Books I read in 2017

Here are the books I read in 2017. They are listed chronologically, January-December.

Read in 2017
The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula Le Guin
Glow Kids: How Screen Addiction is Hijacking Our Kids - And How to Break the Trance by Nicholas Kardaras, PhD.
Tomboy by Liz Prince
Heart and Brain by Seluk
Girl Trouble by Kerry Cohen
The Road to Little Dribbling by Bill Bryson
I'll Take You There by Wally Lamb
What She Knew by Gilly Macmillan
A Cure for Suicide by Jesse Ball
All Our Wrong Todays by Elan Mastai
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
The Heart of Henry Quantum by Pepper Harding
Harmony by Carolyn Parkhurst
The Atomic Weight of Love by Elizabeth J. Church
The Human Superorganism: How the Microbiome is Revolutionalizing the Pursuit of a Healthy Life by Rodney Dietert
Little Failure by Gary Shteyngart
Faithful by Alice Hoffman
Eleanor by Jason Gurley
Boy Erased by Garrard Conley
The Humans by Matt Haig
The Sellout by Paul Beatty
American Heiress: The Wild Saga of the Kidnapping, Crimes, and Trial of Patty Hearst by Jeffrey Toobin
The Red Car by Marcy Dermansky
The Night Ocean by Paul La Farge
The Totally Unscientific Study of the Search for Human Happiness by Paula Poundstone
Since We Fell by Dennis Lehane
Here and Gone by Haylen Beck
The Blondes by Emily Schultz
Not A Sound by Heather Gudenkauf
The People We Hate at the Wedding by Grant Ginder
Less by Andrew Sean Greer
Just Life by Neil Abramson
Furiously Happy by Jenny Lawson
The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson
Hyperbole and a Half by Allie Brosh
My Absolute Darling by Gabriel Tallent
Drinking in America by Susan Cheever
The Best Kind of People by Zoe Whittall
Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: Stories from the Crematory by Caitlin Doughty
The Tresspasser by Tana French
Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore by Matthew Sullivan
Shrill by Lindy West
The Feed by Nick Clark Windo
Hap and Hazard and the End of the World by Diane DeSanders
Killers of the Flower Moon by David Gann
Silhouette of a Sparrow by Molly Beth Griffin
Invisible Beasts and Where to Find Them by Sharona Muir
Your Perfect Right by Robert Alberti and Michael Emmons
Best. State. Ever.: A Florida Man Defends His Homeland by Dave Barry

What did you read?

The Totally Unscientific Study of The Search for Human Happiness by Paula Poundstone

I love Paula Poundstone. I have seen her in person (at the Aladding theater in Portland, Oregon), I love listening to her on NPR's Wait Wait, Don't Tell Me show, and I really enjoyed reading this book!

In it, she describes various things she does to try to find happiness. She tries to get fit. She tries backpacking with her daughter. She tries getting connected on the computer. She tries driving a fancy car. She tries volunteering. I really appreciate how honest she was. Many of things did not provide much happiness at all, and other things provide a lot of happiness. Some of the things provided momentary happiness, and other things gave her longer lasting happiness.

One of my favorite things is how she uses her cats to describe the amounts of happiness she finds or doesn't find - heps and balous. I'm going to pay attention to how many heps and balous of happiness I find in my own life.

Woman No. 17 and The Stolen Child

WOMAN No. 17 by Edan Lepucki

I was lucky enough to win this book through librarything.com's Early Reviewer program. Thank you, librarything!

I'd read and enjoyed Lepucki's first book, California, a post-apocalyptic novel about Frida and Cal, a young married couple.

I was intrigued by the title of her new novel, Woman No. 17, and wasn't sure what to expect.

Lady is recently separated from her husband, and is searching for someone to take her of her young son, Devon. She finds "S", a young woman who bonds quickly with Devon, Lady's older son, Seth, and Lady herself. Lady is trying to figure out if she wants to get back with Karl, and is beginning to write a book about her journey with Seth, who does not speak. "S" dropped out of a college art program, and is experimenting with who she is - the "S" is a shortened version of Esther, her given name.

Told from both women's point of view, Woman No. 17 explores friendship, relationships with children and partners, and art. Both Lady and "S" have a lot to figure out, and they sometimes encourage and help each other and sometimes hinder and hurt each other.

I enjoyed not knowing what "Woman No. 17" was until well into the book, as well as these two characters. A good read!



THE STOLEN CHILD by Lisa Carey

In 1959, sisters Emer and Rose live with their families and communities on St. Brigid's Island, an isolated island in Ireland. It is a rough life, everyone's well-being depends on the land and the sea, both of which can be harsh and undependable. Rose is sunny and fertile, producing sets of twins every few years. Emer is dark and brooding, cherishing and protecting her only child, a son.

Brigid, an American, comes to the island. Her uncle, who lived on the island all his life, has died, and left his house to her. However, Brigid comes for more than just a new home. She is hoping for a miracle. St. Brigid's Island is steeped in mystery about St. Brigid, who is said to have lived on the island centuries before. Brigid, the American, is hoping that St. Brigid can give her what she wants most of all.

Brigid has a hard time breaking into the community on the island. The islanders, including Emer, with whom she develops an intense relationship, are reluctant to share the island's secrets with her.

Irish myth and lore is intricately woven into the lives of these women and their families, bringing depth and beauty to the story. Well done!

Thanks for stopping by! Clicking on the book covers will take you to Powell's, where you can find out more about these books. Happy reading!

Books Read in 2016

On my page on bookcrossing.com (you can look me up by my bookcrossing member name, 2of3Rs), I keep track of the books I read! Here is my list...note that it's in reverse chronological order. So the first book I read in 2016 was 7 Kinds of Smart, and the last book I read in 2016 was When to Rob a Bank.

Read in 2016
7 Kinds of Smart by Thomas Armstrong
Avenue of Mysteries by John Irving
The Tsar of Love and Techno by Anthony Marra
Why We Buy by Paco Underhill
Timequake by Kurt Vonnegut
God Help the Child by Tony Morrison
The Good Girl by Mary Kubica
The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins
Mother Bruce by Ryan T. Higgins
My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante
Hyperbole and a Half by Allie Brosh
The Story of a New Name by Elena Ferrante
Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay by Elena Ferrante
The Story of the Lost Child by Elena Ferrante
Between You & Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen by Mary Norris
Yellow Crocus by Laila Ibrahim
Dark Matter by Blake Crouch
Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? by Mindy Kaling
Miller's Valley by Anna Quindlen
Concussion by Jeanne Marie Laskas
Attachments by Rainbow Rowell
The Affinities by Robert Charles Wilson
Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl by Carrie Brownstein
Hidden Bodies by Caroline Kepnes
The Triumph of Seeds: How Grains, Nuts, Kernels, Pulses, and Pips Conquered the Plant Kingdom and Shaped Human History by Thor Hanson
But Enough About You: Essays by Christopher Buckley (audio)
I See You Made an Effort by Annabelle Gurwitch (audio)
But What If We're Wrong? by Chuck Klosterman
Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh
Atlantic by Simon Winchester (audio, read by Simon Winchester)
Lab Girl by Hope Jahren
Born Standing Up by Steve Martin (audio, read by Steve Martin!)
The Invoice by Jonas Karlsson
Dear Mr. M by Herman Koch
The Woman in Cabin 10 by Ruth Ware
The Paying Guests by Sarah Waters (audio)
Trigger Warning by Neil Gaiman (audio, read by Neil Gaiman!)
Commonwealth by Ann Patchett
Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton
Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk
The Devil's Teeth by Susan Casey
Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut
The Marriage of Opposites by Alice Hoffman
Frog Music by Emma Donoghue
Working Stiff by Judy Melineck
The Stolen Child by Lisa Carey
Woman No. 17 by Eden Lepucki
When to Rob a Bank by Steven D. Levitt & Stephen J. Dubner

A few of my favorites were Dark Matter by Blake Crouch, listening to Simon Winchester read Atlantic, The Marriage of Opposites by Alice Hoffman, Lab Girl by Hope Jahren, Devil's Teeth by Susan Casey...some good ones!

What did you read and love in 2016?

Thanks for stopping by! You can leave a comment here on the blog, or send email to: 2of3Rs(AT)gmail(DOT)com. Happy reading!

Dark Matter by Blake Crouch

I requested Dark Matter by Blake Crouch more than once from librarything's Early Reviewer's program. The plot synopsis had me intrigued. I knew I'd buy it even if I wasn't one of the lucky recipients on librarything. But yay me, I was a lucky recipient!

Here is the plot synopsis that got me interested...

Description: “Are you happy with your life?”

Those are the last words Jason Dessen hears before the masked abductor knocks him unconscious.

He awakens to find himself strapped to a gurney, surrounded by strangers in hazmat suits.

A man Jason’s never met smiles down at him and says, “Welcome back, my friend.”

In this world he’s woken up to, Jason’s life is not the one he knows. His wife is not his wife. His son was never born. And Jason is not an ordinary college physics professor, but a celebrated genius who has achieved something remarkable. Something impossible.

Is it this world or the other that’s the dream? And even if the home he remembers is real, how can Jason possibly make it back to the family he loves? The answers lie in a journey more wondrous and horrifying than anything he could’ve imagined—one that will force him to confront the darkest parts of himself even as he battles a terrifying, seemingly unbeatable foe.

It sounds like a lot to deliver, but the Dark Matter does not disappoint. Using quantum superposition (which I'd never heard of before this book), Crouch has crafted a mind-bending plot that questions reality as we know it. In addition, I cared for Jason and kept turning pages to find out what was going to happen to him.

Well done!

Thanks for stopping by! Be sure to check out this blog's Facebook page: NOT The New York Times Book Review. Happy reading!

April Reading!

April is one of my favorite months. Not only are we seeing some sun here in the Pacific Northwest, but St. George's Day is this month!

Do you know this holiday? In Spain on April 23, lovers give each other books and roses! Did you catch that? This is a holiday spcifically for giving books!
Here is a link to the post I wrote last year about it (I apologize for the copying and pasting)...
http://notthenewyorktimesbookreview.blogspot.com/2015/04/a-holiday-for-giving-books.html

I'm enjoying my reading this April as well. I'm in the middle of book three of Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan series, and find myself engrossed in this intense friendship between Lenu (the narrator) and Lila set in Naples, Italy.

Here is the list of what I've been reading from my Bookcrossing page (www.bookcrossing.com, and my "name" there is 2of3Rs, if you want to explore Bookcrossing). Bookcrossing is the only place I keep a running list of what I'm reading...

Reading Now
Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay by Elena Ferrante

Read in 2016 (In reverse chronological order...in other wrods, the first book I read in 2016 was 7 Kinds of Smart, and the book I most recently finished was The Story of a New Name.)

7 Kinds of Smart by Thomas Armstrong
Avenue of Mysteries by John Irving
The Tsar of Love and Techno by Anthony Marra
Why We Buy by Paco Underhill
Timequake by Kurt Vonnegut
God Help the Child by Tony Morrison
The Good Girl by Mary Kubica
The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins
Mother Bruce by Ryan T. Higgins
My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante
Hyperbole and a Half by Allie Brosh
The Story of a New Name by Elena Ferrante

As you can see, I read The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins, which came highly recommended to me by a friend. I will admit that I almost gave up on it in the middle, but am glad I persevered. Plot twists, mistaken identities...well done! Anthony Marra's The Tsar of Love and Techno was intense and lovely, as was his Constellation of Vital Phenomena which I read last year. I loved Toni Morrison's newest, God Help the Child. Powerful. I read Hyperbole and a Half. Again. Why do I not own this book? It makes me laugh so hard that I cry. She has a new one coming out in October.

                  

What have you been reading? Will you be celebrating St. George's Day this month?

Thanks for stopping by! Clicking on the book covers will take you to Powell's City of Books. You can "like" us on our Facebook page: NOT The New York Times Book Review. Happy Reading!

Without You There Is No Us by Suki Kim

Because so few Westerners are allowed into North Korea, very few people know much about what life is actually like in North Korea.

Suki Kim was born in South Korea, and her family emigrated to the U.S. when she was 13. She grew up with stories of family members who disappeared during and since the Korean conflict. These disappearances haunt her. She hopes to gain insight into what kind of world made this happen as she takes a position as a teacher in a school for elite young men in North Korea.

     

She's eager to learn about the country and its people, and at the same time she is terrified. Strict warnings were passed down about what she could and couldn't do, and what she could and couldn't say. They include...

"Never hint that there is anything wrong with their country.

"Living in Pyongyang is like living in a fishbowl. Everything you say and do will be watched. Even your dorm room might not be secure. They could go through your things. If you keep a journal and if you say something in it that is not complimentary, please do not leave it in your room. Even in your room, whatever you say could be recorded. Just get in a habit of not saying everything that is on your mind, not criticizing the government and things of that sort, so you won't slip.

"Do not make comparisons. For example, do not say that their food is different from yours because that could be construed as critical.

"Be careful with your terminology: Great Leader, Dear Leader, Precious Leader. Those names have to be carefully used, or better yet, just stay away from discussing them at all. Be careful about how to handle images too. For example, Air Koryo offers in-flight magazines. You take one to your office and it has a picture of Kim Jong-il, and let's say you end up sitting on it by mistake. Then you are in big trouble, because the photo is like the person. It is the same with the portrait of Kim Il-sung on the pins every North Korea wears. These men are regarded as deities, at least officially. Make sure you do not throw away, fold, tear, or damage any visual representation of them. Do not point at such images either. It would be considered an act of disrespect and you would be punished.

It is hard for us to imagine living under this kind of restriction and oppression. Kim, by living it herself, and dangerously taking notes to be able to write this book on her return to the U.S., unveils harsh political, social, and economic realities faced by North Korean citizens.

Illuminating. Definitely worth a read.

Thanks to librarything for their Early Reviewer program! Check out librarything.com! You can also check out this blog's Facebook page: NOT The New York Times Book Review. Happy reading!

If At Birth You Don't Succeed by Zach Anner

I had never heard of Zach Anner before reading about his book If At Birth You Don't Succeed on librarything. He is an internet star, hosting several different web series, a comedian, fitness instructor...and oh, he has cerebral palsy.

    

What came through about Zach to me is that he is a person first; his disability is not his defining feature.

One of the many things he does in the book is that he confronts how people often see the disability before they see the person.

I know this is a long quote from the book, but really, it's worth reading...

"A pedestal of prejudice is a hard thing to explain without sounding like a dick. But in a weird way, most of the world places such low expectations on me that there's no way I can do anything but amaze. I recently went on a museum tour of famed illustrator N.C. Wyeth's home and studio. During the tour, I did little more than look at paintings and indifferently notice a slightly narrow dining-room table. Sure, there was the occasional doorway I had to roll through without running into the frame, but it certainly wasn't like docking a shuttle to a space station. This isn't to say that the art itself wasn't beautiful and emotionally compelling to me, but it was an afternoon at a museum, and largely museums only ask their patrons to look at things without touching them. That much I can do. At the end of the experience, the jolly security guard who had escorted us through the tour patted me on the shoulder and said, 'Bet you haven't had this much fun in a loooong time, huh? You did really good!' I didn't have the heart to tell him that I had, in fact, just the day before, been a guest in a house where I was also not allowed to touch anything. And the day before that, I'd kayaked for the first time...over a tree. But still, in this man's mind, my doing nothing successfully was worthy of praise. Perhaps he imagined that I spent my days looking at empty walls wishing I had a still life oil painting of two lemons and a potato, and that I was bored to tears with my normal-size dining room table."

He doesn't sound like a dick. He's intelligent and funny and clever, and he just happens to have cerebral palsy which of course, as he says, is the sexiest of all the palsies.

Zach writes about wanting to be famous, learning how to be funny, figuring out how to live with his disability, but mostly, how to be human.

Definitely worth the read.

Thanks to librarything for their Early Reviewer program! And thank you for reading the blog! You can also check out this blog's Facebook page: NOT The New York Times Book Review. Happy reading!

Books I Read in 2015

Read in 2015
Watership Down by Richard Adams
Show Your Work by Austin Kelon
Not My Father's Son by Alan Cumming
The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins
The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo
California by Edan Lepucki
Proof: The Science of Booze by Adam Rogers
The Word Exchange by Alena Graedon
A Matter of Breeding by Michael Brandow
Dept of Speculation by Jenny Offill
The Sasquatch Hunter's Almanac by Sharma Shields
The People in the Trees by Hanya Yanagihara
Orphan Train by Christina Baker Kline
Kinder Than Solitude by Yiyun Li
The Silent Wife by A.S.A. Harrison
Her by Harriet Lane
Postcards from a Dead Girl by Kirk Farber
I'll Give You the Sun by Jandy Nelson
The Steady Running of the Hour by Justin Go
The Girl With All the Gifts by M.R. Carey
The Fever by Megan Abbott
The Next Queen of Heaven by Gregory Maguire
Love's Promises by Martha M. Ertman
All My Puny Sorrows by Miriam Toews
The Days of Abandonment by Elena Ferrante
Live Right and Find Happiness (Although Beer is Much Faster) by Dave Barry
My Sunshine Away by M.O. Walsh
Still Alice by Lisa Genova
We Should All Be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Second Life by S.J. Watson
The Tale of the Dueling Neurosurgeons by Sam Kean
Language Arts by Stephanie Kallos
Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee
A Dirty Job by Christopher Moore
A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson
The Novel Habits of Happiness by Alexander McCall Smith
A Constellation of Vital Phenomena by Anthony Marra
They Eat Puppies, Don't They? by Christopher Buckley
Armada by Ernest Cline
Secondhand Souls by Christopher Moore
You by Caroline Kepnes
There is No Us Without You by Suki Kim
In a Dark Dark Wood by Ruth Ware
The Grownup by Gillian Flynn
The Book of Speculation by Erika Swyler
Pacific by Simon Winchester
Mother Bruce by Ryan T. Higgins
Wool by Hugh Howey
The First Bad Man: A Novel by Miranda July
On Cats by Charles Bukowski
If at Birth You Don't Succeed by Zach Anner

2015 was not a great year of reading for me. There were books I enjoyed, some I enjoyed quite a bit (The Girl With All the Gifts, A Constellation of Vital Phenomena, all of the psychological thrillers)... but 2015 was a year of huge transition for me.

I know that when I am experiencing a lot of change/challenges/stress, I don't get as much out of what I read. It's harder to focus, when so much of my energy is going into other things.

And...it is what it is. I'm looking forward to 2016!

Thanks for stopping by! Be sure to check out this blog's Facebook page... NOT The New York Times Book Review. Happy reading!

Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee

        

Like so many people, I have read To Kill a Mockingbird many times and loved it. While I was eager to read Go Set a Watchman, I was also a little trepidatious after reading a few strong, negative reviews.

These reviews brought up questions for me...How can any second book live up to such an amazing first book, especially if it is following the same main characters? What about the racial issues that some reviewers brought up? Is Atticus really a racist? Can it be so?

In To Kill a Mockingbird, Atticus is a small town lawyer, widower and father of two young children, standing on justice to defend a black man unjustly accused of raping a white woman. To Kill a Mockingbird is a morality tale, letting us know that fighting for what is right, even against incredible odds, is important. In To Kill a Mockingbird we love and respect Atticus for his strength and firm moral conviction.

His firm moral conviction against racism and prejudice, right?

Well...

Go Set a Watchman begins with Scout coming home to Maycomb County as an adult, just as the Supreme Court has ruled on Brown vs the Board of Education in 1954. Scout (Jean Louise), finds out that most of the people in her town, including Atticus, are not supportive of this ruling. Is it possible that Atticus Finch supports segregation?

This is not the Atticus we remembered.

This is not the Atticus that Jean Louise remembered either. Jean Louise revered Atticus. Yet here he is, supporting segregation. In Go Set a Watchman, Jean Louise struggles to understand how Atticus can disagree with this Supreme Court ruling and how he can believe what he does about race. She feels as though her world is being upended.

What is going on here?

Jean Louise is growing up.

Jean Louise is growing out of simplistic ways of thinking and discovering how complex people and issues are. She changes from thinking that Atticus is all-seeing, all-knowing, and infallible, into realizing that he is human and that he has flaws. Throughout Go Set a Watchman, Jean Louise has to reconcile how she rememebered people from her childhood with the realities of how these same people are behaving in her present day. They aren't different people, she is just seeing them through more mature eyes.

I got more depth and insight into these characters than I did in To Kill a Mockingbird. When I read To Kill a Mockingbird, I, like Scout, saw Atticus as a paragon of justice and racial equality. It was an interesting experience to have loved and revered a fictional character so much and to notice how upset I was as I read Go Set a Watchman to discover how different Atticus was than I wanted him to be. Perhaps Go Set a Watchman is not a coming of age story just for Jean Louise. Perhaps it is one for us as well.

Well done.

Thanks for stopping by! If you haven't already gotten a copy of Go Set a Watchman, you can click on the book cover and get it from Powell's City of Books. Be sure and check out our Facebook page here: NOT The New York Times Book Review. You can also send us email using this address: 2of3Rs(AT)gmail(DOT)com.

Secondhand Souls by Christopher Moore

A follow-up to Moore's A Dirty Job, Secondhand Souls continues to follow Charlie Asher, Minty Fresh, Lily, and Sophie as they try to figure out how to deal with the whole death and soul vessel retrieval thing.

        &

When we left Charlie Asher in A Dirty Job, Audrey had put his soul into one of the squirrel people, meat puppets she'd cobbled together from spare parts of other animals.

Secondhand Souls opens a year later, our motley crew discovering that people are dying, but their souls are not being collected. This can't be good. They try to figure out how to stop the impending doom, racing against time.

This is a great continuation of A Dirty Job...so fun!

I was lucky enough to receive a copy of Secondhand Souls through librarything.com's Early Reviewers program. Thank you, librarything!

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Wee Free Library!

Look what I found as I was out on my bike ride this morning! About a mile from my house is this lovely Wee Free Library!

    

It's hard to tell from this picture, but there are almost a dozen books, including a book by Stephen King, a copy of Black Beauty, another kids' book called The Best School Year Ever, and a novel by M.C. Beaton. The front panel looks like plexiglass, and the whole thing looks well constructed to keep out weathery things that could cause harm to books.

This Wee Free Library is a block from an elementary school too, so lots of kids will see it. What a wonderful addition to my neighborhood!

Do you have a Wee Free Library near you?

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You by Caroline Kepnes

I stumbled upon this book at Target. It looked like a page turner and we were going on vacation, so I bought it.

     

It turns out I did not read it on vacation. But I was right, it was a page turner! When I did get to it, I was intrigued from the beginning. Here's how the book starts. I was drawn in by the second person narration...

"You walk into the bookstore and you keep your hand on the door to make sure it doesn't slam. You smile, embarrassed to be a nice girl, and your nails are bare and your V-neck sweater is beige and it's impossible to know if you're wearing a bra but I don't think that you are. You're so clean that you're dirty and your murmur your first word to me - hello - when most people would just pass by, but not you, in your loose pink jeans, a pink spun from Charlotte's Web and where did you come from?"

The tone sets the stage, as does the blurry cover art. The person isn't just observing this woman, he is scrutinizing her, judging her, owning her in his mind. Creepy.

Creepy, indeed. Kepnes keeps the tension taut throughout the whole book, as this narrator inserts himself into the life of this woman who happened to walk into the bookstore where he works. Events escalate, and...well, I'm not going to say any more. This is a good read!

Thanks for stopping by! You can "like" our Facebook page, NOT The New York Times Book Review. You can also send email to: 2of3Rs(AT)gmail(DOT)com. Happy reading!

A Constellation of Vital Phenomena by Anthony Marra

I know I am late to the party, as I am just now reading A Constellation of Vital Phenomena by Anthony Marra. It has been on my radar since it came out in 2013. I saw it at Barnes and Noble, and remembered a friend's recommendation ("just READ it!", she said). So I am.

     

Starting in 2004 during the second Chechen war (I will admit I have been woefully ignorant about these conflicts), A Constellation of Vital Phenomena starts out with Havaa, a young girl, waking after the night she hid in the woods and her father was taken by the Feds. After her father was taken, she stayed the rest of the night with her neighbor, Akhmed, and his ill wife, Ulla.

Akhmed panics on this day after the disappearance of Havaa's father, as he knows that the Feds will likely be coming for the girl, too. He takes Havaa to a hospital that is several miles away to stay with Sonja, a woman doctor he has never met.

Moving between 1994 and 2004, Marra weaves the story of Havaa, her missing father, Dokka, Akhmed, Ulla, Sonja, another neighbor Khassan and his son, Ramzan who is an informer, and their war ravaged country.

While some of this book is intense - some of descriptions in the hospital are pretty graphic - this is some of the most stunning and beautiful prose I have ever read.

If you can, read this passage slowly...

"Sonja stood and walked to the flat, afraid of what she might hear next. At the kitchen table she examinded the glass of ice. Each cube was rounded by room temperature, dissolving in its own remains, and belatedly she understood that this was how a loved one disappeared. Despite the shock of walking into an empty flat, the absence isn't immediate, more a fade from the present tense you shared, a melting into the past, not an erasure, but a conversion in form, from presence to memory, from solid to liquid, and the person you once touched now runs over your skin, now in sheets down your back, and you may bathe, may sink, may drown in the memory, but your fingers cannot hold it. She raised the glass to her lips. The water was clean."

Not only is the writing beautiful, Marra also captures realities of loss, love, pain, grief and describes them in such a way that I see them with new eyes. I am in the middle of this and am reading slowly, savoring the writing.

Lovely and amazing.

Thanks for stopping by! You can like the blog's Facebook page: NOT The New York Times Book Review. You can also send email to: 2of3Rs(AT)gmail(DOT)com. Happy reading!

Language Arts by Stephanie Kallos

Do you remember watching the movie The Sixth Sense? And when, at the end, you realized that the boy, Cole, had been seeing dead people all along, it changed your experience of the entire movie? (At least that's how it was for me.) I didn't see the twist coming at all, and I loved it.

In Language Arts, we meet Cody and his family. Cody was a happy little boy. He was developing normally until he started to lose language. His parents, Charles and Alison, took him to specialist after specialist to find out what happened and to try to help him get better.

Cody doesn't get better. Shortly after the birth of Cody's sister, Emmy, Charles and Alison's marriage deteriorates. As Cody gets older, and ages out of the system that can provide care for him, Charles and Alison have to work together to find a suitable living situation for him.

     

We see everything as Charles and Emmy experience this. Kallos weaves together this family's struggle, including back story around Charles, with Charles as a child befriending an autistic classmate, language arts, and, interestingly, Palmer handwriting. Language Arts felt a little melancholy, heavy with this family's desperation to try to help Cody as well as deal with deteriorating relationships.

I was engaged in the story as it was, and then a Sixth Sense kind of twist came at the end that made me go back and reread passages of the book to see how she did it. SO well done!

Thanks for stopping by! Clicking on the book cover will take you to Powell's web page for the book. Check out the blog's Facebook page: NOT The New York Times Book Review. You can send email to us at: 2of3Rs(AT)gmail(DOT)com. Happy reading!

Second Life by S.J. Watson

I read Watson's first book, Before I Go to Sleep, and really enjoyed it.* I was excited to see her second book, Second Life, at the library!

        

Narrated by Julia, wife to surgeon Hugh, mother to teenager Conner, Julia has a hidden past. She reveals this past slowly. After the death of her sister, Julia's past starts to get real again. Julia gets involved with a man she meets online. She rationalizes this affair as a way to understand her sister and explain her death.

I found myself not liking Julia, and not believing that she would actually do the things she did with the reasons she gave for doing them. I almost gave up on this book. But it came around for me, and I'm glad I stuck it out. A good read!

*See my write up of Before I Go to Sleep here: http://notthenewyorktimesbookreview.blogspot.com/2011/08/good-reads.html

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Rereading a Few Favorites

I rarely reread books anymore. I used to when I was a kid, eagerly, excitedly, as though I were trying to absorb the words and stories into each fiber of my being.

As an adult? I think I've felt as though there are always new books to discover, and that is where my excitement has been going.

But here I am, rereading a few favorites. I went to Powell's last week with my daughter and I bought two books that I used to own and I want to reread.

I found out that I will be the (lucky!) recipient of a book through librarything's Early Reviewers program, Christopher Moore's next, called Secondhand Souls. Yay! Secondhand Souls is the sequel to A Dirty Job, which I loved. It's been several years since I read it, so I want to read A Dirty Job again before I read Secondhand Souls.

I'm really enjoying reading this again. Poor Charlie Asher, Beta Male, right after his wife dies in childbirth, finds out that he's a death merchant and has to collect soul vessels and pass them on to their new owners. That sounds kind of heavy, but, in usual Christopher Moore style, it's smart and funny. And in addition? The cover glows in the dark.

         

And the other one? A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson.

Recommended by good friends when I was living in a book desert (before the internet I lived in a rural area where there was one small, sad little bookstore that stocked mostly Harlequin romances). When I got my hands on Bryson's book I devoured it, and began a love affair with all things Bryson.

     

And it's going to be a movie with Robert Redford and Nick Nolte!

As my partner has wisely taught me, books and movies based on said books are different things. Most of the time it isn't even right to compare them. They are different animals. I agree with this. I loved Gone With the Wind the book AND Gone With the Wind the movie, even though the movie left out a lot that was in the book.

Have I been disappointed in a movie based on a book? Sure. Mostly because I was watching the movie with book eyes, the eyes that I wanted it to be the same, or rather, I wanted to have the same experience that I had with the book, which isn't really fair to the movie.

Will A Walk in the Woods movie be as good as the book? It will be different. Is it silly to reread the book before the movie comes out? Shouldn't I just enjoy the movie for what it is and not compare the two? Maybe. And I don't care. I am looking forward to enjoying the book again.

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Still Alice by Lisa Genova

This book has been on my shelf for several years, waiting patiently for me to be ready to read it.

    

The story is told from the point of view of Alice, a professor at Harvard. She is diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer's. We watch as she and her family struggle with the diagnosis. We watch as she loses her capability to remember and process things as she descends into dementia.

I watched my mom descend into dementia too, which is why I knew this book would be hard and why it's taken me seven years to read it.

My mom's situation was slightly different, just as everyone's experience with any illness is unique. My mom had a stroke in August of 2003. At the time she'd been living alone, managing her very brittle diabetes with frequent blood sugar checks and administering her own insulin at each meal by determining the appropriate dose based on her blood sugar levels.

The stroke affected her memory, judgment and language. When she was in the hospital right after the stroke, and my brother and I were with her, she asked why people kept sticking her with pins. She didn't remember that she even had diabetes, let alone that she had been managing it on her own. At that moment, my brother and I knew that that was the end of her living alone.

In the following year and a half, she recovered some memory and language, and reached somewhat of a plateau. She remembered that she had diabetes, but couldn't remember exactly how to manage it.

And then her memory started getting worse. Her neurologist started her on Aricept and Nameda, just like Alice did in the book, but they didn't seem to help much. Every time we saw the neurologist, she'd administer the ten question test, asking mom if she knew where she was, knew who the president was, knew what season it was. Mom did worse every time.

This was abnormal from a stroke recovery point of view. They did an MRI and she hadn't had another "event" (stroke). Dementia seemed to be setting in. The neurologist didn't make the diagnosis of Alzheimer's. At some point, she said, dementia is dementia, no matter what the cause.

For my mom the dementia progressed relatively quickly. In the last three months of her life she forgot how to use the bathroom. She forgot who we were. She talked about waiting for her parents (who had been dead for decades) coming to come pick her up. At the end, she slipped into a coma and died a few days later.

It was heartbreaking to watch my mom lose her memory, her faculties, and ultimately her life.

It's hard for anyone close to someone with dementia, as Still Alice illustrates so well. Lisa Genova sheds light on Alzheimer's and living with dementia, illuminating the struggle for Alice herself, as well as her family. Well done.

Several years ago, I wrote a blog post about two other books about dementia, The 36-Hour Day and Contented Dementia. You can read that post here (sorry for the copying and pasting): http://notthenewyorktimesbookreview.blogspot.com/2012/02/how-do-you-spell-alzheimers.html

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Love's Promises by Martha M. Ertman

Librarything does it again! I was lucky enough to receive an Early Reviewer Copy of Love's Promises: How Formal and Informal Contracts Shape All Kinds of Families (Queer Ideas/Queer Action), by Martha M. Ertman. Thank you, Librarything!

    

I'm going to start by saying that I don't love the title or the cover. The title (not the subtitle, but the main title - Love's Promises) sounds like a romance novel, and in fact when I tried to find the Powell's link for the page for this book, about a dozen romance books came up before Ertman's book. The cover, with a white background and red cups, looks like a Christian self-help book to me. I think this is unfortunate, as the contents were something else entirely.

Love's Promises: How Formal and Informal Contracts Shape All Kinds of Families (Queer Ideas/Queer Action) is written by Martha Ertman. Ertman is a lawyer, biological mother to her young son, in a committed relationship with a woman, and is co-parenting her son with his (gay) biological father and her partner. Not a conventional situation!

And that's the point of this book. Many of us are not in conventional marriage or family relationships, and can experience challenges with the legal system's inability to recognize and honor these less traditional relationships.

Ertman uses her own life to illustrate that more and more people are involved in less conventional (she calls them "Plan B") situations that are not directly addressed by family law.

Many of us not in conventional marriage or family relationships could benefit from her insight into the legal as well as the unofficial aspects of creating and honoring all sorts of relationships with contracts. She talks in depth about formal and informal contracts that help define and protect relationships.

I appreciated Ertman's affirming tone as well as her concrete ideas for protecting and recognizing the significance, importance, and rights in the relationships that are most important to us.

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A Book a Week

I read about a book a week. Here's what I've read so far in 2015. The list is in chronological order (I read Watership Down in January)...

Watership Down by Richard Adams
Show Your Work by Austin Kelon
Not My Father's Son by Alan Cumming
The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins
The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo
California by Edan Lepucki
Proof: The Science of Booze by Adam Rogers
The Word Exchange by Alena Graedon
A Matter of Breeding by Michael Brandow
Dept of Speculation by Jenny Offill
The Sasquatch Hunter's Almanac by Sharma Shields
The People in the Trees by Hanya Yanagihara
Orphan Train by Christina Baker Kline
Kinder Than Solitude by Yiyun Li
The Silent Wife by A.S.A. Harrison
Her by Harriet Lane
Postcards from a Dead Girl by Kirk Farber
I'll Give You the Sun by Jandy Nelson
The Steady Running of the Hour by Justin Go
The Girl With All the Gifts by M.R. Carey
The Fever by Megan Abbott
The Next Queen of Heaven by Gregory Maguire
Love's Promises by Martha M. Ertman
All My Puny Sorrows by Miriam Toews
The Days of Abandonment by Elena Ferrante
Live Right and Find Happiness by Dave Barry


      

      

      

What have you been reading?

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