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!

Review: The Sacrifice of Tamar

The Sacrifice of Tamar by Naomi Ragen
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I really wanted to like this book - knowing Ragen to be a well-respected author and amateur sociologist when it comes to the Orthodox Jewish community - but I didn't. It is about a woman named Tamar who is married to a well-respected scholar in her isolated ultra-Orthodox community. Tamar is raped early in the book, and the results of that incident follow her through her life and that of her family.

What I did like about the book was that her two best friends represented two alternative approaches to Judaism within the Orthodox community. Still, I found the character development weak, the plot predictable, and the community in many ways reduced to the archetypes and stereotypes already familiar to me. The writing was easy to follow, but not good enough to make up for the other shortcomings.

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Review: China Rich Girlfriend

China Rich Girlfriend by Kevin Kwan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book was fabulous fun, just like Crazy Rich Asians, Kwan's first book in this series. Most of the same characters were back from the original story, and there are more great examples of scheming, outlandish displays of wealth, and gossip - more than even the characters know what to do with. Though the book jacket summarizes the book as being about Rachel's finding her birth father, that is just one of the four or five intertwined plots within the book. Couldn't wait to read this each day!

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Review: Life in Motion: An Unlikely Ballerina

Life in Motion: An Unlikely Ballerina by Misty Copeland
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I would give Copeland 5 starts as a person, but her autobiography only earned 3. She is one of the first only black soloists in a major ballet company, and her life is amazing - she began ballet quite late (as an adolescent) but had a natural gift for it. The book tells the story of her discovering ballet and training under several teachers, being pulled between professional success and family as a young woman, and then succeeding as a ballerina at a level few ever reach, particularly black women. I enjoyed learning about her and reading her story, but didn't think the writing was very good. There were parts I would have wanted to know more about that were omitted, and places where more detail or color would have made it a better story. That said, she is an icon and I have a ton of respect for her as a person, so I'm glad I know more about her life.

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Review: The Indian Bride

The Indian Bride by Karin Fossum
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I bought this at the Harvard Bookstore Warehouse Sale this summer. It's a mystery, about an awkward Norwegian man who marries an Indian woman abroad. He eagerly awaits her arrival in Norway, but on the day she is due to show up, the body of a battered foreigner is found near his house. The story is about him and about her, but also about the detectives who investigate the crime as well as the town itself, and its secrets and characters. Just one of those good books that is somewhere between a mystery and a novel, kept me thinking and kept me reading.

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Review: Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith

Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith by Anne Lamott
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I think it was the election that did it - that pushed me towards several non-fiction books and a search for some hints on faith. Anne Lamott isn't Jewish (and I am) - far from it, she goes to a Church and talks about Jesus and God as if they are her neighbors - but she has faith, and I needed a good dose of that. She is the best example I have found of Brene Brown's gospel of vulnerability. She completely opens herself up to the reader, sharing all her failures, foibles, and doubts, while simultaneously displaying her faith. Not a blind faith in a traditional god, but a questioning and malleable faith in something palpable and engaging.

Anyway, I love her. And I loved the essays in this book that dive into these ideas.

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Review: Love Warrior

Love Warrior by Glennon Doyle Melton
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I love love love love loved this book. I am a hug fan of Melton's and was so excited to hear her speak at the Massachusetts Women's Conference just weeks after reading this. She is a recovering addict who has generously shared her ongoing life story through her blog and several memoirs. I did not love her first book - finding it a bit repetitive from her blog, but this one was really good. I find her as a person (and her books) to be so honest and revealing and true, while also being rooted in her faith. She refers to Anne Lamott (whom I've also been reading) as her patron saint, and I love that and think she is like my generation's Anne.

In this book, Melton covers the breakdown of her marriage. But she starts with her wedding day and chronicles pieces of her story I had not heard about or read before. She's funny, honest, neurotic, and direct.

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Review: The Summer Before the War

The Summer Before the War by Helen Simonson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I truly loved Major Pettigrew's Last Stand so I was excited to read this by the same author. It wasn't quite as ... zippy? ... as Major P., but I enjoyed it. It is about a small English town right before WWI breaks out. A young woman arrives to become the local school's Latin teacher, and her arrival is just one of several catalysts for change and politics in the town. This book had a great sense of time and place, and the frustrations of British manners. There were juicy characters, interminable committee meetings, and enough plot twists to keep me busy. While a little long in places, it more than made of for it with its charm. Were you in an intergenerational book club, this would be a delightful choice.

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Review: Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore

Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I really enjoyed this book. It was unlike anything I've read lately (although not altogether different in theme from The Circle), and yet somewhat reminiscent of The Thirteenth Tale or even The Da Vinci Code. Yet smarter than all three of them.

It was a mystery, sort of, but also a fable. It followed a young man who, victimized by the internet economy, takes a job in a bookstore. However, the bookstore turns out to be an outpost of a secret society, and he begins to unravel the story of, and puzzles within, the group. It's a story about the tension between old and new, progress and history, and machine learning vs human ingenuity. Truly a book for our time, and one I will remember for a while.

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