A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor

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by Hank Green
First sentence: “
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Others in the series: An Absolutely Remarkable Thing
Content: There is swearing, including multiple f-bombs. It’s in the Science Fiction/Fantasy section of the bookstore.

Spoilers for the first book, obviously.

April has died in a fire, Carl has disappeared, and the world is trying to recover. Mostly April’s friends — Maya, Miranda, and Andy — are trying to move on. And they each do in their way. That is, until they start getting a mysterious book that is telling them what to do. And from there, the plot gets really really complicated and it’s so much better not knowing too much.

And, much like the first book, this one is about more than just humans vs. alien robots. It’s about collective action, and free-will. It’s about whether or not we can stop ourselves from destroying the earth. It’s about friendship and trust and forgiveness.

And, much like the first book, it’s a delight to read. It’s fun, it’s funny, it’s pretentious but not overly-so, and I think Green knows (and has thought long and hard) what he’s talking about. It’s a fun romp, and a good conclusion to the story, but it’s also a thoughtful book with a lot to discuss.

Or maybe I just really like the Green brothers. Either way: it’s a good read.

Dear Universe

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by Florence Gonsalves
First sentence: “You know that moment when it happens?”
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Content: There is a lot of swearing, including multiple f-bombs, teen drinking, and talk of teen sex (though none actual). It’s in the Teen section (grades 9+) of the bookstore.

Chamomile (call her Cham, please) is a senior at the Gill School, a private school she transferred to after she got kicked out of public school in 8th grade for fighting. She has friends, she has a boyfriend — Gene Wolf, track star and super cute — and everything is Perfect.

Except it’s not, because her father is in denial about his Parkinson’s disease diagnosis and doesn’t want anyone to know. So Cham is trying to keep her worlds separate. Of course, that doesn’t work terribly well. Which puts her two worlds on a collision course.

I didn’t dislike this book; I thought Gonsalves balanced the “sick parent” (and “stressed parent” — Cham’s mother is the sole wage earner and is also trying to take care of Cham’s dad mostly alone) with “high school ending” pretty well. I even kind of liked Cham and her attempts to be “normal” by obsessing about sex and prom and spending time with her friends.

But. (And you knew there was a but.) I don’t know. None of the characters had hardly any physical descriptions – Cham had “frizzy” hair, her friend Abigail was a bit overweight and could dance, Brandon had a “man bun” — but I couldn’t shake the feeling that everyone what white. I’m not sure I would have noticed that a few months ago, but I did now. And it bugged me. (I get that authors do this so that people could see themselves, but my default is white, so there you go.) It bugged me that she wouldn’t tell her friends about her dad’s illness. Are they really your friends, then? It was little things like that (like school ended in April for seniors. Really?) that pulled me out of the story.

I guess I just wanted to like it more than I did, and was a bit disappointed that it wasn’t as good as I hoped.

Audio book: The Color of Compromise

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by Jemar Tisby
Read by the author
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Or listen at Libro.fm
Content: There is descriptions of violence done to Black people and use of the n-word. It would be in either the Sociology section or Religion section if the bookstore carried it.

This book is the history of chattel slavery in the United States, but as seen through the lens of Christianity. So, on the one hand: there wasn’t much new for me to learn about slavery that I hadn’t already learned from Stamped from the Beginning. But the part about Christianity was fascinating. See, white Christians have always bee complicit in slavery, in Jim Crow laws, in racism. There’s no way around it. If we consider the United States a Christian nation, if there were God-fearing people who owned slaves; who owned people; who discriminated against Blacks; who, say, in the example of my own church, refused to give them equal standing as white men and women; then, Christians have always been complicit in the oppression of Black people.

And that’s a hard realization. It’s so easy to think of the oppressors as “other”, but as Tisby points out, even if Christians were not actively acting as slave-owners or KKK members (and some were) the Silence of the church as a whole (and many, many members) gave tacit approval to the systemic oppression. By not speaking out against it, by not working to fight against it, they were, by default, for it.

Although Tisby gives suggestions on how to fix the problem of Christianity’s complicit behavior in anti-Black racism, I’m not sure what I can do systemically. I do know I am working on the racism – both implicit and explicit — in my life, working to enlarge my circle and my point of view. And to remember that we are all God’s children, even if the system doesn’t behave like we are.

Women Who Run With the Wolves

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by Clarissa Pinkola Estes
First sentence: “Wildlife and the Wild Woman are both endangered species.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Content: There’s frank talk about bodies and sex. I have no idea where this would be (Self-help, maybe?) if the bookstore had it.

I came across this book in an article for the last class I took, and I thought it sounded interesting.

How it came off 25 years after publication was a lot of heteronormative, new-agey, psychobabble nonsense. Estes takes a fairy tale — generally from another culture, but we’ll give her mid-90s self a pass on that — and then deconstructs it to help explain why society has trapped the Wild Woman inside of women and how she needs to be freed. Now don’t get me wrong: I agree with the premise. Society HAS trapped women into gender roles and norms that are not just harmful for women but for men as well. However, I’m not sure that this was the best way to communicate it. Well, maybe it was in 1995. But now it just seemed very very dated.

And so I ended up skimming and skipping a lot. I did enjoy her tales; some of them I had heard before but many I had not. But the rest of it? Well, there are always self help books about finding your inner wildness. Maybe read one of those instead.

If You Could be Mine

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by Sara Farizan
First sentence: “Nasrin pulled my hair when I told her I didn’t want to play with her dolls.”
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Content: There is some all of sex and drug use. It’s in the teen section (grades 9+) of the bookstore.

I’ve had this one on my backup TBR shelf for nearly six years. I’m just impressed it didn’t get given away in one of my purges!

Sahar has been in love with her best friend Nasrin for as long as she could remember. She is the only person Sahar wants to be with. Except they live in Iran and being gay — not to mention marrying someone of the same gender — is not only illegal, it’s punishable by death.

Sahar and Nasrin know this so they try to keep their deepening romance secret. That is, until Nasrin’s parents arrange a marriage for her. To someone nearly twice her age (which is mid-30s, but still). This sends Sahar into a tailspin, and she discovers that while being gay is illegal in Iran, gender reassignment surgeries are not. So, she decides that the best way to be with Nasrin is to become a man.

While I enjoyed learning about Farizan’s take on Iranian culture and life, it was all a bit, well, convoluted. Sahar didn’t ever ask Nasrin whether she wanted her to change her gender. Sahar just assumed that’s what it would take to stop Nasrin’s wedding, and was bullheaded about going forward with it, in spite of objections from people who have gone through the reassignment surgery.

Maybe it was the lack of communication between Nasrin and Sahar that bothered me. Or the way Nasrin treated Sahar. It really wasn’t a healthy relationship. And I’m glad (kind of spoilers) that Sahar was finally able to let Nasrin go while staying true to who she really is.

It wasn’t a great book, but I finished it. So it wasn’t horrible either.

Monthly Round-up: August 2020

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This was such an odd month. I only read seven books, total, and I can’t even really pinpoint why. Maybe I just am still not feeling it? I don’t know. Maybe September will be better…. or not? Or maybe I should stop judging HOW MUCH I read and just be grateful I still read. I mean, my kids have all but stopped reading no matter how much I mention it.

That said, my favorite this month is one that’s not out yet:

Crownchasers

It’s so much fun.

As for the other six:

Young Adult:

Fire and Hemlock
Juliet Takes a Breath

Adult fiction:

Americanah
The Murmur of Bees

Non-fiction:

Black is the Body
Untamed (audio book)

Are you still reading? If so, what’s been your favorite recently?

Audio Book: Untamed

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by Glennon Doyle
Read by the author
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Or listen on Libro.fm
Content: There are several f-bombs as well as some mild swearing. There is talk of addiction. It’s in the Biography section of the bookstore.

Sometimes a book comes into your life at the right time. I picked this one up to fill out a category in the #ReadICT challenge — everyone’s reading it (or they were back in March, but who’s keeping track?) — and got something completely unexpected and absolutely needed.

I have heard of Glennon Doyle, but never read any of her work, so I was going into this blind. In a series of short essays (some longer than others), the book is essentially the story of her falling in love with a woman, divorcing her husband, and building an entirely new life. But it was about more than that: it was about taking back ownership of your decisions, your life, your feelings and not being “caged” by anything, whether it be society, religion, yourself. It’s a hard thing, being true to your own truest self. It’s much easier to lean on other people’s beliefs and perceptions of you. It doesn’t require the work of figuring things out for yourself. And I think that’s something I needed to hear right now.

I appreciated the humor of the book, the thoughtfulness, the encouragement. I adored Doyle’s honesty and forthrightness, and her willingness to be true to herself at all costs. She sounds like an imperfect but utterly remarkable woman. Doyle is also a good narrator, and I’m glad she read this one; it made it that much more personal.

I’m not sure this is a book for everyone, but I really enjoyed listening to it.

Juliet Takes a Breath

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by Gabby Rivera
First sentence: “There was always train traffic ahead of us and that Saturday was no different.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Review copy provided by publisher.
Content: There are a ton of f-bombs, some tasteful on-screen sex, and pot use. It’s in the Teen section (grades 9+) of the bookstore.

So, while doing some Googling and looking when I finished this, I discovered that it was published four years ago by a small press, but picked up by Dial Press and re-published last year. Which explains 1) how I got an ARC from our Penguin rep and 2) why I missed it the first time around.

Because this a a spectacular piece of feminist LGBT writing.

The premise is this: Juliet has grown up in the Bronx, but gone away to a liberal arts college in Baltimore. Once there, she began discovering her sexuality, and read “Raging Flower” a seminal feminist book by Harlowe Brisbane. On a whim, Juliet decides to write Harlowe and ask if she needs an intern, which Harlowe readily agrees to. So, Juliet takes off across the country to Portland, hoping to be inspired and discover out more about herself.

What she discovers is that Harlowe doesn’t have all the answers, but the experiences — both good and bad — are immensely worth having.

The book was not kind to Portland; the people there were VERY hippie. So much hippie. And maybe that’s the way Portland really is, but I kind of felt like it was overkill. That said, I think Rivera did an amazing job exploring the space between adoring someone and being hurt by them and questioning their motivations. I also loved Juliet’s exploration of her sexuality and her relationship with her mother. But mostly I adored her cousin Ava.

It’s a good feminist book, encouraging girls (and women) to stand up and question not just patriarchy but their own individual responses. It was also a good exploration of intersectionality, and how if we don’t welcome everyone to the table, there’s not a lot of good that can be done. It’s all about taking ownership, and I can get behind that.

And it wasn’t a bad story either.

Black is the Body

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by Emily Bernard
First sentence: “This book was conceived in a hospital.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Content: There is swearing, including a few f-bombs. Also, an entire chapter is devoted to teaching and talking about the n-word. It’s in the biography section of the bookstore.

This has been on my radar for a while; everyone — well, all my coworkers — said it was a really good exploration of one person’s experience as a Black woman moving through White spaces.

And it was that. Bernard grew up in Nashville, but went to college at Yale, and teaches in Vermont, so she is often the only (or one of the only) Black people in a space. In this series of essays, she explores what that means. She talks about an act of violence she experienced, the adoption of her daughters, her relationship with her White husband, and tells the stories of her mother and grandmother’s lives.

It’s an interesting book, one that is very personal to Bernarnd’s own experience. She doesn’t pretend to have answers, but does ask a lot of questions about how White people treat and react to Blacks. It was worth a read if only to think about how I am reacting to others.

That, and it’s a series of personal stories, which I always enjoy. So while this was not my favorite book about race, it was a good book. Because everyone’s perspective is worth hearing.

Crownchasers

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by Rebecca Coffindaffer
First sentence: “The Otari came here to die.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Release date: September 29, 2020
Review copy provided by the publisher.
Content: There’s some violence, mild swearing, and about four f-bombs. It will be in the teen section (grades 9+) of the bookstore.

Captain Alyssa Farshot has everything she needs: a worldship, a membership in the Explorer’s guild, and space. And her engineer/trusty sidekick Hell Monkey. But when her Uncle Atar — who happens to be the Emperor of the thousand planets in this universe — suddenly and unexpectedly dies, Alyssa (and Hell Monkey) finds herself a crownchaser, along with other nominees from the prime families, searching for the seal that will make her empress.

Except she doesn’t want it. And the whole chase becomes more deadly than anyone expected.

That’s the basic plot, but that’s not really a great pitch for this book. How about this: Alyssa is a sarcastic, fearless pilot who has a heart of gold and is willing to go to any lengths for her friends. I loved how Coffindaffer told this story, interspersed with flashbacks to explain the relationships Alyssa has with the other characters in the book. They’re placed at just the right moments, and give the narrative a depth I wasn’t expecting. I adored Alyssa (shoot, I adored all the characters) and the way she just threw herself headfirst into everything she did.

I loved the tone of the book; it didn’t take itself too seriously but also managed to give weight to a couple of ideas (like representation for all, and the inherent classism in the worlds’ systems). It was a perfect balance and kept me turning pages.

An excellent debut novel.