March Book Reviews

The Leviathan:  We did steam punk books for our book club this month and this was one from that genre.  I really enjoyed it.   It parallels WWI in a world where past and future are blended.  I like the characters and the allusions to history.  I don't love that it is a trilogy but so live young adult books!

Too Much Happiness:  A reread.  But I love these stories.  I feel like reading this book was the first time I felt like I really understood the value of short stories.

February Book Reviews

Mao's Last Dancer:  I enjoyed the story about a ballet dancer pulled from village life in communist China, but found that the narrator was too gentle on his own errors. I also would have liked more political information.

The Rent Collector: I love stories about the power of literature and I do believe it call pull people from the slums, but I still found this story naively optimistic.  I felt like the voice telling the story was distinctly American while it was supposed to be a poor uneducated woman living on the trash fields in Cambodia.  I loved the Cambodian folk tales that she included in the text.

2013 Book List {Ranked by favorite}

Gone Girl
Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me
People of the Book
The Power of Habit
The Aviator's Wife
Round House
State of Wonder
The Light Between Oceans
The Weird Sisters
Wonder
Where'd You Go, Bernadette
Inside Out and Back Again
The Importance of Being Ernest
Behind Beautiful Forevers
Every Last One
Still Alice
Escape from Camp 14
Mr. Peanut
Sharp Objects
My Story
Columbine
Little Bee
The Fault in our Stars
Never Come Back
The Christmas Jar
Cold Comfort Farm
Finding Alaska

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November/December Book Review

People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks:  I loved this book.  I found it so interesting and well written.  The writing felt seamless and the story educational and unique.  The story spans generations and populations that in some way touched the Sarajevo Haggadah, one of the oldest Jewish illuminated texts.  The novel was not critically acclaimed but I thought it was genuine and lovely.

My Story by Elizabeth Smart: I should have not read this book.  I look at everyone with suspicion and I check on the kids at least twice as often as I did previously. She is a model of resiliency but I even wonder what that model means to survivors of abuse that don't feel so resilient.  Is it motivating or destroying?

Never Come Back: Mike likes to buy me scary books and they are always fun and always a tiny bit brainless.  But again, a fun way to pass a few dark nights.

Where'd You Go, Bernadette: At first I hated the adolescent voice in this novel, but I grew to adore each of the characters.  It was a quirky fun book that also takes on the heavy battle of authenticity and mental illness without passing judgement or offering solutions.  I enjoyed every page after getting used to a young girls voice.

The Christmas Jars: You know, cheesy, but motivating.

October Book Review

Little Bee: It is hard to review books.  I remember this book being very popular a couple years ago so I guess I expected something bigger from it and it didn't deliver for me.  It was a curious juxtaposition of characters but it didn't feel very authentic.

Inside Out and Back Again: Great young adult read.  I rarely say that (I don't love young adult books), but I loved the way this book make "the otherness" of an immigrant accessible with clear images and simple poetry form.

"Educators do all in their power to prepare you to enjoy reading after college. It is right that you should read according to your temperament, occupations, hobbies, and vocations. But it is a sign of great inner insecurity to be hostile to the unfamiliar, unwilling to explore the unfamiliar. In science, we respect the research worker. In literature, we should not always read the books blessed by the majority. This trend is reflected in such absurd announcements as “the death of the novel,” “the last of the romantics,” “the last of the Bohemians,” when we know that these are continuous trends which evolve and merely change form. The suppression of inner patterns in favor of patterns created by society is dangerous to us. Artistic revolt, innovation, experiment should not be met with hostility. They may disturb an established order or an artificial conventionality, but they may rescue us from death in life, from robot life, from boredom, from loss of the self, from enslavement.

When we totally accept a pattern not made by us, not truly our own, we wither and die. People’s conventional structure is often a façade. Under the most rigid conventionality there is often an individual, a human being with original thoughts or inventive fantasy, which he does not dare expose for fear of ridicule, and this is what the writer and artist are willing to do for us. They are guides and map makers to greater sincerity. They are useful, in fact indispensable, to the community. They keep before our eyes the variations which make human beings so interesting. The men who built America were the genuine physical adventurers in a physical world. This world once built, we need adventurers in the realm of art and science. If we suppress the adventure of the spirit, we will have the anarchist and the rebel, who will burst out from too narrow confines in the form of violence and crime."

Anais Nin

September Book Review

State of Wonder by Ann Patchet: I served my mission in the Amazon so I love reading about other adventures in the same setting.  I think this particular one was interesting and enjoyable while not providing any lasting impression on me.

The Importance of Being Ernest by Oscar Wilde:  This is such a fun play to read.  We did it for a book club and also had a good discussion.

August Book Reviews

One book.  Just one.  And none in July.  And the one I did read was a young adult book.  Mike even mentioned the absence of literature in my life.  I need a good book to draw me back.  

The Fault in our Stars:  One of my pet peeves is how people always talk about young people dying as saints and suffering in such holy ways.  But I suspect they are also just real people who are angry and disappointed and weak and good.  And bad too. This book kind of confronts a lot of the sugary talk around the young dying, which I appreciated.  The book also includes the kind of smart, independent kids you always hope your own will grow up to be.  (Without the sex that these two kids, who are too young in my opinion, do indeed have.)  I liked it more than most young adult novels.  It may also have helped that I read it next to a man on the plane who told me it was the last book his daughter read before she died of undetected cancer and he reads the books as a way to feel connected to her. I like that.  The bonding influence of books - even beyond life. 

June Book Reviews

Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn: This book is by the author of Gone Girl, which I really enjoyed, and this mystery thriller was also good.  Not AS good, but a nice solid thriller.  Not for those with low edginess thresholds.

Round House by Louise Erdrich: Louise Erdrich was an author I studied in college and I remember enjoying.  It is always a bit of a task for me to pick up books by academic writers because I never know what my mental energy level will be - but this book was mostly plot drive, although also well written.  It was a moving coming of age story that I would recommend to most.

Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons: A satire on the pastoral novels of the 1930's.  Fun to read a satire after years and years (since high school) of not doing so.  Written by a woman with great control of language and human emotion.

Columbine by Dave Cullen: I heard about this book from a blogger who always reads books I like, saying it was her favorite book.  So the entire time I am reading it I keep wondering how it makes it to someone's favorite book status.  Not that it isn't interesting.  It is.  Or well written.  It is.  But it is such a strange genre - an academic look at the columbine shootings with a story-telling voice.  The information is so interesting - how the police and media were terribly detrimental to situation. The analysis of the killers themselves is kind of repetitive
.

May Book Reviews

Mr. Peanut: I'm really getting in to the whole murder mystery genre that include traces of literary efforts aside for plot compulsion.  But is it impossible to murder someone without getting involved in lots of sex and talking about it profanely?  Left me a little too dark feeling.

Still Alice: Very easy read.  Interesting.  Not brilliantly composed.  But again, interesting enough to recommend.

April Book Reviews

Behind Beautiful Forevers: Hmm. I don't have any strong feelings about this book.  It was more interesting having read the afterward about the author's decision and act of living in the slums themselves.  I think perhaps the author picked the wrong genre for the book but it was averagely compelling and readable. Of course the plight of the poor always strikes a tender cord but it wasn't really overly sentimental which is mostly appreciated.

Wonder: I've said it over and over but I just don't enjoy writing that is written for young adults.  That said, this book is really cute and prompted some very important conversations with Lucy about being genuinely kind to people who may be different or left out. I like the switching viewpoints even though I think it is usually the easy way out for any author. It was tender without being too heart-wrenching, which is good because this mother heart can really only hold so much heartache.

I don't normally list all the parenting books I read because I tend to skim and skip and reread parts and when I'm done I have no idea if I have actually read the book. That said I "read" a couple this month worth noting...

Free-range Parenting: So very thought provoking.  I would REALLY like to do this for a book club (which says a lot because in general I hate book clubs).  It made sense but goes against a great many of my own parenting mantras.  And yet I wholly agree with the main point that kids need to feel a sense of accomplishment and confidence and independence by doing some things on their own.  And even though I totally believe that, I just can envision myself ever letting go of Lucy's hand when she crosses the street! I'm so torn after reading this book!

Raising Your Spirited Child:  I know this book has been around for a while and has a lot of critics but I found it interesting. Lucy scored very mild on most of the "spirited" categories except for three in which she scored at the top of the chart: Intensity, Perceptiveness, and Energy.  I found giving a name to her distractedness as perceptiveness has been very helpful for me.  With pinterest and blogs, a lot of the suggestions from the book seemed commonplace because we see such great ideas for kids all the time (sensory bins, water play, pretend play), but I like the idea of pretending to get dressed for a ball used to calm a child down (pretend to wash hair, put on earrings, sipper, stocking) because all the touch will soothe and distract them. I also like the language of picturing leaves inside of us blowing around and picturing the wind stopping and the leaves settling. I'm pretty sure Lucy doesn't even qualify as "spirited" by her definition but just giving me the word "perceptive" was parent changing.

On reading for writers

"Each writer is a capacious storage tank containing a lifetime of experience, actual and vicarious.  How can we expect refreshing elixirs to pour forth from our spigots if we have filled ourselves with stale pool water and artificial sweetener?" Lance E. Larsen

{"an ax to the frozen sea within me" Kafka}

March Book Reviews

Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me by Mindy Kaling: I'm pretty convinced that Mindy and I are supposed to bffs so I'm fairly biased but I thought this book was really funny. Every chapter title I kept thinking, "Yes! When I write my funny biography I'm using the exact same chapter title."  And I thought this over and over again.  So I see the world similarly, but Mindy is just funnier about it all. Chapter titles include, "Chubby for Life" and "Don't Peak in High School" and "Non-Traumatic Things That Have Made Me Cry"and "Guys Need to Do Almost Nothing to Be Great" {in which she explains that A little Kiehl's, a little Bumble and Bumble, a peacoat, and Chuck Taylors, and you're hot} and "Why Do Men Put on Their Shoes So Slowly" and my favorite "Revenge Fantasies While Jogging" {In which she reveals the details of each scenario, how long she can think about it for, and the resulting calories burned}.
"I enjoy watching people fall in love on-screen so much that I can suspend my disbelief for the contrived situations that only happen in the heightened world of romantic comedies.  I have come to enjoy the moment when the normal lead guy, say, slips and falls right on top of the hideously expensive wedding cake.  I actually feel robbed when the female lead's dress doesn't get torn open at a baseball game while the JumboTron is on her.  I simply regard romantic comedies as a subgenre of sci-fi, in which the world created therein has different rules than my regular human world.  Then I just lap it up.  There is no difference between Ripley from Alien and any Katherine Heigl character."
"Plus he was super cute, in a "handsomest guy in the AP calculus class" kind of way, if that makes sense."

The Power of Habit:  This was a very interesting read and I wish I could bottle up everything I learned so I don't forget, both for the purpose of using on myself and having interesting things to share at parties.  It was that kind of book.  The kind you want to use for parties.  But I also think it might have also been the most helpful diet book ever. Now the true review will only come when I implement what I learned.

February Book Reviews

The Light Between Oceans by M L Stedman: I waited anxiously to read this book as it has been on my list for a long time and it did not disappoint.  I think my lot in life is to be perpetually unsatisfied by endings, but baring that tradition, I loved the book. I liked the strength of the setting without a novel bogged down by description.  I thought the plot and characters where different enough while still being believable. The most charming part is that it is a guilt-free recommendation because it didn't have any offensive language or situations. That doesn't happen very often these days.

Finding Alaska:  If you ever see me reading a young adult please politely remind me that I don't like them.  Ever.

Gone Girl: The plot was so fun that I wanted to hand the book to everyone I talked to about it.  But the language was just base enough that I couldn't in good faith.  The book hinges on believing the husband has a thread of misogyny in him, so the language was useful for that but mostly offensive.  And persistent.  That said, the plot really was so fun!
"The bankruptcy matched my psyche perfectly. For several years, I had been bored.  Not a whining, restless child's boredom (although I was not above that) but a dense, blanketing malaise.  It seemed to me that there was nothing new to be discovered ever again.  Our society was utterly, ruinously  derivative.  We were the first human being who would never see anything for the first time. We stare at the wonders of the world, dull-eyed, underwhelmed. Mona Lisa, the Pyramids, the Empire State Building.  Jungle animals on attack, ancient icebergs collapsing, volcanoes erupting.  I can't recall a single amazing thing I have seen firsthand that I didn't immediately reference to a movie or TV show....And the worst thing...is: The secondhand experience is always better.  The image is crisper, the view is keener, the camera angle and the soundtrack manipulate my emotions in a way reality can't anymore. I don't know that we are actually human at this point...If we are betrayed, we know the words to say; when a loved one dies, we know the words to say.  If we want to play the stud or the smart-as or the fool, we know the words to say.  We are all working from the same dog-eared script."

January Book Reviews

The Weird Sisters by Eleanor Brown: I really enjoyed this book about three daughters of a Shakespeare professor dad and a mom suffering from cancer.  I found it smart and well paced.  It also feel clearly into the category of books that weave a predictable plot through love and tie everything up perfectly, which can be maddening sometimes, but this time it mostly worked. (Okay, I hated the fact that it had an epilogue to complete the big red bow tied around the plot, but it was a smart enough to book to be forgiven that.)

Every Last One by Anna Quindlen: I don't really know how to talk about this book.  It was so tragic and yet it didn't really feel sad.  I think that was to goal - to write about hope and perspective amid grief and she did that well.  "Ruby loved to tell me things I didn't know, and that afternoon, as we sipped lemonade and scuffed our bare feet through the shaggy grass, she had told me about the butterfly effct, how the beating of their wings in Mexico could cause a breeze in our backyard. 'That's kind of terrifying,' I replied.  But even as I spoke I realized that that was what we had all believed from the moment we had children.  The breast-fed baby became the confident adult.  The toddler who listened to a bedtime story went on to a doctorate.  We flapped our wings in our kitchens, and a wind blew through their futures."

The Skinny Rules by Bob Harper:  Well, it is mostly working, so I say yay for this book.

Photographs (Self Portraits) by Heidi Lender "“Stand on a bench. Make sure it’s Monday. Wear something pretty.” http://heidilender.com/category/once-upon

2012 Books Read {In order of value I found in them}

1. The Paris Wife
2. Unbroken
3. True Sisters
4. The Night Circus
5. Bossypants
6. Night Road
7. Hypnobirthing
8. Sold
9. Heaven is Here
10. Swamplandia
11. The Seventeen Second Miracle
12. Major Pettigrew's Last Stand
13. The Sense of an Ending
14. The Mysterious Benedict Society
15. The Wanderer
16. Harvesting the Heart
17. 13 Reasons Why
18. Shanghai Girls
19. Matched
20. Death Comes to Pemberley
21. The Peach Keeper
22. The Best of Me
23. Snow Flower and The Secret Fan
24. The Mutant Message From Down Under
25. Ina May's Guide to Childbirth

Snow Flower and The Secret Fan by Lisa See

Lisa See's novels always have a good pace, but I didn't really love this book.  It felt like it was building up to a tragedy that was not as tragic as promised.  And I didn't feel like any of the characters took on any real roundness.  Interesting concepts included that did provoke further research but I didn't think their exploration in the book did them justice (women's secret language, foot binding, chinese relationships to daughters, contracted friendships, etc.).

The Seventeen Second Miracle by Jason F. Wright

I can't reveal too much about my reaction because we read this for our family book club and I don't want to show my hand too early.  That said, while obviously a tad cheesy, I feel motivated by the book which is a mark of a good read.

Shanghai Girls by Lisa See

Engaging read (as in staying up after my nightly nursing reading session) but so sad that I would categorize this book as too painful to really appreciate.  The events are just one piece of heartache after another.  And with a lot of the sadness revolving around violence to women, it was just too hard to read. Still it must be said that Lisa See is has clear storytelling skills and it is hard to put down her narrative.  She also creates surprising universalitities in a world that seems so distant from my own. 

Death Comes to Pemberley

I think I must be getting kind of selfish with my reading time because I haven't really loved any of the books I've been reading.  If I am going to be reading you at 2 in the morning with a nursing child attached to me, you better be amazing.  But at the same time I am unwilling to commit to the more academically literary genre that I'm pretty sure is what my mind is calling for these days.  So, that said, I thought this book was so simple that it was confusing.  Where is the punch line?  The big reveal?  And really, I should have know that anyone attempting to mimic Jane Austen is just set up for failure. And yet the next book in my e-reading queue is another Austen spin...I just can't stop.