Sheryl K's Top Books of 2013

Happy New Year, readers!

This year I read 42 books, 10 of which were non-fiction. For those of you who suggested that having a newborn was going to slow me down, well, I am just that much more stubborn than you thought!  While I have spent a lot of the year reading Jamberry and Wet Pet, Dry Pet, Your Pet, My Pet, here are a few other books that I really loved.

On being a woman:

Well, if you are going to tell your boss you are pregnant, I recommend doing it right after Marisa Mayer does the same.  And if you are going to be on maternity leave, try doing it when Sheryl Sandberg releases her book, Lean In.  Once you've had your baby, if you decide to go back to work and pump breastmilk, read The Milk Memos, about some women at IBM who did it before it was trendy.

For nonfiction, Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand was amazing.  My sister recommended this story about a former Olympic runner who enlists during WWII and whose plane is shot down over the Pacific.  Less masterfully striking but still a good memoir is Laura and Lisa Ling's chronicle of Laura's getting imprisoned in a North Korean prison and Lisa's fight to get her released in Somewhere Inside.

I read some really high-quality fiction as well.  Topping the list is The Invisible Bridge by Julie Orringer, recommended by my mom, which is the story of a Jewish Hungarian family during WWII.  I only wish I had read it last summer when I was in Hungary.  Also wonderful was Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, about two Nigerians who fall in love as teenagers, one of whom stays in Nigeria while the other one emigrates to the United States.  A Constellation of Vital Phenomena by Anthony Marra, recommended by Deena, was a memorable and well-written novel about several people making difficult decisions during the Chechen conflict in the late 1990's.

A surprise gift from Kurt and Laura turned into a favorite - The Ghost Bride by Yangsze Choo was a storytelling romp through Malay and the Chinese underworld.  The Interestings by Meg Wolitzer, on many "official" lists, was about lifelong friendships that begin at summer camp and was indeed as good as everyone said it was.  Another universally well-reviewed book was Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn, a mystery that I also liked as much as everyone else.  Finally, awarded the "why did it sit on my shelf for so long?" prize was The Piano Teacher by Janice Y.K. Lee, a love story set in Hong Kong.

I read several books about the Asian immigrant experience in the United States.  The Mango Bride by Marivi Soliven was about two women from very different classes who immigrate from the Philippines.  In The Newlyweds by Nell Freudenberger, a man finds a wife in Bangladesh to bring to the US.  Another story of a wife brought to the United States, this time from India, was in A Good Indian Wife by Anne Cherian. And The Reeducation of Cherry Truong by Aimee Phan was a coming-of-age story about a young Vietnamese woman and her family.

There were two notable books that I enjoy but that were flawed.  The Circle by Dave Eggers was a searing criticism of our lack of privacy on the internet with completely lackluster character development from a writer I know is better than that.  The Aviator's Wife by Melanie Benjamin was also lacking in some character development, but was a good fictional account of Charles Lindbergh's wife's life.

Finally, if you like trashy historical fiction and are not already reading the Outlander by Diana Gabaldon series, you should be.  I read books #4 and #5 this year.

I will keep updating this blog, but now manage my "to-read" list and all my reviews on Goodreads.  Find me there if you are also a member.

Best wishes to all for health, happiness, success, and lots of great books to read in 2014.

Sheryl

Review: I Am Nujood, Age 10 and Divorced

I Am Nujood, Age 10 and Divorced by Nujood Ali

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



This book was fine. Nujood is a Yemeni girl who is married off at too-young an age, and then abused by her husband. In a show of amazing courage, she seeks - and ultimately is granted - a divorce. Gaining international attention, her divorce has led to changes in Yemeni law (though their enforcement is still questionable) as well as a handful of other young women in the Middle East to seek the same freedom.

Her story is sad, and the poverty she lives in magnifies that. Even after garnering international attention (going on The Today Show and appearing in Glamour Magazine), she and one of her sisters fail to continue attending school and while her family's station is slightly improved by her book royalties and humanitarian efforts, they are not magically lifted out of poverty and appreciative of Western values.

Perhaps that is the most interesting part. Her courage is amazing and unusual - but the difficulty in changing the oppressive society that forces women to submit to a male-dominated culture is equally striking.



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Review: The Fiery Cross

The Fiery Cross by Diana Gabaldon

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series continues to hold my attention. After the first half of the last book, I was a little worried that she had "jumped the shark" a bit, but this book renewed my excitement in this epic story.

In this installment, weighing in at 900+ pages, Jamie and Claire are joined by their daughter Brianna and her husband Roger in North Carolina in the early 1770's. There are small skirmishes between different factions as the colonies begin to gear up for the Revolution. But as in her previous books, there are also small everyday situations to contend with - like a murder mystery, missing people, killer bears, lost loves, and babies.

I look forward to reading the next book, probably on vacation in April.



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Review: A Constellation of Vital Phenomena

A Constellation of Vital Phenomena by Anthony Marra

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



I really enjoyed this book, recommended to me by Deena.

It follows a few people's stories during the Chechen Wars from 1996 to 2004. The book jumps around in time, but each chapter begins with a timeline with the date highlighted. The main characters include a little girl whose father is taken by the police, her neighbor who rescues her, and a doctor at the hospital he hides her in. But as the book unfolds, more characters who start out seeming like minor players become increasingly more relevant.

The writing was excellent - as was the character development. I also really enjoyed the unlikely connections he made between characters, some of which the reader knows before the characters do.

I didn't know very much about this part of post-USSR history, and the author did a good job of including enough background so I could follow the story but not so much that I was bored by the history. Definitely recommend reading this and since this is his debut novel (wow!) I look forward to future books of his.



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Review: Reconstructing Amelia

Reconstructing Amelia by Kimberly McCreight

My rating: 2 of 5 stars



Lisa recommended this to me, I think after I read [b:Gone Girl|8442457|Gone Girl|Gillian Flynn|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1339602131s/8442457.jpg|13306276], but I thought it was nowhere near as good as that. In fact, I thought it was like a poor woman's version of [b:Defending Jacob|11367726|Defending Jacob|William Landay|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1329612158s/11367726.jpg|16298550].

The book is about a single mom named Kate whose daughter Amelia ostensibly commits suicide after being accused of cheating at her private school. However, Kate believes she didn't actually kill herself and embarks on an investigation of her own to determine what happened to her. The book alternated between Kate in the current time and Amelia in the weeks before her death. It also includes some emails and text messages as part of the story.

The concept of this book was good and the story was ok, but the characters were not well-developed. Neither Kate nor Amelia's voice were really believable. The twists at the end of the story weren't that fun either. All in all, I was not a big fan.



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Review: The Circle

The Circle by Dave Eggers

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



This book is really tough to review. I am a huge fan of Eggers, although I did not enjoy his last book ([b:A Hologram for the King|13722902|A Hologram for the King|Dave Eggers|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1337179987s/13722902.jpg|19355962]). This book had similar problems to the last one - it was working so hard to be a parable and make a point that I think Eggers forgot to build the characters as well as I know he is able to. I did like this more than Hologram but it was nowhere near the quality of his earliest work.

The story follows a young woman named Mae who feels like she won the lottery when her college roommate gets her a job at The Circle, the hottest Silicon Valley company since Facebook/Google. As she gets used to her new job, she realizes it is an all-encompassing community where she is expected to attend events, stay up to date on several queues of social and work-related information, and where her parents' health insurance problems are miraculously solved.

In a particularly funny bit of social commentary, nearly every day someone shows up at her desk with a new monitor - the first for her actual job, then another for her personal social networks, then another for her corporate social networks and so on. With these types of constructs, Eggers accurately portrays a lot of the current issues with modern technology and our interactions with it.

Over Mae's tenure at The Circle, she becomes increasingly more involved in the company's efforts toward transparency. Ultimately, she becomes so committed to these efforts that her engagement with the company eclipses even that of her former roommate and best friend, who had been a "golden child" at The Circle.

While the story kept me reading and the commentary around privacy and technology was well-taken, I actively missed Egger's ability to write great characters. He made the points that he wanted to, but the book would have been much better had he made Mae and her colleagues fully fleshed-out characters rather than just vessels for the point he wanted to make.



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Review: Sisterland

Sisterland by Curtis Sittenfeld

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



Perhaps nothing will ever stand up next to [b:Prep|9844|Prep|Curtis Sittenfeld|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1386925666s/9844.jpg|2317177], a book with one of the best "voices" I have ever read. This book was good, not great, but held my attention.

The story follows a pair of sisters who have some supernatural powers. Nothing major, just an ability to occasionally look into the future or know the location of something or someone. The sisters have treated this ability differently - one lives a pretty typical suburban life, while the other holds seances and practices as a medium. When an earthquake hits their city, they have very different reactions to whether to make predictions about future earthquakes.

Probably the best part of this book was the description of the relationships between different characters. The sisters, their relationships with their parents, their partners, and neighbors, are all described with great attention to personal detail. There were a few good twists in the plot toward the end as well. I'd recommend this book but it's no Prep.



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