Review: We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves

We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I really really enjoyed this book. It was on my list from the NYTimes Notable list I think and when I got it from the library I didn't remember what it was about and started reading it blindly. Which I completely recommend! Because there is a major plot twist about half way through the book and it made it all the more better to read.

The story follows a young woman who grows up with a brother and sister, but something happens to the family and once she is college aged, the sister is no longer part of the family, and her brother is a federal fugitive on the run. The plot was unique and shattering, and the themes of family responsibility, sibling relationships, and regret were well-developed.

A great read, especially if you don't know much about it ahead of time.

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Review: The Story Sisters

The Story Sisters by Alice Hoffman

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



I really, really liked this book. Alice Hoffman always does something special with her books - infuses a bit of magic or supernatural. And this is no exception, although the supernatural in this book is imagined by one of three sisters who is slowly descending into mental illness. While her exact diagnosis is never named, it seemed like schizophrenia to this armchair psychologist.

The story follows three sisters who are very close until the eldest becomes sick with some illness. They have a secret language and secret imaginary world that are harmless at first but become the center of the eldest's illness and delusions. While she copes with her illness and becomes dangerous and increasingly unhappy, her sisters and mother cope with her absence and its impact on the family.

All the characters were very well-developed in this book, which I appreciated. I also appreciated the skill with which Hoffman represented mental illness, not just as a set of familiar symptoms but as an imaginary world come true. While the denouement of the book was long and somewhat manufactured, the rest of it held my attention as a unique and masterful portrait of a girl in trouble, both from her perspective and that of her family.



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Review: The Tiger's Wife

The Tiger's Wife by Téa Obreht

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



This was a really unusual book. It takes place in Eastern Europe somewhere, kind of like Croatia or Serbia, but the country is not identified. A young woman is traveling across the border to vaccinate children at an orphanage when she finds out her grandfather has died. She wants to retrieve his belongings and also to provide the vaccines, and as she does both she also reminisces about the stories her grandfather has told her about his childhood.

The stories are really unique - fairy-tale esque in a lot of ways. One about a woman who marries a tiger, and one about a man who doesn't die. They are interwoven into the modern-day storyline in pieces, as this woman comes to terms with her grandfather's death, and tries to understand what is happening in her country, besieged by war.

I liked this book because it was different. It wasn't the story itself or the allegories that I enjoyed so much as the surprise of reading something different than a linear narrative.



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Review: Carry On, Warrior: Thoughts on Life Unarmed

Carry On, Warrior: Thoughts on Life Unarmed by Glennon Doyle Melton

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



Meh. I really like Glennon - I read her blog regularly and really enjoyed her TedX talk. She's obviously a very strong person whose vulnerability and transparency are both very generous. (She is known for being a "Mommy Blogger" but her life was dominated for many years by eating disorders and drug abuse until finding out she was pregnant and hurriedly marrying her boyfriend at the time.)

I guess the thing about this book was that there wasn't that much new in it. As someone who has read a lot of her posts and essays, I didn't find a new part of her story or a new angle. It was more of a collection of her best essays, or her best stories, and perhaps some new ones, but nothing thematically new. It was also a bit more religiously oriented than her other stuff seems to be, which I didn't really mind but didn't do anything for me either.

I'm still a big fan of hers, and grateful for her writing, but there wasn't anything special about this book.



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Review: Gold

Gold by Chris Cleave

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



I really enjoyed this book. [b:Little Bee|6948436|Little Bee|Chris Cleave|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1344401905s/6948436.jpg|4126074] remains one of the most haunting books I've ever read, and this was not that impactful, but the story was really compelling and I looked forward to my commute when I could continue reading it.

The story is about two friends who are both olympic-caliber cyclists. They have a long and complicated friendship while competing with each other over many years, and the book alternates between present time and history to build the story. One is married, with a daughter who becomes very sick, and this impacts her dedication to racing. The other is a lifetime loner whose entire life is about cycling. As the book goes on, the relationship between the women, as well as with the married one's husband and daughter, and their coach becomes more complex.

What I really liked about this book was how Cleave unfurled the story - similar to Little Bee, there were secrets and twists and things that weren't revealed right away, which built characters across multiple dimensions.



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Review: Seabiscuit: An American Legend

Seabiscuit: An American Legend by Laura Hillenbrand

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



After reading [b:Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption|8664353|Unbroken A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption|Laura Hillenbrand|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1327861115s/8664353.jpg|12946965], I put this one on my list. It was ok. If you were to tell me that I'd want to read an entire book about racehorses during the Great Depression I probably would not have believed it, so from the perspective of learning something completely alien, it was great. But on the scale of everything I read, it was not my favorite.

Horse-racing during the 1920's and 1930's was a national obsession - to the degree that the NFL is today. People traveled around the country for races and more newspaper inches were dedicated to many of the heroes and the horses than to the wars and presidents of the time. I had no idea.

This book follows a particular horse, Seabiscuit, who is an underdog from the start. By carefully crafting a story around how horses are bred, groomed, and sold, the unlikeliness of Seabiscuit becoming a hero is made clear early in the book. Yet he does become a great racehorse, and Hillenbrand does a comprehensive job of describing all the people involved in getting him there - the handlers, jockeys, owners, competitors, and fans. The relationships among these people are fascinating too, and she dedicates significant word count to each of their backstories.

I am glad to have read this but can't say it was a page-turner. Some required reading never hurt anyone thought.



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Review: How to Get Your Kid to Eat: But Not Too Much

How to Get Your Kid to Eat: But Not Too Much by Ellyn Satter

My rating: 5 of 5 stars



This might be the best book on parenting I've read so far. I have had a lot of anxiety around Sasha's food consumption - no doubt based on my own ambivalence around food issues, but nevertheless it has been stressful. Is she eating enough? Is she eating enough of the right things? What do I do when she doesn't want to eat?

Satter's premise is simple. As a parent, it is my job to determine what Sasha eats, and her job to decide how much of it to eat. When put that way it seems so simple, but the ramifications in our family have been staggering. It has enabled me to completely let go of feeling stressed out at meal times. It is easy to say "you don't have to eat that if you don't want." And it has definitely reduced the "control" oriented fights around food. Satter is realistic too - she says that having family dinners is probably the best thing you can do, and that they should have carbs, protein, and vegetables. But then she says that if the only way to do that is with a frozen pizza, then do it with a frozen pizza. She also suggests that as your child is learning to try new foods or doesn't like what's being served that you should be sure that there are carbs at dinner for them to fill up on. She has other helpful tactics for snacks, kids who don't want to eat at the table, etc. She is completely against feeding kids a separate meal than adults, which I believe in too, but has some ideas on how to make that palatable (pun intended) for everyone. For example - every meal should have at least one item on the plate the kid likes. Hence our dinner the other night of spinach lasagna and strawberries.

The book starts with newborn feeding and goes through adolescence, so there are parts of the book I didn't find relevant, but I did like that the themes she suggested would be relevant over the long haul - that the tactics might change but the strategy would be consistent. There were also sections devoted to more serious eating disorders than a picky toddler, but while irrelevant to me, was still good to see her method applied in different ways.

I've been recommending this nonstop to parents of young kids. A classic in our family's library for sure.



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Review: The Filter Bubble: What the Internet Is Hiding from You

The Filter Bubble: What the Internet Is Hiding from You by Eli Pariser

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



I first heard Pariser speak when this book was initially published - maybe on NPR or a TED Talk. His thesis was intriguing - the tools we use to access the Internet (like Google) are filtering our view of news and information in an effort to customize for us. For example, as you like things on Facebook, the algorithms find more things similar to that to show you - so if you like a few liberal-leaning articles, or news sources that are liberal-leaning, more will begin to populate your feed.

I filed this idea away, occasionally thought about it, and put the book on my booklist. Finally got around to reading the whole book and I learned a lot more. The first thing that I learned was that the reason that Google and Facebook do this is all about revenue. Maybe this is obvious but I enjoyed the analysis of how all these corporations make money and use our information. Even though the book is now a few years old, it was still valuable to read.

The rest of the book had similarly interesting content around things like a long-term perspective on news sources, and how democracy is impacted by this "filter." While a few of the sections on historical context went a bit long for my taste, it didn't ruin the book for me. Overall I am glad to have read it, and it keeps me thinking as I use the Internet for information how to try to get to the information that is outside my "bubble."



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Review: Pigs in Heaven

Pigs in Heaven by Barbara Kingsolver

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



I really enjoyed reading this book. Silly me, however, I didn't notice that it was a sequel to [b:The Bean Trees|30868|The Bean Trees (Greer Family, #1)|Barbara Kingsolver|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1362981087s/30868.jpg|1095121], which I read long enough ago that I didn't really remember it. I may have liked it even more if i had re-read that first, although this was pretty great as a standalone book too.

The story follows a woman and her adopted daughter who are involved in a newsworthy situation that lands them on Oprah. This publicity arises the attention of a Native American rights attorney, because the daughter is Native American, and she begins to investigate the circumstances under which the girl was adopted. Naturally, they turn out to be hazy, and a custody trial ensues, but the plot is far from predictable.

As usual, Kingsolver has created a universe seemingly effortlessly of 360-degree complete characters, tough decisions, and thorough scenery. I find her to be one of those authors whom I don't remember to read enough of, then delight myself by re-finding.



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Review: Songs Without Words

Songs Without Words by Ann Packer

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



This book was fine. Packer's debut novel [b:The Dive From Clausen's Pier|16059|The Dive From Clausen's Pier|Ann Packer|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1390408629s/16059.jpg|1617177] set the bar so high for her it would have been difficult for anything to stand up to it. This book was compelling enough to want to finish and I invested in the characters, but writing the review a few weeks later I can barely remember a lot of the details of it.

The story follows two lifelong best friends from adolescence through adulthood. As children, one of them loses their mother to suicide, which defines and cements their relationship. As adults, their lifestyles are very different - one a wife and mother, the other remaining single. A large portion of the book explores what happens when tragedy strikes again - as adults.

I'd probably read Packer's next book because this one did hold my attention, but if you're looking for something that is of the caliber of Clausen's Pier, this isn't it.



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Top Books of 2014

Happy New Year, Readers!

2014 was a great year for my family - and my reading!  We'll get to books in a minute, but to catch you up on the year: I left Dell in January and started working at a software startup in Cambridge in March.  Webster continued to work for his west-coast-based software startup, so at least we're geographically diversified.

We bought our next door neighbors' condo when they moved to Hawaii (tough life, right?) so we now have more light and more space - the latter of which has been necessary as Sasha is now talking up a storm and running around constantly, often in pursuit of Lucy's tail.  The extra space will also come in handy when Sash becomes a big sister in May :)

But enough of the chatter, let's get to the books.  This year I read an even 50 books, 19 of them non-fiction, including memoirs.  That's a lot of books - which I credit somewhat to having a month off in February between jobs, and somewhat to having a bus/subway commute rather than a car commute, so I get an extra 20-40 minutes of reading time a day.

Here were my favorites, in alphabetical order:

Fiction:

Crow Lake - after their parents' untimely death, two elder brothers raise their younger sisters

February - a woman raises her children as well as she can after losing her husband to an oil rig disaster

Maya's Notebook - a young woman flees her dangerous lifestyle, finding solace in a small island off the coast of Chile

Ordinary Grace - murders shock a small town as a minister's son comes of age one summer

Orphan Train - orphans, separated by two generations, lead parallel lives of growing up

Secret History - a deadly secret bonds six college students together in a small liberal arts school 

Shoemakers Wife - young lovers, first in Italy, then in the United States, have decades of "almost" reuniting

Silver Star - two young sisters make the best of the situation when their flighty mother abandons them

Skeletons at the Feast - a unique set of perspectives in this Holocaust novel

Sycamore Row - Grisham revisits the attorney from A Time To Kill and his latest case

The Time in Between - a young woman flees the Spanish Civil War and ends up in a life of espionage 

Non-fiction:

Behind the Beautiful Forevers - the lives of several families who live in Mumbai's poorest slums

Collision Low Crossers - a journalist embeds with Rex Ryan and the New York Jets for the 2011-2012 season

Exploding the Phone - the history behind the phone company and the hackers who found ways to exploit early technology 

Lean Startup - arguably the quintessential book on strategy for startup company success

Sliver of Light - three Americans captured in Iran share the story of their imprisonment

Someone Could Get Hurt - a popular sportswriter's humorous memoir of parenting young children 

Townie - a famous author's childhood memoir, caught between his mother's poverty and his father's carefree university existence

When They Come for us, We'll be Gone - a thorough and fascinating history of Jews in the USSR from the 1960's through the 1990's

Wild - after her life falls apart, this memoirist hikes much of the Pacific Crest Trail on her own

Review: This is Where I Leave You

This is Where I Leave You by Jonathan Tropper

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



Jo recommended this to me - and it's a current movie starring Jason Bateman. I liked it a lot - it's about a family whose patriarch dies and his dying wish is that the family sits shiva for him - that is, stays together in the house for a week as is Jewish custom.

The family of grown adults, however, are pretty dysfunctional - particularly as a clan. The main character's marriage is falling apart because of infidelity. He has three siblings: one struggling with infertility and bitterness, one whose marriage is helplessly unhappy, and one who is dating someone highly inappropriate. Their mother has secrets of her own. Still, they spend the week together and just barely manage not to kill each other.

The story was well-written and fun to read. Best of all, the ending was good. Lately, too many books I've read have tidy endings, and this one doesn't. This ending is a resolution, but it isn't tidy. Which, given the characters, seems very believable. My only criticism is that parts of the book felt too obviously like they were being written for a movie script. Which....maybe they were.



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Review: Maxed Out: American Moms on the Brink

Maxed Out: American Moms on the Brink by Katrina Alcorn

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



I heard Alcorn speak at the Massachusetts Conference for Women and thought her story was interesting enough to buy her book. The book was ok - it was a memoir of how she became overwhelmed as a working mother. She details how her anxiety and panic grew as she took on more responsibility at work and added a second, and then third child to her family. Finally determining that she needed a break from work, she takes time off, only to discover many other women in similar circumstances.

Interspersed with each chapter of her story was a short 2-3 page section about research supporting things she was going through - like maternity leave in different countries, or the percentage of women with undiagnosed post-partum disorders. While she explained in the preface of her book that she did that to make it more interesting than just a memoir, that's where I felt like the book failed. I wanted to hear someone's personal story, not read the same statistics and facts that I keep seeing in the news.

While I applaud her for both finding a solution that worked for her family as well as sharing the personal details of her story with a large audience, I didn't love the book, mostly because it purported to be more than that, when that would have been more than enough.



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Review: Orphan Train

Orphan Train by Christina Baker Kline

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



This book was great - I think Jo may have recommended it to me. It's about an actual train that used to take orphans from the streets of New York City and bring them to the Midwest to be adopted by families who either wanted children or wanted cheap labor during the 1920's and 1930's. The book follows one particular girl through her journey and the different families she ended up living with, many of whom were abusive, and only one of whom ever treated her kindly as a member of their family.

This story is unwinding at the same time as another young woman in the 1990's is slowly aging out of the foster care system. As community service for a petty crime, she ends up helping an elderly neighbor clean out her attic, where they find the elderly neighbor's history is as one of these orphans.

While some of the parallels are obvious to the reader and some of the plot rather predictable, overall this book held my attention as I rooted for both orphans to find happiness.



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Review: The Night Circus

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

My rating: 2 of 5 stars



I tried with this book - I really did. The premise was cool - a strange circus that arrives unannounced and only operates at night. The circus is actually the site of a decades-long competition between two rival magicians' proteges, which they are only somewhat aware of. The setup was so interesting that I was eager to read the book.

It just got too darn weird for me. Too much supernatural and fairy-tale, not enough character development. I spent half of the book convinced that two female characters were the same character, which didn't make my experience any better, but did make me feel like I was right about character development being lacking. The ending seemed like a cop-out with minor characters suddenly having major parts.

The author, I recall reading, sees herself as a crafter of modern fairytales. If that is the case, she did a good job with that genre - i just didn't care for it.



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