Review: Dept. of Speculation

Dept. of Speculation by Jenny Offill
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I read about this book in the NY Times and had high hopes for it. Alas, it was a disappointment. The story followed a marriage, really diving into what it means to commit to someone and to have a long, complex relationship. While I liked the premise, the execution wasn't as good. It was written in a beautiful, poetic style, but one that was sometimes too obscure for me to understand the plot. While I enjoyed the writing, I'm still confused about what actually happened, versus what was the main character's reverie imagination. For me, that's a deal breaker - I like plot.

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Review: Wolf in White Van

Wolf in White Van by John Darnielle
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Meh. This book was on a list I picked up somewhere or other, but it didn't really do it for me. It was about a loner of a man who maintained a "choose-your-own-adventure" style game by mail after being disfigured by an "incident" as a child. His otherwise uneventful life is suddenly complicated when two of the players of his game are injured while playing it. I was drawn into the story at many junctures but ultimately just didn't like the main character enough to care what happened. The writing was fine, but the character development, while comprehensive, didn't create enough empathy for me.

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Review: Without a Map

Without a Map by Meredith Hall
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Wow - this was another beautiful book. I love reading two good ones in a row. In this memoir, Hall becomes pregnant at 16, and ostracized by her church, both of her sets of (divorced) parents, and her entire community. The next decade of her life is spent wandering the world, and surviving the shame her community made her feel about her pregnancy, as well as the regret for putting her child up for adoption. She thinks of the child constantly, and after marriage, two children, and divorce, ends up finding her birth son. The writing in this book was really touching - you could feel her shame and her confusion and her loss. Also fascinating was her ongoing relationship with her parents, whom she doesn't completely remove from her life. A sad story, but ultimately a redemptive one. I couldn't put it down.

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Review: The Unseen World

The Unseen World by Liz Moore
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I hesitate to compare anything to A Little Life, one of the most beautiful and heartbreaking books I've ever read, but this book held my attention in a similar way. It was consuming and lovely, well-written and tragic. The story follows a young woman (Ada) who was raised by her scientist father. She grew up in his lab at the fictional "Boston Institute of Technology," his colleagues becoming her surrogate family. When he begins to suffer from dementia, she is taken in by a family friend, but managing her father's care and estate begins to unravel his background and history. While this wasn't a creepy mystery in any way, it was a beautiful story about family, history, sacrifices, and childhood's end. I loved it.

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Review: Sex Object

Sex Object by Jessica Valenti
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I'm on roll lately with modern feminists (Solnit, Rebecca, Lindy West), and this was a good complement. Valenti (whose short essay https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandst... I read earlier this year) has created a very interesting book. She interweaves her own experience as a young woman with societal information about sexual harassment to make a point about being female that is both personal and backed by data. While I did find some of her decision-making more risky than my own around drugs and sex, that in no way diminished her claims that being a young woman (and, now, a woman-woman) in the United States in the 2000's can be scary, demeaning, demoralizing, and outright dangerous. From men on the subway to boys in school to people on the street, she relays stories of being harassed and ridiculed and injured, just for being a woman. She is stoking the outrage that so many of us wrongfully ignore on a daily basis.

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Review: Who Gets What — and Why: The New Economics of Matchmaking and Market Design

Who Gets What — and Why: The New Economics of Matchmaking and Market Design by Alvin E. Roth
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I bought this book because I have a personal interest in the Boston Public School lottery, and the author is a Nobel Prize-winning economist who helped design the lottery. He also helped design the New York City Public School lottery, the kidney transplant exchange, the medical school match process, and numerous other systems. Which he does not stop reminding the reader of. His lack of modesty aside, and my personal interest aside, I thought this was a really interesting look at what a "market" is, and how to make sure there are enough buyers and sellers with enough information to make the market work - how to "create" a market, as it were. Definitely glad I read it, and it's one of those concepts that makes me look at the world differently now.

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Review: Boy, Snow, Bird

Boy, Snow, Bird by Helen Oyeyemi
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I heard about this on Huffington Post, on a list of books for women to read. This was a really weird, really good, really unusual book. In some ways it is a modern read on Snow White - a woman with a shockingly awful childhood marries and inherits a beautiful, nymph-like stepdaughter. She struggles with their relationship, and then when she has her own child, she discovers by the baby's complexion that her new family and husband have been hiding their black heritage for a few generations. As you may imagine, things get complicated. With great character development, nods to familiar fairy tales, and even elements of magical realism, this book really held my attention.

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Review: Men Explain Things to Me

Men Explain Things to Me by Rebecca Solnit
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Along with Lindy West and Jessica Valenti, Solnit is a modern feminist who I am drawn to given recent world events. In this book of essays, she details some of her personal experiences and reflections on society as to where we are as women in the world today. The title of the book (which garnered all sorts of look on the subway) refers to the first essay, wherein she is at a party and the (male) host won't let her get a word in edgewise about a brand new book on an esoteric topic that it turns out she is the author of. While no other essay quite has the punch of that story, even the drier essays are instructive. As good social commentary, they point out things we accept as everyday occurrences, and remind us that they are Not Normal.

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Review: The Casual Vacancy

The Casual Vacancy by J.K. Rowling
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Mom recommended this one to me, and I had a great time with it. It was about a small town with an aggressive town council that suddenly gets a vacancy when one of the councillors unexpectedly dies. The story is simple, it just follows the townspeople as they negotiate the empty seat (the "casual vacancy") as well as the current topics up for debate. After lulling you into a folksy story, Rowling starts to nip at you with prejudice, both polite and not, and a set of unexpected events across the town, that come out of this councilman's death. The best part of the book, however, was not even the plot; it was the character development. Boy, did I have a "team" and allegiances, and people I knew I'd like and dislike in real life.

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Review: Version Control

Version Control by Dexter Palmer
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I liked this book and it was very strange. It was about a couple - Rebecca and Philip - and their lives interacting with both technology (like self-driving cars) and tragedy. Philip works on a highly classified project relating to time travel, and as the book progresses, his work becomes central. While I liked the characters and the story, there was something about the twists and the conclusion that just didn't come together for me. That said, I appreciated the sci-fi angles in the book, and the depiction of a world that is, if not here right now, right around the corner.

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Review: The Tusk That Did the Damage

The Tusk That Did the Damage by Tania James
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This was a really unusual book, and one that sat on my "to read" list for a long time. It's about an elephant - called the Gravedigger - and all the people around him whose lives he impacts: documentary filmmakers, poachers, and parks employees to name a few. The narrative switches across characters sometimes abruptly, but overall it pulls together to a cohesive story. The chapters with the Gravedigger's point of view are the most unique, but several of the characters are well-developed and the story moves along.

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Review: Hamilton: The Revolution

Hamilton: The Revolution by Lin-Manuel Miranda
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

OK, I'm obsessed *obsessed* with Hamilton. So it's no surprise that I had a barrel of fun with this holiday gift from my inlaws. It is basically the entire libretto - word for word, then annotated with commentary from Lin-Manuel about everything from what words didn't make it in to what songs influenced different parts of the work. If that wasn't enough, it also has some short stories about the making of the musical - how it impacted his home life, about the other creators, about the cast. If you love Hamilton, this is a really great read.

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Review: Lab Girl

Lab Girl by Hope Jahren
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I really enjoyed this book! I heard about it on NPR and was not disappointed. It is a memoir by a female scientist. She grows up with a distant mother and scientist father, and becomes a scientist herself, studying plants, leaves, and flowers. The book is incredibly readable, even the scienc-y parts, and she goes a little "Grapes of Wrath" in her interspersing the science of plants with her own life story. She details both her own education, as well as her unusual life managing a lab that is always at risk of being unfunded, and her strong relationship with her career-long lab partner. Couldn't wait to get on the train each day to have my reading time with Hope.

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Review: Kindred

Kindred by Octavia E. Butler
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book was great. It reminded me of Outlander, as it was about a woman in modern times who repeatedly travels back in time to the American South during slavery. As a black woman, her life is endangered with each visit, but she is mysteriously tied to a young boy there, and is summoned whenever he is in trouble. A landmark book upon its publishing, it continues to resonate today. Well written, well researched, and well developed, this book was compulsively readable.

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Sheryl K.'s Top Books of 2016

Happy New Year Readers!

This year I balanced work with tons of reading (56 books, 10 of them non-fiction), and even some yoga.  Webster enjoyed several adventures, like camping in New Hampshire with Sasha, and officiating a wedding in LA.  Sasha loves preschool and shines as a big sister.  Micah started walking and talking and just won't stop!  We all went to Montauk for my sister's wedding, to Block Island with Web's family, and back to Osterville on the Cape for some summer fun.  I caught Hamilton fever, and got to see it in NYC! The kids are really starting to enjoy books on their own, too. 

But onto the books.  I really enjoyed reading this year, and figured out how to get better at it during my commute.  Hands down, my favorite book this year was A Little Life.  It’s not for everyone, with its depictions of abuse and pain, but I found it just beautiful.

Rounding out my “Sweet Sixteen” of fiction are the following:

Two books I enjoyed for their ingenuity in plot and twists were Fingersmith, which could have been written by Charles Dickens (but wasn’t), and Fates and Furies.

My delight in science-fiction didn’t wane this year.  Station Eleven and Margaret Atwood's The Heart Goes Last depicted vastly different (but equally awful) post-apocalyptic worlds.  Woman on the Edge of Time was a wonderful story about a woman’s experience in a mental institution, and her contact there with the future.  And Mr. Penumbra’s 24-hour Bookstore was a sharp commentary on the contrast between human intelligence and machine learning.

I enjoyed two Norwegian books, which is totally random.  But I’ll look for more this year, after liking these two so much.  Both were mysteries, The Indian Bride more traditional, and The Swimmer more of a thriller.

There’s not much of a theme to the other books I loved this year.  Kitchens of the Great Midwest was a charming set of connected stories about a woman’s coming of age as a chef.  In Tell the Wolves I’m Home, a young woman befriends her deceased uncle’s gay partner.  A social worker tries to help an isolationist family, as his own family falls apart, in Fourth of July Creek. Isabelle Allende's Island Beneath the Sea was a well-researched story of slavery.

I returned to some of my favorite authors this year as well.  Sibling disfunction and loyalty are at the center of Ann Patchett’s Commonwealth, while Jonathan Safron Foer’s Here I Am tackles both the American Jewish experience and the conflict in Israel.  China Dolls is a rich immigrant story about young women in San Francisco in the 1930’s and ‘40’s.

Some of the non-fiction I enjoyed the most was by Anne Lamott, my new favorite author.  Her Operating Instructions is a must-read for parents, and Traveling Mercies might just help anyone’s heart these days.  Glennon Doyle Melton’s Love Warrior is a memoir, but also a soul-soother; she is the next generation of Lamott.  And Doris Kearns Goodwin’s memoir of baseball and of her happy childhood outside of NYC, Wait Till Next Year, was lovely.

If all this is too high-brow for you, I had a ball with Kevin Kwan’s Crazy Rich Asians and its sequel, China Rich Girlfriend.  Great beach reads, vacation reads, or just downtime reads that follow a group of uber-rich friends and enemies across Singapore, Hong Kong, and mainland China.

Happy Reading to all, and to all a Good Year!