Tag: books

Books Read January 2021

More books read than normal, but I think most of the were leftover from last month; the first three books I finished in the first ten days of the new year.

Disoriental by Negar Djavodi – 9h 51 m. The story of an Iranian family who flees to Paris and the journey of the youngest daughter to self discovery – finding her way as an immigrant and as a gay woman. This is one of those books that I started without reading the back cover – it had been on a list of recommended books in translation – and as a result I wasn’t quite sure where the book was going for a while. The book jumps back and forth in time and was a little slow to get started for me, but once the threads came together it coalesced into a really touching story of family and immigration and identity. I was really drawn to the idea the narrator struggles with how to find a place in a new country without losing her heritage: “Because to really integrate into a culture, I can tell you that you have to disintegrate first, at least partially, from you own”

The Mothers by Britt Bennett – 5h 18m. I picked this one up after reading the Vanishing Half, Bennett’s bestseller from last year. This novel is about three friends and the ebb and flow of their relationship and how friendships can unravel even while being intertwined. Absorbing story.

How to Eat by Mark Bittman and David L. Katz, M.D. -(hard copy, so no time tracking) I’ve long been a fan of Mark Bittman’s super simple and accessible approach to feeding ourselves. This book, taken from a New York Times column that he and Katz wrote, cuts through a lot of the buzzy food research to distill what we do truly know about healthy food choices. The takeaway: eat a diet primarily of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, legumes, beans and nuts. I liked how they really talked about the flaws in scientific research; most food news is so sensationalist and there are no magic foods. They also make the point that the standard American diet is so detrimental to begin with that even minor changes to replace processed food in one’s diet would be a marked improvement. Reading this book really simplified healthy eating for me.

On Being 40(ish) edited by Lindsey Mead – a collection of essays about… being 40 (ish). Some of the essays spoke to me more than others. The existential angst of privileged people (of which I am sometimes guilty) gets a little tedious to read sometimes. But some standouts: Catherine Newman’s essay of friendship told through clothing was a beautiful tribute to her friend. Sophronia Scotts piece “I don’t have time for this” was just the anti-wallowing slap in the face that I needed. Jessica Lahey’s writing about mentoring at risk youth had some good lessons about connecting and the importance of a moment. “If I’m present enough,” she writes of her students, “and empathetic enough, an attosecond can expand to contain multitudes, to encompass their painful past and shape our possible future together. ”

The State of Affairs by Esther Perel – audio book narrated by the author. In this book the famous sex therapist examines cheating in an attempt to understand why people cheat, and perhaps lay out some lessons to be found in infidelity. She examines the motives and emotions behind people who cheat and people who have been cheated on and people who have been cheated with. One thing she says, that really struck me, was that people these days don’t usually cheat because they are unhappy, but rather because they think the could be happier. Of course there was something a little titillating about reading a book that gets into the weeds of infidelity, but ultimately for me, it made cheating just seem like something that took a lot of mental and emotional work.

Love Lettering by Kate Clayborn – 6h 27m. Contemporary romance about Meg, an in demand hand-letterer and the uptight financier Reid who helps her get over her creative block. Sweet and funny. I thought Reid was a perfectly lovely hero in the Mr. Darcy mold. Actually I found him more interesting than Meg and at times I wish the novel weren’t in first person narrative so I could be hin his head more. (side note: why are so many fiction written in first person? It’s on my list to find some non-first person novels to read). The details about hand lettered signs and the stationary business were a fun deep dive.

Books read in November 2020

How to Stop Time by Matt Haig – 6 h 7 mins. Lovely, light read about a man who ages so slowly that he has been alive for centuries. The book explores the ideas of family and history and time and perspective. I enjoyed the speculative history parts, particularly meeting Shakespeare.

Burial at Thebes by Seamus Heaney. Hard copy. Heaney’s adaptation of Euripides’ Antigone. I had wanted to read some of Heaney’s poetry, being unfamiliar with it. This play was the first thing available at the library. It read surprisingly modern, almost jarringly so. Perhaps that is because in my head the story of Antigone is an ancient one. I have vague memories of reading Anouilh’s version in high school French class. Heaney’s version focuses not so much on Antigone’s story, but rather that of Creon and his megalomania.

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid – 6h 36m. Engrossing story of an aging Hollywood film star and the journalist who is helping her write her memoirs. I’m not sure if I really connected with any of the characters, but this book was really well constructed and deftly plotted. I was mesmerized and stayed up until 3am to finish it.

Poser by Claire Dederer – audiobook read by Christine Williams. I had heard an interview with Dederer on the podcast Everything Is Fine, and I thought she had a lot of very sensible thoughts about being a woman over 40. This book is a memoir told through yoga poses. She took up yoga to help with back pain that developed while breastfeeding and writes about how her yoga journey mirrored her own life’s journey. There were a lot of really thoughtful ideas about identity and how we search for identity even as it changes. I do think, though, I am getting a little fatigued with the genre of new mother personal essays. Whereas personal essays about new motherhood used to make me really feel seen and not so alone, they now feel a little cliched, and the domain of a certain demographic. Maybe I need to read about more diverse motherhood experiences?

Loveboat, Taipei by Abigail Hing Wen – 6h 48m. When I was a high school student in Southern California, people in the Taiwanese community talked about Loveboat all the time. It was a cultural exchange program in Taiwan for teenagers – not officially called Love Boat, but referred to as such for all the matchmaking that resulted in its pressure cooker of newfound independence. I never went – it sounded really intense to me. Wen’s book is a YA novel about Ever Wong, whose parents ship her off to Loveboat. There she does the requisite self discovery and flirting with romance and bonding with girlfriends. I must say this book really did make me a little nervous to have a teenager. s

Also in November, two audiobooks we listened to on our trips to the Shenandoahs, both given high approval ratings from the eight year old:
Nim’s Island by Wendy Orr, narrated by Kate Reading – I loved this adventure story featuring the resourceful Nim.
The Wild Robot by Peter Brown, narrated by Kate Atwater – Such a great story about a robot finding her way and herself with the help of a colourful cast of animal friends.

Where the Wild Things Are

Our dog eared copy of the beloved classic.

That very night in Max’s room a forest grew and grew – and grew until his ceiling hung with vines and the walls became the world all around and an ocean tumbled by with a private boat for Max and sailed off through night and day and in and out of weeks and almost over a year to where the wild things are. – from Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak

I feel as if suddenly it’s spring. Not just spring, but late spring, verging on summer. Somehow we missed spring, while sitting at home during a pandemic. The cherry blossoms (which are always an indicator here) peaked at the beginning of the stay at home orders. Usually the cherry blossoms are time marker for me, but this year, it was a blip, barely registering.

My cousin Karen has been writing daily on Facebook, each post labelled with the day number. I think if it were not for her posts and for the daily posts of other blogs I read, I would have absolutely no sense of what day it is or how deep into stay-at-home orders we are. When I’m working, the rhythm of time is pretty much defined by when in the process we are (ie. prep, rehearsal, tech, or performance) and when the next free day is. Without those markers, time seems to be particularly slippery.

Several years ago, when the eight year old was a baby, there was a knock on our door and it was our across the street neighbor with two shopping bags full of book they had our grown. In that pile was a well worn copy of Maurice Sendaks Where the Wild Things Are. These days, the three year old has been really into reading Sendaks classic are at bedtime, there is something beautifully apt about Max’s story – how our walls are now our “world all around” as we sail “in and out of weeks.” I feel as if we are living with a pack of feral creatures who root in the pantry and fridge for food when the whim strikes, leaving mess and havoc in their wake.

To be sure, part of this is my own fault – perhaps I should not have left the three year old alone with a spray bottle, two cups of water, and some water colour paints. My hopes that he would docilely create art while I showered were laughably naive. I emerged from the shower to shouts from the 8 year old trying to contain the mess, and a rainbow of water spread on the floor, while the three year old stood on his chair, the spray bottle topless and empty. There are definitely terrible eyes being rolled and terrible roars and terrible teeth being gnashed. Sometime they are mine.

Unlike Max, I have no tricks to tame the beasts. Though come to think of it, his trick seems mainly to embrace the wild rumpus, even to instigate it. Maybe I should try more of that. Perhaps that is what we can learn from the little boy in the wolf suit. That at the end of the day, once we have exhausted ourselves rumpus-ing, we just want to be where someone loves us best of all. And where dinner is hot.