from correspondence was one of my favorite parts of this book. The letters were always polite and correct, but could convey so much. I think about how we can offload the task of writing such correct and proper letters to ChatGPT now, and it makes me sad. I mean this phrase, in which Charlotte declines a proposal:
I am not the serious, grave, cool headed individual you suppose – you would think me romantic… and say I was satirical and severe. However I scorn deceit and I will never for the sake of attaining the distinction of matrimony and escaping the stigma of an old maid take a worthy man whom I am conscious I cannot render happy.
We certainly don’t write like that anymore.
There was also so. much. death in this book. Of the six Bronte children, two died in infancy as well as the mother. And then, of course, Emily and Anne and brother Bramwell also died before they were into their thirties. Bramwell was a trip – troubled, aimless and full of scandal. I thought a lot in this book about their father as well, who outlived all his kids and kept doing his work as a minister until his death at age 84. If you’re into dense literary biographies, this is probably a good book to sink into.

On my bookshelf: I just finished reading a couple books, so there are only two books on my books in progress shelf:

This is so awkward: Modern Puberty Explained by Cara Natterson and Vanessa Kroll Bennett – This book is what the title suggests. It looks at the science behind puberty and then offers tips and scripts for how to talk about it with kids. Natterson and Kroll Bennett are the co-hosts of one of my favorite parenting podcasts.

Confessions of an Unlikely Thru-Hiker by Derick Lugo – Lugo is a young Black comedian who decides to hike the Appalacian trail, even though he had never even been camping before. I have a fascination with stories of people who do epic hikes (Wild, The Salt Path).

I’m going to start having a longer commute in a few weeks, so if anyone has any good audiobooks to recommend, please tell me!

Books Read – August 2024

I feel like I read a lot of books in the first few weeks of August and then really slowed down for the next little bit. Eight books read in August.

The Rakess by Scarlett Peckham – This novel was on a list by Alexis Hall of romance novels that he likes. The Rakess takes the trope of the rake who is saved by a virtuous and upstanding woman and gender flips it. The book opens with the female protagonist, Seraphina Arden, in bed with someone and wondering how long she has to cuddle before she can kick him out. Seraphina embodies all the stereotypical rake behavior that one finds in romance novels – drinking, late night carousing, easy affairs. She meets Adam, a fine upstanding, morally uncorrupt widower with kids. Romance novel type things ensue. I was really intrigued by this premise, but ultimately the characters still felt like romance novel cliches with romance novel cliche trauma to justify the way they behave, and the writing was somewhat stolid and awkward. There are some intriguing side characters and progressive ideas about social reform, but ultimately everything was just kind of flat for me.

I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith – for Engie’s Cool Blogger’s Book Club. Thank you to Engie for organizing! I really liked a lot of this book, but I think the book kind of lost me with the whole “Lock Father in the Tower” bit and the resolution of the novel was kind of madcap. I also didn’t love the framing device of the journal – it seemed a little precious for my tastes. I did like the whimsy, the sense of time and young adulthood, the fantasy of being genteelly poor, Topaz – Topaz was great. So I put this book under, “Glad I read it, now can I watch the movie?”

Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier – When I was watching trailers for I Capture the Castle, youTube also brought up trailers for a 2020 movie version of Rebecca that came out on Netflix, and that sent me down a rabbit hole. You know, Rebecca, that novel about the young plain something who gets swept off her feet by a much older man and then goes to live in his manor estate and is haunted by the memory of his first wife. I don’t have Netflix so I couldn’t watch the movie, but I was transfixed by the clips I saw online. Then I decided to re-read the book. I remember reading Rebecca when I was in seventh grade and thinking it was the best book ever. I don’t know what it is with me thinking that lying manipulative men were romantic when I was a pre-teen/teen. (See: my obsession with Jane Eyre.) I thought it still held up as a creepy disturbing suspense novel, but I find it creepy and disturbing for different reasons now.

The Turnout by Megan Abbott – This is a suspense/thriller about sisters Dara and Marie Duront who run a ballet school along side Dara’s husband Charlie, a former pupil of their mother’s. There is a fire and a burly contractor comes to fix the damage, inserting himself into their lives and throwing off the delicate balance of the trio’s dynamic. All this against the backdrop of the annual Nutcracker production, which in itself is a high pressure situation. The novel is twisty and twisted as plot elements get revealed and unraveled. It’s not a genre I read much, but stories set in the performing arts world always attract me and I thought the writing was really spare and direct. It’s a page-turner for sure, and I liked the backstage glimpses, but ultimately, I was reminded that I don’t usually read suspense novels because I don’t like being tense all the time, waiting for (pointe) shoes to drop.

So Late in the Day: Stories of Men and Women by Claire Keegan – This is a trio of short stories, each in their own way about loneliness and inability to connect with people. I’d read Keegan’s Foster, and like that book, the writing in these stories is neat and unfussy, but also a little hard for me to grasp – things dance on the surface and I don’t ever feel like I know what is going on. I kind of feel like this is why people like Keegan’s writing so much – there is something very simple about it, but also it hides untold depths. I think what I liked about Foster, more than these stories, was that Foster had moments of genuine connection – in the stories in So Late in the Day, everyone just seems to want to be alone.

Blankets by Craig Thompson – autobiographical graphic novel about Thompson’s abusive sad childhood growing up in an Evangelical church, his struggle with religion, and his relationships with his family and his first love. So my first thought on reading this book was, “What a lot of work it takes to write a graphic novel!” Seriously, this book was like three inches thick and took me so long to read because it was to heavy to take anywhere. So there’s always a bit of awe and respect for the process behind a graphic novel and the skill involved to write, draw, and pace a story. The actual book itself was fine. It was kind of hard for me to get over the fact that even though his parents are strict Christians, 16 year old Craig was allowed to go visit his “girlfriend” Raina (the relationship was a little undefined) a couple hours away, and stay with her family for a week. I don’t know – maybe I had a super sheltered childhood, but that definitely wouldn’t have been something I was allowed to do. This book is often billed as a great romance, and I didn’t find it particularly romantic because Raina didn’t seem like a fully fleshed out character. The parts that were most effective for me were the parts about family and looking out for each other and letting them go. And the artwork was beautiful – the kind of stuff where I felt like I would never really see all there is to see in one picture because there was so much detail.

Drive your Plows over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk, translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones – I picked this book up from a Little Free Library, can’t remember why. Maybe I thought I should read some translated fiction by a Nobel Prize winner. I have to admit it took me while to get into this book, but then by the end, when it turned into a full fledged murder mystery, I was like, “Whoa, where did that come from??” It was like the book started out as something really cerebral and then in the last third switched genres on me. It took me several months to read this book, but I wish I had read this book in a more concentrated manner because by the time I got to the murder mystery reveal, I’d forgotten what had happened in the first half of the book and had to go back an re-read it. The main character, Janina, is a recluse in a Polish village who studies Blake and astronomy and teaches kids English and loves animals. She doesn’t use people’s names, instead referring to them by outstanding characteristics. People die. She gets involved in a meandering kind of way while interacting with other misfits. This book takes place in winter and the cold just comes off the page. All in all, I think this is book is way more accessible than I realized at first.

Funny Story by Emily Henry read by Julia Whelan: I hadn’t read any Emily Henry before, and I thought the premise of this one was cute – after Daphne’s fiancé runs aways with Miles’ girlfriend, Daphne and Miles move in together since she needs a place to live and he needs a new roommate. I listened to the audiobook. Also Julia Whelan. I really believe that Whelan can make any book absolutely riveting. So really, who knows if I liked this book or not! Actually I did like a lot of it – I thought the protagonists were adorable and liked the way female friendships developed in the book. There was some pretty typical romance novel BIG MISUNDERSTANDINGS and roadblocks, stuff that felt a little contrived, to be honest. Stuff of the, “Just pick up your phone!” nature. But I didn’t mind it. Over all there were several parts where I laughed out loud while driving, and both the leads were just so nice and earnest that I was totally rooting for them.

On my Nightstand – These books have all been in progress from my last book post – clearly September has been a slow month for reading.

The Brontes: Wild Genius on the Moors by Juliet Barker- Last chapter! Charlotte’s final book is published posthumously.

You Dream of Empires by Alvaro Enrigue – I really want to just sit down and read this book in one sitting because the chapters are short and I keep losing the narrative thread and forgetting who the characters are. But each chapter is really interesting – I just have no idea how the whole book is tied together.

The History of Women in 101 Objects by Annabell Hirsch- latest chapters: The dance card, Tupperware, the Bikini, Greta Garbo’s Ballpoint pen.

It’s Elementary by Elise Bryant – Overworked mom Mavis is guilted into heading the PTA’s new DEI committee. Then the principal goes missing. I’m only one chapter in, but this book is the lighthearted comedy I need right now.

Books Read, July 2024

Squeaking in under the wire of August, here are the books I read in July. At least I think these are the books I read in July. I’ve misplaced my book journal so I haven’t written anything down for weeks and weeks. Sometimes I think I should move to an online system of tracking my reading, but I do love the act of putting actual pen to actual paper.

Bookish link of the month: This interview with author Jason Reynolds. The Washington Post does a series where they take a peek at an author’s bookshelves and working environment, and I find it a fascinating look into authors and where they come from and their process. I love this quote, where Reynolds talks about a cookie jar that he keeps on his shelf:
“If books are cabinets for stories, then my bookshelves hold a lot of things that are cabinets for stories that might not come in the form of what one might consider a book. Like that Ernie. To me, the story that exists in that clay is just as important as a story that is printed on the pages of some of these books. That image of my father, it’s not a book, but his life was, and therefore it gets to live on this shelf like everything else. In my life, all things with a story belong on a shelf.”

The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley – Probably my favorite book I read last month, and one of my favorite I’ve read this year. A British civil servant works for a newly formed government ministry that pulls people from the past and transplants them in the present. She is assigned to work as a liaison for the time “expat”, explorer Graham Gore, pulled from a doomed 1845 Arctic expedition. This novel combines time travel, spy thriller, and romance novel with thoughtfulness and wit. I would say I’m not really into time travel novels (I thought The Time Traveler’s Wife a ridiculous novel.) or spy thrillers, so this novel was a nice gateway book into those genres. This book sucked me in, made me think about time and history, and was funny – I laughed out loud several times. The whole thriller/ spy plot wasn’t as interesting to me as the workplace comedy and the way Gore was a prism through which to look at our modern times. I particularly liked this exchange:
[Gore] was introduced to the washing machines, the gas cooker, the radio, the vacuum cleaner.
“Here are your maids,” he said.
“You’re not wrong.”
“Where are the thousand-league boots?”
“We don’t have those yet.”
“Invisibility cloak? Sun-resistant wings of Icarus?”
“Likewise.”
He smiled. “You have enslaved the power of lightning,” he said, “and you’ve used it to avoid the tedium of hiring help.”

To Night Owl from Dogfish by Holly Goldberg Sloan and Meg Wolitzer read by Imani Parks, Cassandra Morris, and others. This epistolatory novel starts as a series of emails between two twelve year olds whose fathers have fallen in love and decide to send the girls to the same summer camp in hopes that they will bond. The agree to dislike one another. Hijinks and disasters big and small ensue. I listened to this novel with the kids. The 7 year old was at first a little reluctant, but then got kind of invested. I like a good epistolary novel, but this book pushed that device to it’s limits. There was one part, when the girls were at camp, where they still didn’t talk since they were intent on not liking each other, so they were writing emails instead. Which supports the epistolatory form, but did make for some clunkiness. Overall, though, I enjoyed this book – the characters are quirky, the escapades are amusing, and a big portion of the story takes place in the theatre world, which is always fun for me to read about.

Oh Beautiful by Jung Yun, read by Catherine Ho – I picked up this audiobook after hearing about it on What Should I Read Next where the guest was a huge audiobook listener. The book is about Elinor, a half Korean, half White journalist who used to be a model. She is assigned a story about the oil boom in North Dakota, close to where she grew up. As she researches her story, she also is forced to confront her own past as well as the past and future of North Dakota. For some reason, I thought this book was about immigration to North Dakota in the 1800s. But it wasn’t. Anyhow, I didn’t love this book to start – the main character doesn’t always make good choices, there is rampant misandry – every male in this book is some kind of predator- and it felt like that book wanted to tackle too many issues at once. Occasionally there would be a character that would surprise me and almost redeem the book, but then the book would go back to being about unhappy, unkind people meandering through life. I thought the book was thoughtful about so many points – the realities of life in a boom town, feeling adrift from family and one’s roots, sexual harassment in academia – but ultimately, the his book just wasn’t for me.

Night of the Living Rez by Morgan Tatly – This is a collection of short stories set in a Penobscot Indian Reservation in Maine. I picked this book up to read during our trip to Maine this summer. The stories center around David, a boy growing up on the reservation, and spans into his adulthood, back and forth in time. Some of the stories border on the absurd – like the one about running into a friend who has frozen his hair into the ground – to the heart wrenching, like the one about David’s sister who struggles with drug abuse. And throughout there runs a theme of intergenerational burdens and trying to make good choices but having none. I thought this book was grim and haunting, though surprisingly funny, and the writing is beautiful.

The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi by Shannon Chakraborty– This was a fun book in a genre I don’t usually read (fantasy). Amina al-Sirafi is a middle-aged retired pirate who agrees to one last lucrative job in the hopes of earning a huge payout which would ensure a life of comfort for her and her daughter. I loved the Middle East/ African setting. I loved Amina, and her world weary, “I’m getting too old for this shit, but I’m still a bad ass” narrative voice. There is a colourful cast of characters and side kicks- the requisite “getting the team together” sequence had me grinning. It also has a tinge of “first in a series”, so that’s something to look forward too as well. Not sure I completely understood the world building and magic elements, but I had a good time anyway. There were some very funny/on point bits:
“For while the pious claim money doesn’t buy happiness, I can attest from personal experience that poverty buys nothing.”
or this exchange:
“[Your wife] knows you are a pirate?”
“I am no a pirate,” Majed huffed. “I am a cartographer with a checkered past.”
“Yes, a checkered past of piracy.”

On my proverbial night stand:

Life is Hard by Kieran Setiya – I’ve finished the chapter on Injustice, the last two chapters are Absurdity and Hope.

The Brontes: Wild Genius on the Moors by Juliet Barker – so close to finishing this one! Elizabeth Gaskell is writing a biography on Charlotte. Her husband is trying to get her last novel published.

Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi – This book — every chapter rips my heart out and leaves me hanging. I love it and hate it at the same time.

You Dreamed of Empires by Alvaro Enrigue – the blurb calls this a “colonial revenge story”. It’s set in 1519 in what is today Mexico City. The writing is vivid and engrossing. I was looking for a historical novel in translation and this one popped up.

The History of Women in 101 Objects by Annabelle Hirsch – This my current audiobook, but I’m not commuting anymore so it’s been slow going, though fascinating. There was a delightful chapter on The Hatpin read by Helena Bonham Carter.

Books Read – June 2024

Two interesting book-related links to share first –

This article: “The Joy of Reading Books You Don’t Entirely Understand.” The author makes a case for reading deeply and challenging yourself. For not letting a difficult book, or a book in which you have no context intimidate you into not reading it. I makes me think about how Engie writes in her book recaps about things she’s had to look up. I think there are two things, though – there are books that are set in a world that I know nothing about, and then there are books where I feel like I ought to understand what is happening, but for reasons of writing or plot or what not (or even my own headspace at the time), I just can’t wrap my head around what is going on. I just quit an audiobook last week that I couldn’t make heads or tails out of. I couldn’t tell where the story was going or what it was doing. Am I missing out by abandoning this book? Am I under-estimating the joy I could have from just reading as a meditative exercise? Though, when I want that kind of immersive, dense kind of reading experience, I turn to poetry. Reading a book I don’t understand has not yet gotten me to a nirvana state yet. What am I missing here?

The New York Times released a list of “Best” books of the 21st Century. It’s an interesting endeavor. Of course it’s completely subjective and leans heavily towards books originally written in the English language, and what I think of as “prestige” reading. There is a distinct lack of genre fiction. Of the 100, I’ve only read 11. There are several books on the list that I would be interested in reading, mostly the non-fiction choices. But honestly there are a lot of books that I’m not interested in reading. Life is too short, you know… And reading is such a subjective thing. Reading through the list, I had a few thoughts –
– there is something that takes all the joy out of reading when it is turned into a competitive sport – check the boxes for the books you’ve read!!! I don’t want to feel bad about not reading something on the list, but there is a sense of “Oh, I’m not well-read…”
-The part that I found the most fascinating was the individual author’s list of their top 10 picks. Sarah MacLean has a list!
-Maybe I’m not the target audience for a list like this. There are a lot of books I enjoyed reading more than My Brilliant Friend. But then, I go back to the article I mentioned at the top of this post – Was I expecting to understand more of the book than I needed to?
-As always, the comment section is gold. Tons more book recs to be found there.
-I’ve probably spent more time reading about this list of 100 books than I have actually reading a book this past 24 hours.

Anyhow – on to the books I read in June. A lighter month. Not quite sure why.

Frozen River by Ariel Lawhon – Historical novel about a midwife in revolutionary war Maine. I enjoyed reading this book- the protagonist, Martha Ballard, was a pretty great character and really liked the relationship with her husband and children all the details of her life as a midwife. The author’s notes at the end were fascinating. In my head, though, I kept comparing it to another book I read years ago – Hearts and Bones by Margaret Lawrence – also about a mid-wife in eighteenth century Maine solving a mystery. I LOVED Heart and Bones. If you find a copy, you should read it. It’s a very different book from Frozen River – the story is a lot darker, the ending not as satisfying, but in a good way. The writing… the writing is SO GOOD, a little dense, but the kind of book that completely transported me. I need to find a copy of Hearts and Bones and re-read it. But -okay I was talking originally about Frozen River – I thought it was a pretty good historical mystery novel, though I felt like the “mystery” was maybe the weakest part of the story and the plot veered towards “woman in peril” thriller at the end. Everything up until that part, though, I really liked.

The Comeback by Lily Chu, read by Philippa Soo – This book, about a woman who inadvertently starts dating a K-pop star, was the 12 year old and my Mother-daughter book club book – we listened to it together when running errands or hanging out. We both really liked this book, and laughed quite a bit. I’ve read/listened to all three of Chu’s books, and while they get billed as romance novels, I’m here for the strong women, their friendships, and the voyage of self discovery. The romantic interests are always dreamy and cute, but also kind of… rote. I think The Stand In is still my favorite of the three, but this one was great too. And I’ve been listening to some K-pop to go along with this book, which is a genre I know nothing about. “It’s like American pop songs, but I can’t understand the words they are singing,” I said to the 12 year old. “Yeah…” she replied in that, “I know, isn’t it great?!?” Kind of tone.

Wash Day Diaries by Jamila Rowser and Robyn Smith – Mid month, when I was kind of in a reading slump, I borrowed a bunch of graphic novels, and Wash Day Diaries was one of them. This book features five interconnected stories about a group of friends in the Bronx who go about the ordinary business and ordinary drama of their days. It’s nice to see a book centered on strong female friendships. Also – as someone with pretty low maintenance hair, seeing hair washing as a ritual event, was really fascinating. (Side note – I was reading about graphic novels in audio form and decided to listen to a sample of one – it was kind of like listening to a radio play. When I’m done my current audiobook, I might explore a graphic novel on audio.)

My Name is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout – I picked up this book from a Little Free Library a while ago, and it has just been languishing on my bookshelf. When I did a huge re-organization of the bookshelf a while back I pulled this as one to read since it was a slim volume and I thought I could read it quickly. I did not read it quickly – not through any fault of the book, but I just kept misplacing the book and then it would fall off my radar for a while. I thought this book was really well written, but – you know that thing where you read a book blurb, but don’t really read it quite correctly, and then the book ends up not being what you were lead to believe? I, for some reason, thought Lucy Barton was 90 years old on her death bed and I spend the first little bit thinking that her mother was a ghost. And as I read further, it quickly became clear that that wasn’t what was going on. So then I spent the rest of the book feeling a little lost. Anyhow, there are a lot of sad things in this book. A lot of beautifully written realizations in this book. But it was such an internal book, I didn’t get a sense of who Lucy really was – she spends so much time talking about the past that I didn’t know who present day Lucy was. And maybe that’s the point? That we can’t encapsulate who we are, that we contain many facets, even to ourselves? I finished the book feeling like there must be more in Lucy’s story.

Landslide by Susan Conley – I read this book while in Maine, one of the suggestions from a Maine reading list. This novel is about a documentary filmmaker living on the coast of Maine, and how her life with her two teenage sons is upended when her fisherman husband is involved in an accident while fishing off the coast of Nova Scotia. I really loved this book, and how the struggles and joys of living in a community with a dying industry figure prominently. Reading this book as we drove up the coast of Maine, really made me think about how these coastal towns are having a hard time surviving, yet how the people who live there have such a strong sense of place. I love how Conley also writes about the ironies and triumphs and angst and confusion that comes with raising teenagers, particularly teenage boys. I knew I wanted to read more of this book, when I read this on the very first page:
I tell myself it’s a beautiful face. It’s important to tell myself that many things about teenage boys are beautiful so I don’t panic.
or this:
“I’m trying to adhere to the say-very-little strategy, but when Sam [oldest son] gets to me I can’t help myself.”

Or this:

“I’ve started keeping a running list in my mind of things I need to do for the wolves[her sons] On bad days I call this the List of Resent ments. I try not to think about the list. But my brain would have worked differently without the boys. I think it would have stayed more open, and that I would be making more films and not a List of Resentments.”


It’s not all about the narrator’s feelings on the complexities of motherhood, though. This book is just felt real and honest about the good and bad things in life, and how hard it is to hold yourself together and be an adult when life isn’t going very well.

On my proverbial Night Stand. I am 3/4 of the way through many books, and barely into a few others. I don’t know how I got to the point of having so many books going at once. Hopefully we’ll finish them in July?

The Brontes: Wild Genius on the Moors: – I haven’t made much progress in this book this month. Charlotte is dead, a biography has been commissioned, but there is some drama with that.

Night of the Living Rez by Morgan Tatly- Another book from the Maine reading list – this one is a group of short stories centering around two men who live on the same reservation. Tatly has a new book out and I want to finish this book before I pick up his new one.

Blankets by Craig Thompson – graphic novel memoir about Thompson’s childhood and young adulthood as he grapples with the conflict between his first relationship and his faith. I had left this book out and both the 12 year old and the 7 year old started reading it because, you know, it’s got pictures! Must be appropriate. It was for sure not 100% appropriate for the 7 year old.

Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi by Shannon Chakraborty – Middle aged female pirate on one last mission. I had started this, got sucked in, then had to return it to the library and it took months for it to come off the Libby holds list. BUT I then found it on Hoopla, where everything is always available immediately. So now I can jump right back in. Can’t wait to see how things turnout.

Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk – Picked this up from a Little Free Library – it’s my current poolside read because I actually own this book so I don’t have to worry about library fine in case it accidentally drops in the water.

Life is Hard by Kieran Setiya – Still plugging away at this. I’m on the chapter on Injustice. The last chapter was on Failure.

The Trumpet of the Swan by E.B. White – read aloud to the kids at bedtime

The Turnout by Megan Abbott – Thriller set in the world of a ballet studio during Nutcracker season.

What have you read lately? Do you ever read books you don’t understand?

Books Read April and May 2024

I read a lot in April, but I didn’t read much in May because work was really busy, Lots of audiobooks because of commuting, though…

Last Night at The Telegraph Club by Malinda Lo – I picked up this book from my sister in law when I was visiting them in Berkeley. This novel is about Lily Hu, growing up in 1950s San Francisco and how she begins to question and explore her sexuality. It’s always fun to read a book about the place that I’m visiting, particularly since we did go to Chinatown and I had a frame of reference for some of the streets mentioned in the book. I loved all the historical details, and thinking about life as a Chinese American in mid century America. I think ultimately, though, coming of age novels aren’t really my jam right now. I find I get impatient to know what happens to a character once they break free of childhood so I’m always a little disappointed when the books end with them just starting their journey. I liked reading this book and all the characters, but I just wanted there to be more story and less personal angst. I think this is definitely a “me” problem because the book is beautiful written and well researched.

Textbook by Amy Krouse Rosenthal – A 2016 collection of writings, micro essays, drawings, and some things I can’t define. I first heard of Amy Krause Rosenthal through her delightful children’s books. (Oh gosh – I just googled her and she passed away in 2017, which makes me so sad now and tinges the book with bittersweetness) This book has an interactive texting component to it, which given that she has passed away, makes that element really poignant. Anyhow, this book is structured in class subjects and she uses each subject as a lens through which she examines all the things that give us angst and give us joy. I really loved this book – the book is very dog eared from all the passages I wanted to mark. I laughed and laughed so hard. Some favorite excerpts:
Under Social Studies:
“You run into someone from elementary school, someone you haven’t seen in forever. How have you been what have you been up to?! There are many ways to come at their questions, but considering your shared history – you were once prepubescent fort-makers together – there sis really only one response: What have I been up to? I’ll tell you the biggest, craziest things since I last saw you: A few humans tumbled out of my lady parts.“

Under Midterm Essay, about hitting middle age:
“An so it was, everything around me had a bittersweet sheen to it; moments were dramatically stamped FLEETING and TRANSIENT as I roamed about. A simple exchange between my son and me, for example, felt epic in its beauty and poignancy; all that happened was that he tapped on his bedroom window, I looked up at him from the sidewalk below, and he waved…. I lost it when my daughter excitedly asked me to quick come outside, watch this; See how fast my new sneakers make me run?
I didn’t exactly have a midlife crisis. I had a mid-life cry-bliss. “

And also has pithy charts and drawings like this one under Language Arts:

Murder Your Employer- the McMaster’s Guide to Homicide by Rupert Holmes – This is a novel about how to, well, murder your employer. I borrowed the audio book because it was narrated by Neil Patrick Harris and Simon Vance. The novel centers around Cliff, who is recruited to a school that trains people in murder, kind of a Hogwarths for would be killers. I thought this book was gleefully convoluted, and Holmes skewers the mystery genre to perfection. If you’re not into murder mysteries this might not be your thing, but if you do like them, this will feel delightfully similar in tone to Everyone In My Family Has Killed Someone.

The Obsession by Jesse Q Sutanto – Read for Mother Daughter Book Club. The 12 year old picked this out and then told me I had to read it. It’s about a high school boy who developed an obsessive crush on a classmate and how his crush retaliates. I didn’t love this book – all the characters are either morally terrible or clueless in a harmful way. The 12 year old loved it though – she loves novels with a good twist and this one was quite twisty. I did yelp out loud at one point. I have enjoyed other books by Jess Q Sutano, though – I think she writes fun and entertaining books.

My Brilliant Friend be Elena Ferrente– FINALLY finished this book from Cool Bloggers Book Club. My take away – WTF? Who are all these people? I mean a) literally in the sense that I couldn’t keep track of all the characters, and b) I could never figure out what they were about.

How Beautiful We Were by Imbolo Mbue – This beautifully written novel is about a village in Africa that is contaminated by the digging on their land by a BIG American corporation. The villagers spend years trying to get the big company to stop the digging and to pay reparations for all the death and disease the digging and toxic run off has has caused. The effort has a huge cost to the people of the village. This was a sad and frustrating read for me, as might be expected whenever a story pits people without resources against huge corporations and corrupt governments. I really liked this book, despite that- or maybe because of it. Mbue finds surprising nuances and complexities in corruption and survival.

The Tattooist of Auchwitz by Heather Morris, read by Richard Armitage– I picked this audiobook because it was read by Richard Armitage, who I’ve been a fan of since the BBC production of North and South. As might be expected from the title, this is a very very sad book – the misery was a little unrelenting. At the same time, I thought there were parts of it that were stunning even in the face of the autrocities of the Holoucaust.

Sourdough by Robin Sloan, read by Therese Plummer– I picked this up becauae I saw it on a list of short audiobooks. It is about a young computer programmer who moves to the Bay Area to work for a tech company and starts making sourdough bread in her spare time. I thought this satirical and charming book was a fun read, but the end was a little unhinged and bizarre. The astute observations on life in the Bay area made me laugh. There were parts that made me want to revive my sourdough starter and start baking bread again, the descriptions of bread baking were so evocative and romantic. I don’t love books where the ending comes out of left field, and this book kind of just left me scratching my head. I listened to a lot of this during late night commutes and there were parts where I thought, “Maybe this doesn’t make sense because I’m tired’.” And I’d go back and re-listen, a couple times even. But nope, the story was just that odd in places.

My Fair Brady by Brian D. Kennedy – YA novel set in the world of high school theatre. (I suggested this as a mother daughter book club book, but I’m not sure the 12 year old read it.) High school senior Wade is passed over for the lead in the school production of My Fair Lady, so he decides to befriend Elijah in an attempt to show people how not self centered he is. Elijah on the other hand has joined the lighting crew for the show in order to make some friends, and jumps at th eopportunity to make friends with super popular Wade. I always find theatre books fun to read – seeing what an author got right or wrong compared to my own experiences. I loved those details in this book, but I didn’t love Wade. The concept of the book is based on what an asshole Wade is, but the story is told in first person and I find it very rare that people truly come off as assholes in first person.

On my proverbial night stand:

Landslide by Susan Conley- Maine author to go with our Maine trip. Really enjoying this book.

Life is Hard: How Philisophy can Help us Find Our Way by Kieran Setiya- A couple years ago I read Setiya’s book Midlife: a Philosophical Guide, and found it so thoughtful to read. This book is about the various things that can make life challenging- infirmity, loneliness, failure, injustice- and seeing if phlosophy can help us navigate them,

Wild Genius On The Moors by Juliet Baker- Charlotte Brontë has died! Yet there are still thirty pages to go….

To Night Owl from Dogfish by Holly Goldberg Sloan and Meg Wolitzer, audiobook- charming epistolatory novel about two 12 year olds whose fathers have met and fallen in love- it’s a little too cute sometimes (perhaps because of the audiobook format) but mostly proving delightful.

The Trumpet of the Swan by E. B. White- reading aloud at bedtime to the kids,

Night of the Living Rez by Morgan Talty- another Maine author- a collection of interconnected short stories. I’m enjoying to so far.

Books Read- March 2024

It’s almost June, but here’s what I read in March. I didn’t plan it this way, but March was a very romance heavy month.

The Marquis Who Musn’t by Courtney Milan – This is the second book in Milan’s Wedgeford Trials book that centers on a 19th century village in England with a huge Asian immigrant population. Naomi Kwan wants to take ambulance classes and learn first aid, but as a single woman, is constantly told she couldn’t. She enters into a fake engagement with the handsome new in town Liu Ji Kai in order to register for classes as an engaged woman. But Kai has other motives for being in town. Warm friendship ensues. Not my favorite Milan – her plotting is a little clunky, but I can always count on her for smart characters, fascinating and well researched historical settings, and good writing with some spot on sentiments. Sentiments like this:
“Is that why she hasn’t yelled at me anymore about the ambulance class?”
Her aunt simply shook her head. “Since when does my older sister yell?”
Naomi felt her nose wrinkle. “Technically correct. Emotionally false.”
Or this one:
“Let me teach you a trick,” Mr. Liu said. “You seem to need some way to fend off questions, and this works for about everything… Go ahead. Repeat the question you just asked me.”
“Who are you?”
He gave her a cutting look – a sweep of his eyes from head to toe as if he were a scythe, slashing her down. “My private situation is none of your business.”
She staggered back. He radiated triumph. “See? Easy enough.”
“Easy for you,” She muttered. “How do you expect me to use that at home? Have you no parents?”
Even in 19th century England, Milan has captured the angst I often feel as an Asian daughter.

Ten Things that Never Happened by Alexis Hall, read by Will Watt – Amnesia plots are absolutely not my thing, but this book kind of turns that trope on its head. Sam runs a bed and bath store and thinks his jerk CEO/boss Jonathan is going to fire him, endangering the jobs of all his employees, so when Sam has an accident while talking to Jonathan, he fakes amnesia to buy himself time. Of course uneasy friendship, respect, understanding, and love ensues. Along with a pretty terrific cat. I really enjoyed this book- it was laugh out loud funny in places, and beautifully touching in others. I loved the narrator- he made this book the audio equivalent of all my favorite Bdritish rom coms rolled into one, with a colourful and hilarious cast of characters.

Brazen and the Beast by Sarah MacLean – second novel in the Bareknuckle Bastards series. I really like Sarah MacLean- her novels are really well written, her heroines are smart and independent and there are always finely detailed secondary characters. This novel involves Hattie, who wants to run her father’s shipping business, and Beast who is… actually I’m a little foggy on the twists and turns of the plot points and how Hattie and Beast got involved. I think that bit was a little thin. It involves a long held grudge and a smuggling ring. Hattie and Beast were great characters. The plot was… incidental.

The Lover’s Dictionary by David Levithan – slight and pithy. To be honest, I don’t remember much of it, though my notes seem to indicate that I found a lot of it worth highlighting. It’s the story of a romance where each chapter is based on a letter of the alphabet.

The L section, is Latitude – “ What a strange phrase- not seeing other people. As if it’s been constructed to be a lie. We see people all the time, the question is what we do about it.”
Isn’t that always the question?

S for scapegoat – “I think our top two are: not enough coffee. Too much coffee.”
Also so true.

X for ..x – “Doesn’t it strike you as strange that we have a letter in the alphabet that nobody uses? It represents one-twenty-sixth of the possibility of our language, and we let it languish. If you and I really, truly wanted to change the world, we’d invent more words that started with x.”

Daring and the Duke by Sarah MacLean– this was the final book in her Bare Knuckle Bastard series. After I read Brazen and the Beast, I figured I might as well finish the series. I enjoyed it, but not as much as Brazen and the Beast. I really wanted this book to be an epic saga in the vein of Gone With The Wind or Thorn Birds. The heroine Grace is a fascinating character and I wanted to read about how she ran away from her childhood home and built her empire, but the story starts after she’s already become a powerful figure in the underworld. Ewan is fine, complicated and kind of puzzling to me, and he’s the least interesting part of Grace’s story. Also- massive overuse of the word “lush”.

The Wedding Date by Jasmine Guillroy– this book was on a San Francisco reading list and since we were about to go to San Francisco, I put it on my Libby holds. Then a few days before we were going to leave for the Bay Area, I saw a copy of it in the Little Free Library in front of our piano teacher’s house. How fortuitous! Anyhow- this book was fine. It features a meet cute in an elevator in Sam Francisco, an impromptu wedding date and then dating life. It was pleasant enough but there was a certain lack of tension in the relationship- the book features two smart independent people who clearly like each other- they just have to figure out the logistics. The things that could have made the book interesting – namely, she’a Black and he’s White- gets mentioned and then dropped and never really addressed.

On my proverbial Night stand:

The Brontes: Wild Genius on the Moors- so close to finishing this one. Charlotte is getting married!!!!!

My Fair Brady- YA book set in the world of the high school musical.

Sourdough by Robin Sloan – audiobook that I picked because it was on the shorter side and I knew I could get through it before my commutes got shorter. It’s about a woman working in tech who inherits a sourdough starter and it changes her life. Makes me want to revive those starters in my fridge.

The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi – middle aged female pirate, leaves her ten year old daughter at home to carry our one last, hopefully lucrative, assignment. It is proving delightful so far. I’m laughing a lot.