non-fiction – Life Off Headset

Books Read November and December 2023

I feel like for being so busy in November and December, I got more reading done than I thought I would. Thank you, audiobooks and commuting! I finished the year having read 51 books – which is fewer than last year, but I also had a lot less time off from work this year than last year. The past two months have been mostly lighter books.

Thank You for Listening written and narrated by Julia Whelan – Novel about an audiobook narrator finding her way in life. I loved this book. I had debated between reading it and listening to it on audio, and Engie had such good things to say about the audio that I went with that version and do not regret that choice. I want more books read by Julia Whelan now. And the book itself was also pretty great – I laughed out loud many times while listening. I see this book billed as a Romance, and while there is a great love story, I think there is so much more going on in this book for Sewanee, the protagonist, than just finding love. The book abounds with complex and loving relationships, the details about life as an audiobook narrator are fascinating to me, the Italian audio engineer is indelible in my mind. This book was just so satisfying.

Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer – It took me two years, but I finally finished this book. I had first heard of Robin Wall Kimmerer when she was a guest on the podcast On Being. This is a pretty dense book. Not dense as in thick and tome-like, but dense in that every essay in this book required so much concentration from me. I would finish one essay and then feel like I couldn’t really digest another one. So I would say this is a book to be read slowly, one essay at a time. (Or go find her interview on On Being, if you don’t feel up for reading this book…) There are so many threads in this book, but a lot it ties back to the idea of nature and the natural world and learning from a world that gives and gives. And how humans take and take, but we don’t remember to listen to the earth or to give back to it. This book really impacted how I talk about nature to my children, though. I mean, I don’t think I used to talk about nature too much to my kids, but after reading this book, I’ve come to feel that it is important to point out the beauty and brilliance and benefits of nature to my kids so that they also foster an appreciation for the natural worlds and don’t take it for granted.
Some quotes I highlighted:
“Maybe we’ve all been banished to lonely corners by our obsession with private property. We’ve accepted banishment even from ourselves when we spend our beautiful, utterly singular lives on making more money, to buy more things that feed buy never satisfy. It is the Windigo way that tricks us into believing that belongings will fill our hunger when it is belonging that we crave.”
Yes, do I really need more things? I wrote in my notes, after reading this passage, “Now I feel guilty about wanting that dress.” I don’t think the point is to make people feel guilty for their consumerism, but rather for them to think about what “need” really means and what “wants” really are.

“If all the word is a commodity how poor we grow. When all the world is a gift in motion, how wealthy we become.” – from the essay The Gift of Strawberries – a reminder to not take the earth for granted and to treat natural resources as a gift. There is a lot of railing against capitalism in this book. As is probably to be expected.

“Our toddlers speak of plants and animals as if they were people, extending to them self and intention and compassion – until we teach the not to. We quickly retrain them and make them forget. When we tell them that the tree is not a who, but an it, we make that maple an object. […] If an a maple is an it, we can take up the chain saw. If a maple is a her, we think twice.” What do we teach our children about the world we live in?

I Should Have Honor written and read by Khalida Brohi – Brohi is a Pakistani activist who advocates for women’s rights and speaks out against honor killings in Pakistan. Her message and mission is an important one and there are parts of her book that were so sad and horrifying. I think, though, I kind of wanted less of her personal story and more about the history and impetus for honor killings. Granted this is her memoir, so the book is of course mostly about her journey – and it is really an incredibly brave one – but I think I wanted more of an insight into the country and culture she was from.

All The Right Notes by Dominic Lim – This book was about Quinto a piano player and composer in New York whose music teacher father wants him to come home to put on a show to raise money for his high school music program. And his father wants Quinto to convince Emmett Aoki, a famous movie star and his child hood friend/crush, to perform. Reconnecting with Emmett sends Quinto’s world into a tailspin. I’m always intrigued by romance novels (well, really any novel) set in the theatre world and with Asian characters. Not all books get theatre life right (or right compared the my reality, which is, admittedly just one perspective), so sometimes I just find them annoying, but I like to read them anyway. I thought this book was fine. The writing is funny in parts, awkward in others. The description of Filipino food made me want to look it all up and then order some. Overall though, the book wasn’t terribly memorable for me.

The Chiffon Trenches written and read by Andre Leon Tally – Tally was a fashion journalist and Anna Wintour’s right hand man at Vogue. Reading this in conjunction with Braiding Sweetgrass was interesting, because fashion is such a material industry. This book is full of juicy inside stories of the fashion world. Tally’s descriptions of clothes were so vivid and several times I looked images up because I just had to to see for myself the ensembles of which he wrote. This book made me want to be stylish, yet also made me realize how even though fashion can be a lot of fun and a great form of self expression, at the same time it must be a huge mental load to be so put together. There is a lot of this book that feels completely not relevant to my life, but I enjoyed hearing about nonetheless. There are also a lot of sad and vulnerable moments in this memoir. Tally, who passed away in early 2023, says a lot about being a Black man in a predominantly white industry, and makes many points that I had never thought about before.

The Takedown by Lily Chu, read by Phillipa Soo – I really enjoyed Chu’s book The Stand-In, and I’m a sucker for audiobooks narrated by Hamilton cast members, so of course I picked this book up. The novel centers around Dee Kwan a (borderline toxically) positive person who works in diversity consulting. She gets assigned to work a case at a major fashion house and hijinks and drama and self awareness ensue. I thought this was a charming book. There are some awesome – yet complicated – female friendships, some thoughtful handling of issues of race, a nice guy that is a little too perfect, and a chinchilla. I thought the ending was a little too pat, but there’s your romance happily ever after for you. Chu’s books are labelled as romance, but I feel like the romance is the least interesting parts of her books, to be honest. This book was an interesting listen to follow The Chiffon Trenches.

And Elderly Lady Is Up To No Good by Helene Tursten, translated by Marlaine Delargy -Another Engie recommendation, which I picked up after I read Killers of a Certain Age and wanted more stories of women who are no longer in the first (or second or third) bloom of youth. These series of short stories of an 88 year old Swedish woman who lives alone and likes it that way, to the extent that she’s willing to do anything to keep things going the way she wants. It’s a little dark and very funny. It’s a good palate cleanser read, I think – short, smart, and unlike anything else I’ve been reading. I already have the sequel in my TBR pile.

Essential Labor: Mothering as Social Change by Angela Garbes – This book is a collection of essays that looks at caregiving in America and how this essential act is greatly undervalued, probably because it is considered the domain of women. She has one really great essay that points out how our society values inventors and not maintenance workers – and what are caregivers but the maintenance workers of people’s bodies? I really liked Garbes’ previous book Like a Mother, which looked at pregnancy and childbirth today. Essential Labor, I felt, was a more personal book. I think I wanted something a little more scholarly, though, and with a little more focus. While there are so many thoughtful and interesting points in this book and a lot of personal narrative, Garbes also recaps a lot of other people’s writings and part of me just wanted to read all the articles listed in her bibliography rather than just her interpretation of them.

Business or Pleasure by Rachel Lynn Solomon – This novel was in the New York Times’ list of favorite romance novels of 2023, and sounded interesting. Chandler, a ghost writer, feeling slightly disillusioned about her career has a one night stand with a cute guy. The next day, she is hired to ghost write the memoir of a former teen heartthrob who turns out to be… one night stand guy. This book features one of the funniest and most honest bad sex scenes I’ve ever read – Chandler and Finn’s one night stand is incredibly disappointing for her, and you know what? It’s probably one of the most true to life things I’ve ever read in a romance novel. Sex is always amazing in romance novels, but is it always that in real life? Anyhow, I expected the rest of the book to be about how Chandler and Finn grow to like each other as they work on the book, but it turns out to be so much more (and so much more open door) than just working on the book. There are a lot of details I liked about the book – I particularly appreciated how Chandler and Finn bonded over being Jewish because you don’t often find those cultural details as such a casual key characteristic in romance novels. I thought this was a fun read all in all – not terribly memorable on a whole but some really great moments. I’m a little burnt out on first person narrative contemporary romance novels, though. Why doesn’t anyone write romance novels in the omniscient voice?

Murder in Mesopotamia by Agatha Christie – I’ve read a lot of Agatha Christie, but hadn’t read this one yet. I think I saw this on a list of really good Agatha Christie novels that people don’t generally talk about. This was a Poirot mystery set in Mesopotamia, so all the expected cringe-y colonial undertones are there. The mystery itself was quite clever. I try not to guess “whodunnit” when I read mystery novels because I think it takes the fun out of the big reveal for me. I am probably in the minority here, but I actually prefer Miss Marple to Hercule Poirot mysteries. Poirot can be a little smug for my tastes. Nonetheless a nice comfort read for the end of the year.

Well that wraps up 2023 reading. I’ll have a post with my favorite books and reading experiences from the year later on. I hope.

On my proverbial bedside table:

Wild Genius on the Moors – Still reading about the Brontës. Everyone is dead almost. Charlotte doesn’t like to leave home.

Girlfriend on Mars by Deborah Willis – Amber is competing on a reality show for a chance to go to Mars. Boyfriend Kevin is back home in Vancouver, trying to live life. So far, funny and wry.

Untangled by Lisa Damour – it has the very cringe-y subtitle of “Guiding Teenage Girls through The Seven Transitions into Adulthood.” The content is better than that subtitle.

The Monsters We Defy (audiobook) by Lisa Penelope read by Shayna Small -Part heist novel, part historical fantasy, set in the Washington DC’s Black Broadway of 1925. This is proving very entertaining.

Mad, Bad, And Dangerous to Know by Samira Ahmed – Mother Daughter Book club read. Muslim American Teenager in Paris for the Summer on a mission to solve a historical question with a very cute descendant of Alexander Dumas in tow.

Books Read – June 2023

Nothing like the first of the month to recap the books I read two months ago… I read more books than normal in June- thanks partly to my solo week at home! These past few months I’ve been really enjoying reading hard copy books. I read a lot via Libby on my phone, but there is something glorious to be about sitting with a book and turning the pages and flipping back and forth. I think the family being away really upped my “read in bed” lounge-y time.

The Chuckling Finger by Mabel Seeley – I was unfamiliar with Seeley, but I guess this American writer was hugely popular in the late 30s and 40s. She wrote mystery and crime novels. I picked up this book because I saw it recommended in The Week – can’t remember by whom. It’s like an Agatha Christie mystery with a touch more gothic in it. The story centers around Ann Gray, who has come to visit her cousin at her house on the lake. Mysterious accidents and eventually bodies ensue. It’s not the most well plotted of mysteries, but the heroine is plucky and smart and quite daring. Good if you’ve exhausted Agatha Christie and looking for something similar.

Scarborough by Catherine Hernandez – This 2017 novel by Canadian writer Hernandez centers around three children whose lives intertwine at a literacy center for low income families in a suburb outside of Toronto. Such a well crafted book, with story lines and characters flowing parallel and then intersecting in heart-wrenching ways. I think this novel really showed how hard it is to be a good parents when your basic needs are not being met – it’s Maslow’s hierarchy of needs in novel form. Another central theme in this book is how children can simultaneously be so vulnerable yet so resilient. Even when their lives are hard, the characters manage to find friends and moments of joy. Reading about children who are abused or mistreated is always hard for me, yet Hernandez manages to treat all her characters with empathy and compassion, even when they are making really bad decisions.
Quotes I highlighted:
– “He lay his daughter on the bed face up, which made her snore so perfectly. She was the most beautiful sack of potatoes he ever did see.”
Yep, I’ve been there.
-“Sylvie’s dad was on that couch for months. Jonathon, like many here, was a sad combination of bad cards dealt and bad choices made.”
-“When you’re dead, you can’t tell someone, “You will change your ways,” because their ways won’t continue ever again.”

Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman – full cast audio production – I listened to this book on my commute and loved it. It was clever, funny, deeply human and vastly entertaining. I laughed out loud many many times. In this novel, as the world hurtles towards Armageddon an Angel and a Demon contemplate life and how much the actually enjoy Earth and don’t want it to end. I don’t always like full cast audio productions, but I found this one to be pretty great.

When a Rogue Meets his Match by Elizabeth Hoyt – This is the second book of Hoyt’s Greycourt series. It was … fine. Not particularly memorable – I just had to google the book to remind myself of the plot – it involves a forced marriage and then BIG SECRETS and then bad people. In my notes, I wrote, “The chemistry between the main characters was hot. Plotting was kind of awkward. I’m not sure I understand the motivation for all the intrigue.”

Night of the Scoundrel by Kelly Bowen – So I got to the end of When a Rogue Meets his Match and… there was another book appended to the back. I figured, may as well read it too. This novella is pretty much a vengeance plot. Guy says, “Help me get revenge.” Girl says, “What will you give me?” He says, “Whatever you want.” And they fall in the love in the meantime. Kelly Bowen is new to me. I thought her writing was very good, but I thought that the trauma and backstory of the mysterious hero was overwrought. I don’t mean to say trauma can’t be… well, traumatic, but just there was something almost sadistic about the amount of suffering he was made to go through here.

Wench by Dolen Perkins-Valdez: This novel is set at Tawawa House, a holiday resort in Ohio where white men would bring their enslaved Black mistresses. I was fascinated by this little slice of history – about what would motivate a man to bring his enslaved mistress to a resort and what it was like for the women to leave the plantation. The novel centers around a group of six slaves who meet at Tawawa House and the friendships they form and how their lives shift as they return to the resort year after year. Not going lie – this book was a challenging and gut-wrenching read, as one would expect of a book centered around the lives of a group of slaves. There is a lot of brutal sexual assault depicted as well as the mental and emotional and physical cruelty of slavery. Even still, I found this book gripping, as it followed the main character and her conflicted relationship with her master.

Index, A History of the by Dennis Duncan – The title pretty much says it all. I found this book fascinating. Duncan delves into the history of how we categorize, track and find information in the books that we read. The book is a little dry, very witty and definitely nerdy. I mean there is a whole chapter about page numbers. I take page numbers for granted, but Duncan points out that page numbers were kind of useless before the printing press was invented then goes into the history of page numbers including what is one of the earliest surviving page numbers. Also, apparently indexes were controversial when they first became a thing because people thought that scholars would just read indexes rather than the real text. Also – did you know there was a society of professional indexers? I guess someone has to create an index, but it had never occurred to me before that that could be a profession. And in our world of AI and Google and e-book search functions – are professional indexers going to be obsolete? Duncan does provide an example of a computer generated index and a human generated index of this book, and one can certainly tell the difference. Indeed, the human generated index is one of the most amusingly tongue in cheek things I’ve read in a while. Definitely don’t skip reading the index of this book if you read it.

Unshuttered: Poems by Patricia Smith – Smith collects nineteenth century photographs of Black people and this volume of poetry was inspired by those photographs. Photographs of Black people of the time are very rare as Black people did not often have the money or freedom to have their portraits taken. For each photograph in this volume of poetry, Smith has written a poem that speculates as to whom the subject is. Both the pictures and the poems are haunting.

Slay by Brittney Morris – YA novel, our Mother Daughter book club book this month. I heard about this book on the podcast What Should I Read Next and immediately put it on my holds list from the library. This novel centers around 17 year old Kiera who has developed a video game that only Black people can play – the worlds and characters and superpowers were all created with the Black experience in mind. No one knows that she is behind this hugely popular game and when a teenager is killed over the game, Kiera has to decide how to handle the public scrutiny and accusations of “anti-white discrimination” that the game starts to get all while. I thought this was a very thought provoking book – Morris speaks more eloquently about the need for safe spaces and for the difficulty of being unable to assert your own racial identity than any piece of non-fiction I’ve read. At the same time, the book isn’t preachy or didactic – all these thorny issues are wrapped up in a well plotted novel that moves with momentum. I really enjoyed this book. The 11 year old did as well.

On my proverbial night stand:
Wild Genius of the Moors – Still reading about the Brontes. The past couple chapters have had so. much. death. Sad sad times.

Keeper of the Lost Cities by Sharon Messenger: Mother daughter book club book. My daughter suggested this one. She is obsessed with this series about a girl who discovers she has magical powers and leaves her known family and earth.

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn – as part of Engie’s blogger book club. I’ve never read this book before and am finding it beautiful in its details of time, place, and character.

My Darkest Prayer by S.A. Cosby – I loved his novel Razorblade Tears. This is one of his first efforts and while it is a little rough around the edges, I’m enjoying the prose very much.

What are you reading?

Books Read January 2023

Okay, I literally wrote “January 2022” at the top of this post. When does it sink in? I once read a trick of pre-writing the new year on the first ten checks in your check book – I thought that was a pretty neat hack.

The Nineties by Chuck Klosterman – I’m not sure what Chuck Klosterman is. I mean googling him, he is defined as a “writer and essayist”. I think of him as a cultural critic, though I’m not sure what the qualifications are for that. Anyhow, this book is a collection of essays dissecting the 1990s from a cultural standpoint. I picked it up because I’m always interested in what people say about the times I’ve experienced. Klosterman looks at the decade through the lens of media, the internet, politics, sports, film and other things that were in the public conversation at the time. Klosterman is a cis-gender white male, and that was definitely in the back of my mind as I read the book; while there were some really keen observations in the book, I couldn’t help but to think that there were huge swaths of the American experience in the 1990s that was missing from the book. To be fair, he does acknowledge that his viewpoint is rather specific (as would anyone’s viewpoint be.). There is also a huge amount of snobbery in this book – for example, he skewers Titanic as a movie without merit, which dismisses the pleasure of watching a popcorn movie for the thrill of the moment. (He writes, “Yet the single most interesting thing about Titanic is its total commitment to expressing nothing that could be construed as interesting, now or then.” I mean I think a huge ocean liner sinking is pretty fascinating myself). All that notwithstanding, I thought there were some really thoughtful things going on in this book about how we (or at least the “we” that have the luxury of an examined life) live and think about our place in the world.
Some food for thought:
Most of the time, the skewed recollections [of our conversations] dwell on pop cultural ephemera – the precise spellings of minor consumer products, iconic lines of dialogues that are both famous and incorrect, and the popularity of a children’s movie staring the comedian Sindbad that does not exits. The most unhinged explanation for this phenomenon involves quantum mechanics and the possibility of alternative realities; the most rational explanation is that most of these memories were generated by people of the early nineties, a period when the obsession with popular culture exponentially increased without the aid of a mechanism that remembered everything automatically.
One of Klosterman’s points in the book is about how the 90s was the last decade when it was okay not to know something, to live with the uncertainty since we couldn’t immediately fact check everything. Once we could easily Google things on our phone, being correct became much more standard and expected. This thought made me think about the benefits of living in uncertainty – of being okay with knowing that you don’t really know if something is 100% correct. It seems like it would be hard and freeing at the same time.

In the nineties, when a semi-educated young person was asked to identify the root cause of most American problems, the probably answer would not have been capitalism. The more likely response would have been commercialism. … The problem of commercialism is the motive, and that can be recognized in how the thing is packaged. This differs from a hatred of capitalism, where the problem is the thing.
I thought this an interesting point. He explains that it’s the difference between hating Christmas and hating Christmas Carols played before Thanksgiving. But again, also his elitism is showing because what does “semi-educated” mean anyway?

The Death of Vivek Oji by Akwaeke Emezi – Set in present day Nigeria, this novel is centered around Vivek Oji, who he was, how he died and the community surrounding him. I wasn’t expecting a mystery novel when I picked it up, but that’s what it evolved to be. I think the relationships of the people in this novel was my favorite part. Vivek was part of a large, loving, and complicated community and I loved how everyone loved Vivek in their own way. His mother, in particular, in her tenacity to find out the truth of her son’s death, was heartbreaking. The writing is beautiful, almost poetic, and so immersive. I went into the book not having read the “back” so it took me a while to see where the story was going. The chapters alternate viewpoints, some told in first person and some in third person and there were so many characters it was hard for me to follow the narrative thread. I think I would have liked this book much better if I could have sat down and read it all in one sitting because reading it a little at a time over several weeks just made it feel really disjointed.

The Charm Offensive by Alison Cochrun – Romance novel set in the world of a Bachelor-type reality show. Charlie, an awkward tech wizard whose career is in flames agrees to be the latest Prince Charming in order to rehab his reputation. Dev, one of the show’s producers is assigned to be Charlie’s handler. As Dev helps Charlie navigate the women vying for his hand, the two become close. I have to admit, I didn’t completely buy that Dev and Charlie could get so close (physically and emotionally) without *anyone* on the show figuring it out and calling them on it. (Well, no one did until about 3/4 of the way through the book.) Or that it took them so long to figure out their feelings for each other. But maybe that’s just a testament to how messed up it is to be on a reality tv show? The other thing I didn’t love was the way the women on the show were portrayed, at least initially. I get that when you have thirty women trying to win the same guy there are going to be some stereotypical girl fighting and cattiness, but all the contestants felt really two dimensional until it was down to the last few and even still, now I can’t remember a thing about them. Despite all that, I did enjoy this book a lot because of the romantic leads and the peek inside making a reality television show. Dev and Charlie were both really nice and sweet guys with believable emotional baggage to figure out, there was a good amount of tension and chemistry between them.

Any Other Family by Eleanor Brown – I felt like this book was similar to This is How it Always Is in that it’s a parenting fable disguised as a novel. It’s the story of three mothers linked by the fact that their adopted children all have the same birth mother. The families have gathered for a vacation and get the news that the birth mother is pregnant again, bringing up questions of if they should adopt the new child or find a new family. A lot of the book is about how people create their idea of family. Each chapter alternates being told from a different woman’s point of view, which really highlights how one’s outward appearance can belie that doubts and anxieties within. I really liked that aspect of the book – the person who seems to all have it together in one chapter is seen to be barely holding on inside in the next, and how no one sees one’s flaws as deeply as oneself. Even still, I feel like between this book and This Is How It Always Is and The School For Good Mothers, I’m a little tapped out on “the difficulties of mothering” novels for a while. It was well written and very readable, but I just need a break from tales of exhausted mothers.

Lots of passages of note:
Violet wakes up. Elizabeth closes her eyes to pray for strength, then open them and forces a smile onto her face. “Hello, sweet girl,’ she says, pretending to be the cheerful mother she knows she ought to be, and the the withered thirty-something husk of a woman who hasn’t had a good night’s sleep in far too long. Violet begins to wail. You can’t bullshit a bullshitter.
Yup.

“Look. Things change. This is a fact of life. But you have survived one hundred percent of the changes in your life so far, which means the odds are high you’re going to survive whatever comes next, even if you don’t know what it is right now.”
One character says this to her rising middle-schooler. I need to file this away to say to my kids some day.

“The thing is, you’re going to be a lot of different mothers over the course of Violet’s life. It could be that you don’t like being this mother this infant mother, and no one would blame you for that, not a bit. it’s really hard. They’re energy vampire, and they take so much and give so little. But it won’t always be this way. She’ll be Tate and Taylor’s age and Phoebe’s age, and you’ll be the mom she needs then, and you’ll like some of those stages a whole lot more, and some of them probably less. None of this is written in stone. There’s no finish line in parenting, no end to it. We just have to be in it with them the whole time.”
It’s stuff like this that makes this book feel like a parenting manifesto disguised as a novel. There is a lot of wisdom to it, though.

On My Proverbial Night Stand Currently…

The Brontes – Still. Charlotte Bronte is now in her late teens. I had a moment of pause when I realized that she is already halfway through her short life.

My Plain Jane – A twist on Jane Eyre written by the team that wrote My Lady Jane. Amusing so far, though a little chaotic. Fun to read in conjunction with the Bronte biography.

Braiding Sweetgrass – Reading a little bit at a time. This week, I highlighted this passage: “The marvel of a basket is in its transformation, its journey from wholeness as a living plant to fragmented strands and back to wholeness again as a basket. A basket knows the dual powers of destruction and creation that shape the world. Strands once separated are rewoven into a new whole. The journey of a basket is also the journey of a people.”

What the Fresh Hell Is This? Perimenopause, Menopause, other Indignities, and You – Because I turned 40 and then thought… gosh I wonder what’s next. (I did read, and didn’t love, The Menopause Manifesto, so I’m interested if this take on the issue will resonate with me any more…)

I’m Only Wicked With You – Romance novel by Julie Anne Long, part of her Palace of Rogues series. Not loving it as much as the first two books in the series but not hating it enough to quit quite yet.

Books Read – November 2022

A surprisingly full reading month. Some good, some not so good.

Dava Shashtri’s Last Day by Kirthana Samisetti – I felt pretty “meh” about this book. The novel is about a very wealthy lady, the self-made Dava Shashtri, who arranges for all her children to come home so that she can spend her last days with them. Secrets come out, families get redefined. I think the main thing I didn’t love about this novel was that I felt like that a lot of the storytelling was kind of … lazy. Throughout the novel diary excerpts, letters (unsent), newspaper articles, etc. were used to tell the reader what the characters were like, and while I love a good epistolary novel (Where’d You Go Bernadette did this so well), in this book these narrative devices just seemed a somewhat contrived and forced way to do some character development. Also … I know everyone has a story, but I think these days I don’t have as much patience for stories about rich people problems.

Shit, Actually by Lindy West – okay, this book was hilarious. Each chapter is devoted to one movie which West recaps while pointing out the sheer ridiculousness of the movie. Some of the chapters were so funny that I read them aloud to the Husband. West points out the sexism, agesim, racism, all the problematic -isms that were (are) pervasive in Hollywood, often to hilarous effect. The title of the book refers to Love, Actually – which I love, but yes, it has some really cringe-y things going on in it.

The School for Good Mothers by Jessamine Chan- This book was really well written and crafted, but it made me so angry. Which, I think, was kind of the point. The novel tells the story about Frida, who leaves her two year old alone at home for a few hours and is sent by the court to a facility that is basically mom rehab. It’s a little dystopian/ Handmaid’s Tale in the way that the women at the facility have no rights and must buy into this very rigid idea of what makes a good mother. Ironically, I was reading Sibling Rivalry at the same time and some of the language that the educators at the facility use is very similar to language in Sibling Rivalry, except in the concept of “mom school”, the words sound like some kind of military state mantra, and for a split second made me question my own faith in parenting books. Anyhow, everyone is miserable, the women are powerless, motherhood is skewered, and fathers get off easy in this novel. I can’t say I enjoyed it but it was certainly powerful and I really understood the way that the mothers in the book were all being judged and expected to hold motherhood as some impossibly high standard. “Unrelenting misery, finely written” is what I wrote in my notes. Some quotes that hit close to home:
“My ex-husband said my custody might be suspended. is that true?”
“Yes, the child will remain in her father’s care.”
“But it won’t ever happen again. Gust knows that.”
“Ms. Liu, this was an emergency removal because of imminent danger. You left your daughter unsupervised.”
Frida fushes. She always feels like she’s fucking up, but now there’s evidence.

The mothers at the school are instructed in how to hug their children:
They shouldn’t hold for more than three beats. Sometimes five or six beats is permissible if the child is injured or has experienced verbal, emotion, or physical trauma. Up to ten beats is permitted in extreme situations. Longer than that will hinder the child’s burgeoning independence.
When I first had my kid, I always wondered what the right thing to do was, even for the intangible….this pretty much sums up some of my internal monologue.

Frida is exhuasted from crouching and squatting and chasing and listening and giving and trying to channel frustration into love.
Yup… every day.

Siblings without Rivalry by Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlich – Speaking of which…. I thought this book had some really good concrete ideas for how not to create contentious sibling relations. Which is not to say that kids won’t fight… just that parents can minimize their own role in their children’s antagonism. So many useful things in this book, the big idea is that when we listen to our kids and make them feel heard, they will be less likely to feel resentful of their siblings. A few of my specific takeaways:
– Don’t compare your children. This seems obvious, but I think there are subtle ways of comparing that I didn’t realize I was doing until I read this book. Specifically doling out praise – rather than praise inherent qualities in children, praise actions. Which I know is oft given parenting advice, but I’d never thought of it in context of siblings. When you praise actions, then siblings may be less prone to jealousy because actions can be emulated in ways that characteristics may not be. So a kid isn’t thinking, “Oh I’m not smart like my brother.” rather they think, “Oh my brother studies after school. That’s a good habit. I’ll try that too.”
– When kids fight, address the injured party, not the aggressor. So rather than, “Don’t hit your sister!” you say to the sister, “Oh does your hand hurt? Let’s get it some ice.” Then you show that your attention is on the injury not the action.
– Encourage kids to work things out on their own. Their steps: Narrate the conflict (“It looks like you both want to play with the train.) then let the kids figure it out (“I’m taking the train away until you guys can come to an agreement on how to play with it without fighting.”) I’ve actually tried this several times and it seems to work a lot of the time. I think in the past, I’ve stopped at just taking the toy away, but that extra step of actually telling them to work it out seems to really encourage them to talk to each other rather than sulking in separate rooms.
-In Family meetings avoid deciding things by vote because voting can leave someone feeling as if their opinions don’t matter. Have each person state their case, then state the family values you want the decision to follow. If you do vote, acknowledge the disappointment.

Tiny Habits by B.J. Fogg – I wrote little bit about this book in my last post when I was contemplating my morning routine. Fogg studies behavior science at Stanford, and his book is very organized- he lays out this step by step method he has developed to help cement little habits, with the idea that little habits become big developments or advances. I will say, I think the book is a bit of overkill for learning his method. I mostly read the book because I had heard him on an episode of Life Kit and was intrigued by his ideas, but I think I had expected the book to be more about the science and psychology of cementing habits, but there wasn’t a whole lot of that kind of backing. I don’t think one needs to read his book to incorporate his ideas into one’s life. I did like the lists he had at the back of the book of various examples of simple ways to incorporate tiny habits and prompts into one’s life. Also in the back of the book he has a fun list of ways to celebrate tiny habits – his method is pretty much: brainstorm tiny habits that would fix a problem/ pick one tiny habit and find a prompt for it/ link tiny habit to prompt/ celebrate tiny habit to cement it. One of my favorite is “Look for something yellow.”

My Lady Jane by Cynthia Hand, Brodi Ashton, Jodi Meadows, read by Katherine Kellgren – I loved this book, a take on the story of Lady Jane Grey, the nine day queen. Funny, sassy, sweet, smart, this book made me laugh out loud so many times. I’ve always thought Lady Jane Grey’s story was so so sad. I mean, she was basically a 16 year old pawn who lost her life in the deadly games of the court power. I couldn’t see how the authors could give her a happy ending, but they did. There might be a little imaginative bending of historical truths, but I highly approve. Also the audiobook narrator has this deliciously dry tone that made the listening experience a delight. I hear the second book in the series is My Plain Jane, based on Jane Eyre and I’m already planning to read that in January.

Olga Dies Dreaming by Xochitl Gonzales – There was so much I liked about this book, about a wedding planner to the elite living in the Bronx and her politician brother. The writing was great, the characters complex yet understandable, the book tackles themes of racism, classicism and the American Dream in a really sharp and observant way, and the plotting was swift and kept me interested. The book also made me realize how little I know about Puerto Rico, despite it being part of the United States. The two main characters are of Puerto Rican heritage and their complex relationship with the island is one of the main plot points of the book. The book also reminded me a little of The Dutch House in the way that characters in both books have to grapple with saintly absent mothers. I will say, that there was one bit towards the end that kind of just put me off to the book – it was just a plot point, an important plot point, but one that I wish had been handled differently. All in all, though, I thought it was a good read. Some passages I highlighted:

–Olga began to notice that her clients were growing steadily richer while people doing the work were getting compensated in exactly the same way. Even the rich people appeared less content than before. Simply existing seemed an immense burden to them. Their wealth bought them homes that were “exhausting” to deal with, vacations that were “overwhelming” to plan for.

– In the aftermath of the Spice It Up debacle, Olga realized that she’d allowed herself to become distracted from the true American dream – accumulating money – by its phantom cousin, accumulating fame. She would never made that mistake again.

In Olga’s heart there was a pin-sized hole of infinite depth that made every day slightly more painful than it needed to be. She thought of it, this hole, as a birth defect. The space where, in a normal heart, a mother’s love was meant to be.
I thought that was just some really beautiful writing.

Books Read October 2022

This month I made it to 52 books read. My goal for this year is 60 books, which I think is within reach. But also, I don’t want to just speed through a bunch of short books for the sake of hitting that goal. I’ve decided I want to spend the winter wrapped in a blanket, sipping tea, and reading very lengthy tomes. Preferably in hardback. Suggestions welcome!

The Murder of Mr. Wickham by Claudia Gray – A Jane Austen inspired murder mystery that features the characters from Austen’s novels gathering for a house party at the house of Emma and Mr. Knightly. Marianne and Colonel Brandon are among the guests, as well as Lizzie Bennett (now Mrs. Darcy) and Mr. Darcy and their son. This book is so cleverly put together. It was a light and fun read and I really enjoyed reading about life after “happily ever after” for each of the couples. Gray has clearly thought through how each couple’s marriage plays out and the relationships she portrays feel entirely in keeping with the characters that Austen created. It was kind of like reading really good fan fiction, and I mean that as a total compliment. I will say, I felt that the actual murder plot was not entirely convincing, but then again, I don’t know that that was entirely the point of the book.

The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas – 2017 YA novel about sixteen year old Starr, a black teenager who witnesses the fatal shooting of her childhood friend by a police officer. Starr goes to a private prep school in the suburbs, worlds away from the gritty neighborhood she lives in, and has become adept at navigating two worlds. The novel deals with how she deals with the aftermath of the shooting, wanting to do the right thing but afraid of the fallout for her community and for her family and for her very own life. I thought this book was really riveting and I stayed up late to finish it. Clearly all the accolades it has received are well deserved. I think my one quibble was with Starr’s white boyfriend from her fancy prep school; he often comes off as the token good white guy who integrates seamlessly into Starr’s life in a White Savior kind of way.

Mother Trucker: Finding Joy On the Loneliest Road in America by Amy Butcher – Butcher, a writer and professor in an emotionally abusive relationship, seeks out Joy “Mothertrucker” Weibe after discovering her on Instagram. Weibe is the only female ice trucker in Alaska, and Butcher is drawn to her seemingly independent and bad ass life. So Butcher contacts Weibe and asks to come visit and ride along with her as she drives up Dalton Highway, a remote and dangerous dirt and gravel road in Alaska. To be honest, I thought this book was going to be a profile on Weibe, or some kind of adventure travelogue. In the end, though, the book was more about Butcher herself and her journey to turn her life around – kind of like Wild, but with Joy “Mothertrucker” standing in for the Pacific Crest Trail as the catalyst for self discovery. That aspect I found a little disappointing because I really wanted to get a deep dive into Joy and life as an ice trucker, and instead she comes across as some kind of mystical wise woman. Still, there are some great details about what it is like to drive the Dalton Highway and there is a lot of brutally honest writing in this book about relationships and abuse. (So warning on that)

The Self-Driven Child by William Stixrud, PhD, and Ned Johnson – I read Stixrud and Johnsons’ book “What Do You Say” earlier this year and found their scripts for parenting really helpful. The Self-Driven Child is their first book, and I would say it focusses less on scripts, but more on the science and strategies of how a parent fits into the life of their child, namely as a consultant and coach rather than as a dictator. Their book is based in a combination of brain science and real life experience through their work as a tutor/test prep instructor (Johnson) and a clinical psychologist (Stixrud). The book is well organized with tangible action steps at the end of each chapter, which I really liked. So often parenting books are all about theory and ideas but don’t give parents concrete steps they can do with their children I made so many highlights in this book that I feel as if I should just get my own copy. Some good things to remember:
– “If you act as if it’s your job to see that your child does his homework, practices the piano, or plays a sport, you reinforce the mistaken belief that somebody other than he is responsible for getting his work done. He doesn’t have to think about it because, on some level, he knows that eventually someone will “make” him do it.” Such a good reminder that being overly involved does not serve your child well.
– “Kids need responsibility more than they deserve it” – this one is a hard one for me, but makes sense upon reflection. I always thought that kids earned responsibility, but the book indicates that they have to grow into it and they can’t grow into it unless given the chance to do it.
– “He began to suggest to parents that they make enjoying their kids their top priority so that their kids would have the experience of being joy-producing organisms.” I forget this one a lot. I just don’t enjoy my kids a lot of the time… and that shouldn’t be their problem. I definitely need to work on this one. Kids need to know that their value is not in their quantifiable achievements.
– “But you’re in it with your kids for the long-haul, and part of being a parent is standing on the sidelines sometimes so that they can return to you for a hug and pep talk before going back out there. That’s where it’s most important for you to stand. So stand tall, don’t forget to cheer, and at the end of the day, remind them that you care much more about them than any stupid test score.”

You Can’t Be Serious by Kal Penn (audiobook read by Kal Penn) – Kal Penn is known for many things, but for me he will first and foremost be Kumar from Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle. I thought his memoir really fantastic, full of anecdotes from his time both as an actor and as an Obama staffer. He comes across as a really intelligent and thoughtful person. Because I myself went into a career that isn’t the most traditional one for Asian Americans, I always like hearing of other Asian Americans who went into non-traditional careers. What really struck me, though, was not just the anecdotes, but the really honest way he talks about being an Indian American in Hollywood. He does not shy away from calling out the racism that he encountered over and over again. From constantly being told that something would be funnier if he could do it with and accent (“What kind of accent? Scottish? Irish? Southern?” he would slyly ask.), to going up for an audition for an Indian character and the other person reading for the role being a white person in brown face, and many many more. And then, amazingly, he gets involved in politics and works in the White House for two years. The stories of his time on the campaign trail and in the Obama White House are really inspiring – full of such great details, but also a reminder of what a hopeful and decent time the Obama administration was. All in all I really enjoyed this book – it made me laugh out out, gasp with outrage, and warmed my heart.

Books Read July – September 2022

I feel like I got a lot of good reading in this summer, though September itself was not a big reading month because of work. I’m now filling my book queue with some books that I hope will be page turners, so I’ll be encouraged to read even when I’m having long days at work. But these past few months:

The Deep by Rivers Solomon, Daveed Diggs, William Hutson, and Jonathan Snipes, read by Daveed Diggs. This sci-fi novella centers around a group of water-breathing people who were descended from pregnant African slaves thrown overboard from slave ships as they crossed the Atlantic. It’s inspired by a song produced by the group Clipping for an episode of This American Life called We are the Future, which in the aftermath of George Floyd explored the concept of Afrofuturism. The Deep is a beautiful, raw, and evocative story which centers on Yetu whose role in her community is to hold the collective memory of her people since it is too painful for them all to remember themselves. She eventually leaves her people in order not to carry this burden. The way the novel’s water dwellers have created a world that is very different from the world we inhabit on land, I thought was a really thought provoking lens through which to think about things like race, gender, and collective history. Also Daveed Diggs of Hamilton! Apparently I will listen to any audiobook narrated by Hamilton cast members

Paperback Crush by Gabrielle Moss – This is a non-fiction book about the YA fiction genre of the 80s and 90s -Sweet Valley High, Babysitter’s Club, The Sunfire Series – pretty much the books I grew up reading. This book was a pure nostalgia trip! There were also some great interviews and details with the people who wrote these books and also an interview with an artist who did some of the cover art. That inside peek at how formulaic these books were was fascinating to me. The book does end somewhat abruptly, but before then it brought back so many memories of some of my formative reading years. Also, I definitely made notes of some books that seemed really interesting that I never read when I was a tween and which I might be interested in picking up now.

Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell – Novel that imagines the life of Shakespeare’s wife and children during the plague of 1596. I loved so much about this book – the elegant precision of the writing, the details of life in the 1600s, the way the characters were so fully drawn, the relationships, the Shakespeare references (even though he is never mentioned by name and indeed was a somewhat shadowing figure on the sidelines throughout), the exquisite sadness of the book. The ending – the beautiful, cathartic ending. I’m not a book crier, but this book brought a lump to my throat.

The Love of My Life by Rosie Walsh, read by Imogen Church and Theo Soloman – Domestic suspense novel of the “Woman in Peril” genre. This book was not what I expected, and in a good way. Without giving away anything, I’ll just say that I really liked how this book explored how love can be so complicated and so simple at the same time.

The Splendid and the Vile by Eric Larson – Larson recounts the first year of Winston Churchill’s term as Prime Minister of Great Britain and the beginning of WWII. This book looks at that time not only through the political and military lens, but also through the domestic and personal one. The book reminds me of the Virginia Woolf quote, “This is an important book, the critic assumes, because it deals with war. This is an insignificant book because it deals with the feelings of women in a drawing room.” Larson shows that war and drawing room feelings are both equally important – even against the backdrop of war, people still continued to live their lives, fall in love, have affairs, worry about their children. Even as history is being made, lives continued to be lived. I also felt there was a certain similarity between Londoners living through the Blitz and us living through COVID – the unrelenting tension of living life in a constant state of caution.

The Great Green Room by Amy Cary – I heard this biography recommended on the podcast What Should I Read Next. This is a book about Margaret Wise Brown, who wrote, among other things, the classic Good Night, Moon. I thought the book itself rather methodical and workman like in its prose, but the details of Brown’s life were interesting, particularly her ideas of what would appeal to children – insights that were I think notable given that she didn’t have children. Or maybe it’s because she didn’t have children that she was able to have such a unique perspective on what would interest them in a book.

Well Met by Jen DeLuca – This past summer, I read this blog post that broke down Goodread’s list of most popular romance novels of the past three years. Anyhow, I thought it was a hilarious analysis of the titles included in the list – most of which I haven’t read because I tend to read historical romance, and most of the titles were contemporary romances. But only three titles on the Goodread list made her “Loved” list. One of them was Bringing Down the Duke by Evie Dunmore, which I also loved, so I figured the other two books would be worth checking out. This was one of them. It did not disappoint. Well Met is set against the backdrop of a Renaissance Festival – so already it is sprinkled with my catnip. Anyhow this is a charming and sweet and funny book. I don’t always love first person narrative – which is probably why I don’t read a whole lot of contemporary romance – but the heroine in this book had such a hilarious personality that I didn’t mind much.

News of the World by Paulette Jiles – Spare yet perfectly pitched novella about Captain Jefferson Kydd, an elderly widower who makes a living going from town to town reading the news to people in the American Frontier in post Civil War America. He takes on the task of bringing a girl, Johanna, back to her relatives. Johanna’s parents had been killed by Kiowa raiders and she has been living with the Kiowa for the past four years and life with them was the only thing she has known. The journey Kydd and Johanna take is dangerous and without comfort, but along the way Kydd and Johanna, form a special bond even as they struggle to understand each other. Jile’s prose is so very good. The end left me a little teary eyed. One of my favorite passages:
“No, my dear, he said. He put his hand over hers, once again placed the fork correctly, and once again lifted it to her mouth. Then he sat on his own side of the wagon and saw her struggling with the fork, the knife, the stupidity of it, the unknown reasons that human being would approach food in this manner, reasons incomprehensible, inexplicable, for which they had not common language. She tried again, and then turned and threw the fork into a box stall.”

How to Keep House while Drowning by K.C. Davis – My house feels like a constant state of mess, so of course this book was appealing. Davis, who is a licensed profession therapist, approaches keeping house from a mental health standpoint and there were so may wise and gentle ideas in her book. My two main takeaways:
– “Care tasks are morally neutral.” I really needed to hear this because often I think of my inability to keep things clean and tidy as a failure of some sort. And, I admit, I feel like I pass that feeling on to my kids. We are raised on the “Cleanliness next to Godliness” adage, but Davis reminds us:
“You can be a fully functioning, fully successful, happy, kind, generous adult and never be good at cleaning.” Taking away the feeling of guilt and shame associated with keeping a clean house helps me focus on the why I want to keep my house clean and how to achieve that goal, rather than wallowing in the parts of cleaning I find hard.
-Think about what it takes to make things functional, and start with that as your baseline. She also re-frames cleaning as “re-setting”. In thinking about how to reset my space every evening so that future me can function in the morning proves a really helpful framework for when things are overwhelming. So, for example, the dining room floor might not get swept, but the kitchen counter is clean so that I can make breakfast in the morning.
“Cleaning is endless. Resetting space has a goal.”
Even aside from the deep thoughts about cleaning and how to organize your life, Davis also has some really practical tips and strategies that I like. I found this book really helpful.

Broken Horses by Brandi Carlile, read by Brandi Carlile – When the Husband and I were first dating, he would listen to Brandi Carlile’s self titled debut album every single morning. We called it breakfast music. I thought Carlile’s memoir was a really great read/listen- she has a straightforward easy style of writing as one would expect from her music, and I really enjoyed hearing about her life. I was also really struck by how humble and hard-working she was. She doesn’t hide the hustle nor her good luck. An added bonus of the audiobook is that between chapters, she performs songs that she talks about in the previous chapter – it adds so much depths to hear Carlile sing a song after finding out what it meant to her.

Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro – I usually really like Ishiguro, but this book took me a while to get into and I still don’t think I fully understand it. Ishiguro’s rather detached and naive prose style is probably quite suited for a story told through the eyes of an Klara, an Artificial Friend – an AI creation who goes to live with Josie, a very sick girl. Like most Ishiguro novels, the narrator doesn’t quite understand the whole picture and I actually found it frustrating in parts. I understand the narrative device as a means of exploring the idea of humanity, but the book just didn’t mesh for me like a lot of Ishiguro’s other books.

When We Lost Our Heads by Heather O’Neill – I picked up this book because it is set in Montreal and I like to read books set in my destination city when I’m travelling. This book was certainly well written – smart and satirical with characters all slightly off kilter. Set in late 19th century Montreal, it tells the story of two girls, Marie Antoinette and Sadie, who come from different backgrounds but both live in a wealthy section of Montreal. They become friends but then are separated after a tragic incident. They both grow up to tackle ideas of feminism in very different ways. This book really skewers men and the way they take women for granted and underestimate them. I thought the book very clever, but overall the style was a little heavy handed and stilted and I didn’t love it. A notable quote, though:
“The truth was, she had always liked being alone. Women never got to be alone. That was too much of a luxury. Women always had someone to take care of. She had o one to take care of. She got to really do what she pleased. She left her clothes on the side of the bed. There was no one who would yell at her for leaving them.”

Boyfriend Material by Alexis Hall – This was the other book on NGS’s list of “loved” romance novels from the Goodreads list. I, too, loved this book. It was funny and swoony and heartfelt. It tells the story of screw up tangentially famous Luc O’Donnell who needs a fake boyfriend to save his career so his friend sets him up with the unimpeachable and slightly uptight barrister Oliver Blackwood. Slightly uptight and unimpeachable heroes are kind of my romance novel catnip so I enjoyed that aspect very much. But even aside from that this book balanced humour and sincere emotion perfectly. Such a good read.

Lovely War by Julie Berry narrated by Jayne Entwistle, Allan Corduner, Julie Berry, Dion Graham, Fiona Hardingham, John Lee, Nathanial Parker, Steve West – This novel had quite a clever framework – two intertwined love stories set against the back drop of WWI, told by Aphrodite. Yes, that Aphrodite. The Goddess of Love has been caught in an affair with the God of War and she must argue her case. Other also gods drop in to help tell the stories of love in time of war. The premise of the novel is quite clever, but the heart of the story lies in the journeys of hope and resilience the pair of lovers take – I thought it a really touching and engaging story. The audio version had different actors voice the different gods’ contribution, and I really enjoyed how each person brought a unique voice to each god.