I read a bunch this week, thanks to Spring Break. Here are my goodreads reviews. If you’re on goodreads, add me as a friend so I can see your books too! I’ve also started an instagram account where I join my love of reading with my love of art.
The Path Made Clear (2.5 stars): This was mostly full of others’ wisdom collected, organized and packaged by Oprah. I am not an avid follower of Oprah but I also don’t have the cynical hatred others seem to have. I think she’s done amazing things with her life, I think she’s worked hard to help others, and I think she’s been trying to learn and grow along the way. All of those things make her pretty awesome in my book.
This book was a fine read, there are lots of little gems in it but, in my opinion it’s not really about Discovering Your Life’s Direction and Purpose. It’s just sound bites from different shows she’s done with wise guests over the years. Not a thoughtful distillation of all that imbued with her wisdom, which I would have loved to have seen.
Queenie (3 stars): I have a lot of mixed feelings about this book. I’ll start with what I didn’t like:
– It has nothing to do with Bridget Jones. I wish publishers would stop doing this. It hurts the audience and the writer. Just stop making simple comparisons that are not true, it sets up an expectation that inevitably ends in a let down.
– There were many tidbits of issues around racism in this book, and maybe I am not one to judge as a white woman, but it felt to me like the author glossed over all of them. None of them were given the due they deserved. To me, this is worse than if it weren’t there at all. If you’re going to mention it, I’d prefer you give it the attention it deserves.
– I completely understand that there were many reasons for Queenie’s behavior and choices and I’m not judging it but as a mom there was so much here that made me both cringe and be really, deeply sad. I was so worried for her and angry that none of her friends supported her more and that distracted me a lot.
Now on to what I liked:
– I am grateful for novels that don’t sugarcoat and besides the racial issues I mentioned above, I feel this novel did a good job not sugarcoating what was going on with Queenie. This is not a novel you want to read (or listen to as I was doing) with kids around. The author did not shy away from telling it like it is. And I always appreciate that even if the truth makes me cringe/sad/angry.
– The chat group with her friends was likely one of my favorite parts of the book.
– The conversation around mental health and Queenie’s journey to fighting for hers. I really liked the way this was handled. I also liked that it wasn’t like she woke up one day and was all better. Life doesn’t work that way and neither did this novel.
So there you go. Mixed emotions. One I will think about more.
The Porpoise (2 stars):
He does not understand yet that there are things that keep one awake at night which are more terrifying than pirates or reefs, and cannot be avoided by dousing of lights at dusk and the possession of a good map. He does not understand yet that sometimes the monster is other people, sometimes the monster squats unseen inside one’s own heart, and sometimes the monster is the brute fact of time itself.
I’ve read and liked Mark Haddon’s previous books, so I was looking forward to reading this book. Alas, it’s wildly different from The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time so if you’re picking this up in the hopes that it will be similar, I want to make sure to caution you. I also want to mention that this book has a lot of violence in it. Murder, incest, lots of fighting, etc. If I hadn’t received an ARC, I likely would have put it down. I think the blurb downplays the plot quite a bit. I don’t want to give away too much but please beware of trigger warnings. Also, about a third of the way in, one of the characters morphs and it becomes a Greek tale, and then Shakespeare also comes into the story so it has three interweaving stories, making the whole plot quite surreal.
Having said all of this, I decided to persevere, and by the time I finished the book, I was quite interested in the fates of the characters. The writing was good, some of the characters were interesting, but in the end this book has way too many triggers and way too much violence for me.
Thank you to netgalley and the publisher for an advanced copy in return for an honest review.
Understanding Numbers (4 stars): I love math so I knew this book was going to make me happy and it delivered 100% on its promise. This relatively compact book shows the readers how so much of our daily life contains math. It talks about concepts like mean vs median and relative vs absolute numbers. Concepts like game theory and Prisoner’s Dilemma.
It focuses on five core areas: health, environment, society, relationships and communication. For each of these areas, it gives four examples of cases where math figures greatly into the core of that field/area. For example, in society, it talks about voting, in relationships, it talks about evolution of kindness, etc. Each section is short, to the point, and introduces the problem and shows how math is a part of how we tackle the problem. At the end of each section there are concise and precise learnings that help shift your thinking/perspective so you can remember what they covered.
I’m relatively familiar with many of these concepts in math/statistics and there still was much interesting content here for me and the concepts were put so simply and clearly that I had multiple discussions with my nine year old son over some of what was in this book.
Highly recommended.
Thank you to netgalley and the publisher for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.
An Uncommon Atlas (5 stars): What a fantastic, fantastic book! If you’re interested in data and like visual representation of information, you will love this book. There is a huge range of information in this book from asteroids, to water usage, to bug variety, to drifters, and so, so much more. Each piece of data overlaid beautifully onto a world map and explained with interesting tidbits. Here’s a tiny selection of things I highlighted as I read my copy:
“In Hong Kong, about 80 per cent of residents flush their toilet with seawater”
“Hydropower makes up nearly 100 per cent of electricity production in Paraguay.”
“There have been six different manned missions to the moon, but there have only been two crewed trips, down the almost 6 miles (11km) to the deepest part of the ocean.”
“About 300 cable systems carry almost all the world’s transoceanic data.”
There are three sections: “land, air, and sea”, “human and animal”, and “globalisation.” My favorite was the first one. But all three are phenomenal.
I have enjoyed every single minute I spent with this book, I can’t recommend it enough.
Thank you to netgalley and the publisher for an advanced copy in return for an honest review.
The Silver Ladies of Penny Lane (1 star): When I saw the title of this book, I thought it would be a fun, light read that ideally would make me laugh. I am sorry to say it wasn’t so. This book is about an older, divorced woman, Tess, who is worried about how fat she’s getting and how she might not have a date for her daughter’s wedding so she and her friend sign up for a dating app.
Half the book is about how she mustn’t eat all the food she’s eating and how the woman who runs the sessions at the WW-like place where she goes tells her (and others) how they must never be ok with being fat. There are at least a hundred mentions of how she shouldn’t eat this or drink that and then another as many of how such and such food is worth it or oh well she’s on vacation, blah blah. In this day and age of body neutrality and body positivity, this alone drove me insane.
But then as if tying your worth to food wasn’t enough, the main character goes on these disastrous dates, at two of which she drinks too much to the point of not being in her right mind. At one of which she has sex without remembering that she does. Only to find out later that the guy is a player and does this all the time (this being getting women drunk and having sex with them.) I am pretty sure we call this non-consensual sex. As if the fact that she experiences this isn’t enough, when her supposedly good friend finds the same man in the app, she doesn’t even warn her to not go there. This is friendship?
Tess and her “friend” Orly talk unkindly to each other all the time, they put each other down, they are snide and catty. All of which might be real-world but none of which is “hilarious feel good.” And even as Tess starts to feel better about herself, the fact that it’s 100% correlated with a man and with looking thinner, made me so disappointed. The only person I maybe liked was Shirley but of course she was one of the smallest characters in the book.
Overall, for me, this book was neither funny, nor feel good.
Thank you to netgalley and the publisher for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.
Grace After Henry (3 stars): I liked pieces of this story because I felt they were real and raw. The grief, especially the mom’s grief and also Grace’s grief and the way she sees him everywhere she looks. The biggest part of this book is a twist enough that it’s hard to review it without giving away anything. I think, to some, this will be a sweet novel and to others, who maybe have experienced grief like this, it might be a bit too cutesy. I read it relatively quickly.
I did like the ending as I was worried it might go the other way. It was a sweet, little novel, but unlikely to stay with me for very long.
The Ditch (3.5 stars): “The second time, though, I listened to the sentences as if they had a false bottom.”
This story is about Robert, the mayor of Amsterdam, who sees a moment pass between his wife and one of his aldermen and decides that his wife must be cheating on him and the rest of the story is imbued with his suspicions and he revisits everything his wife says and does through that filter.
I had read and liked several other Koch novels before, but after I received this, I was worried it would not be like the others. At first, it felt like maybe it wasn’t. I didn’t like any of the characters and didn’t really feel like the story was going anywhere.
By the time I finished it, it felt exactly like his other books to me. There’s one central thing going on, but most of the story is about the characters and “ordinary” lives and how people’s own lives intersect with others’ and create these textures and layers. I don’t even know how to explain it. What I know is that even though I don’t love any of his characters, I find Koch’s novels stay with me and this one is no exception.
“This time I would look at them differently. I would look at them through the eyes of a husband who knows he is being deceived.”
Maybe because he knows how to portray human nature so well.
Thank you to netgalley and the publisher for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.
How to Raise Successful People (4 stars): I read this book in one sitting. I will start by saying that I am not a fan of parenting books in general. I find that they are either written by people who aren’t parents or people who tell you there’s one right way. Neither of which works for me. I have a teenager who rolls his eyes each time he sees me look at a parenting book and tells me that they are not worth it.
Alas, I picked up this book anyway because I am always open to learning, growing and trying to do better. There’s much in this book about how we get in the way of our kids’ because of who we are.
“The first thing every parent should do, then, is reflect on their experiences. It sounds simple, but we often fail to do it.”
and how many parents are making choices or taking action from their own insecurities, doubts, anxieties, etc. So their kids approves, needs, etc. them. It’s about letting the kids lead, letting them take detours if need be and being there and knowing that they will be ok. It’s about honoring and respecting who your kids already are. It’s about not letting your own definition of success/your goals/your ambitions get in the way of your kid’s life.
“The lesson in all of this: Children will listen to you – they want your approval and love – but if they want to be happy, they’re going to have to listen to themselves.”
It’s about respecting your kids so they can respect themselves, so they can take risks and become independent. It’s about giving them independence, choice, responsibility and trust at a young age and continuing it all throughout.
The author recommends a system she calls TRICK ( Trust, Respect, Independence, Collaboration and Kindness). Both giving it to the kids and modeling it yourself.
As with all such books, I don’t agree with every single word the author says. There are parts where I thought she was too opinionated, too judgmental, or too preachy. Parts where it sounded like patting oneself in the back. But there is so much gold in this book that I didn’t care at all. At its core, this was a fantastic book and her message resonated deeply with me. It is one I will work hard to remember as I continue to raise my kids.
Thank you to netgalley and the publisher for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.
The Places that Scare You (4 stars): Pema Chodron is one of the few people I go back to again and again. I find that the lessons, the stories, the perspective is something that I need to remind myself of with some regularity. Words of wisdom. To me, there isn’t much new here, just a remembering of things I know but seem to always forget. A way to make sure that I can stay practicing, keep remembering. I am never going to get it right but I am grateful she’s there to remind me that it’s ok each time.
My Lovely Wife (3 stars): Fast paced thriller. I listened on audio while on vacation so it went even faster than usual. Yet another mystery with unlikeable characters, shocking revelations and on and on. A bit less annoying, for me, than some of the others I read. I will be happy when the unreliable narrator, unlikeable character, and the shocking twist trends all go away and we can be back to good old fashioned well-written mysteries.
On the list of all the ones I read, this doesn’t do terribly poorly but it also likely won’t stand out. I gave it 3 stars because I pretty much read it in one sitting and any book that can make me do that deserves at least 3 stars.
Lights All Night Long (4 stars): I absolutely loved this coming-of-age novel. It’s about two siblings from Russia, where one gets an opportunity to study abroad in America. There’s so much here that resonated with me. The writing is absolutely stunning and the love of siblings, the poverty, the hopelessness and the mother-son relationship (as well as the mother-daughter) are part of this tender, hard, deep and beautiful story.
While there’s a mystery at the heart of it, this, is not a mystery novel. It’s a character-driven story about the struggle between your life and future and saving the ones you love. It’s about family and roots and aspirations and hopes and love. It’s a really beautiful story and I highly recommend it.
And there we go, an ok week of reading. Here’s to a great week next week.
Books I Read this Week 2019 is a year-long project for 2019. You can read more about my projects for 2019 here. I am also tracking my books in real time on Good Reads here. If you’re on Good Reads add me so I can follow you, too! I’ve also started an instagram account where I join my love of reading with my love of art.
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