Review: Educated

Educated by Tara Westover
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book was great! I read it after seeing it on the Rooster list. Similar to The Glass Castle, it was a memoir about a woman who grew up under circumstances that we would consider negligent. However, what I liked most about this book was how Westover depicted her life in a way that, until she begins to break away from her (separatist, home-schooling, abusive) family, seems at worst odd. There are untreated injuries, siblings who run away, and canned goods stocked for Armageddon. Then as Westover comes to terms with her childhood, as a reader, I was more able to see how her upbringing was abusive and negligent, not quaint and odd.

Ultimately, Westover seeks education, and education wins. This was a great read.

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Review: The Rooster Bar

The Rooster Bar by John Grisham
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

John Grisham's books are always a fun read. This one followed three friends graduating from a for-profit scammy law school with no real prospects for employment. They get together and figure out how to make money ... untraditionally. I thought the character development really stood out in this book - it was really interesting to learn about each character's back story and how they came to attend this law school. Then, how those backgrounds led each of them to have the skills necessary to pull off their plan.

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Review: The Half Brother

The Half Brother by Lars Saabye Christensen
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

WOW. This was quite an epic. Recommended by my Norwegian friend Stig, this book possessed me for months. It was about three generations of a family living in Oslo during and after WWII. Translated from the original Norwegian, it was written very subtly, with moments sometimes not hitting me until I was a few pages past the scene. The character development was really good, and the narrative as a whole was ... epic. Perhaps my only hesitation in a stronger recommendation was the length - I definitely got lost at points in the book, willing it to get to the next chapter.

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Review: The Life She Was Given

The Life She Was Given by Ellen Marie Wiseman
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

My neighbor Sue recommended this to me and it was a really unusual read. It was about a woman who, as a young girl, was sold by her abusive mother to a circus, because she was an albino. Over time, she builds a family at the circus, but not without drama. There are alliances, betrayals, and complications throughout her life. The plotting of the book was spectacular, the character development bordered on trite, but was well-written enough that I still enjoyed the read. Great ending, too.



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Review: The Lost

The Lost by Daniel Mendelsohn
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book was AMAZING. I was familiar with it but never made it a point to pick it up. I found it at a bookstore in (of all places) Kansas City, and took a chance. WOW. It is hard to categorize this book - part memoir, part world history, part American Jewish history, Mendelsohn covers a lot of ground. And I could not put it down.

Mendelsohn opens by describing his Miami Beach relatives, who would look at him as a child and comment how much he looks like a particular relative who died in the Holocaust. This sticks with him through his childhood and into adulthood, and is one of a few influences that drives him to want to learn about his family's history. Rather than be satisfied with "he, his wife, and their four children died in the Holocaust," he embarks on a decades-long quest to learn what actually happened to his particular relatives. In doing so, he really personalizes the tragedy of the Holocaust in a way that is both individualized and universal. He is meticulous in his research, and in his descriptions of his reactions to every piece of information he uncovers.

This is not an easy book to read - it's quite readable, but has a lot of descriptions of Holocaust murders that are, appropriately, awfully disturbing. But I also found it a hopeful book, and one that told a very complete personal story, from beginning to end.

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Review: The Constant Gardener

The Constant Gardener by John le Carré
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I bought this book a while ago, then it sat on the shelf, then Web read it, didn't love, so it sat on the shelf for another while, then I finally picked it up. I did love it! It is about a British diplomat whose wife is killed while they are stationed in Kenya. As he begins to investigate the circumstances of her death, he learns that she may have been uncovering a major public health issue that powerful people didn't want publicized. The balance of the book is about what she discovered and how he tries to avenge her death.

Like his other books, this had plenty of intrigue and twists. Though not a "spy" book like his classic works, it had a similar pace and plotting. It wasn't fast-moving, but the subtleties were well-delivered, and the story overall compelling.

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Review: Asymmetry

Asymmetry by Lisa Halliday
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This was a frustrating book. The first third was a well-written and enjoyable read about a young woman who falls for an older man, both writers. This made sense with the title of the book (their relationship, due to their age and experience, was asymmetrical on many levels.) The second third of the book was about a man detained at airport security because of racial profiling. Then the final third of the book supposedly tied the first two together - except I don't believe it did - not well at least. After such good character development in the first third, and such good plot in the middle, I was expecting a great crescendo at the end to tie it all together. Alas, no luck.

Perhaps this is an insiders' book - one that is better enjoyed by writers and critics. But for a professional book-lover, it missed the mark.

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Review: That Kind of Mother

That Kind of Mother by Rumaan Alam
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The premise of the book (a white woman hires a black nurse to help her with her infant; they become close, and when the nurse dies in childbirth, the woman adopts her child) caught my eye when I was at the library. I really, really enjoyed reading this. I think I'm far enough away from my own children's infancy to be able to read of other mothers' experiences without my anxiety spiking, and those descriptions in this book - about sleep deprivation, breastfeeding, spousal relationships - rang true.

The specifics of a white family raising a black child are touched upon, although not comprehensively. More effort is dedicated to the relationship between the adoptive mother and her adopted child's biological sister, who has also just had a child. The family that is built across these people is non-traditional, to be sure, and the challenges they face are more than many families do. But I really loved reading about their relationships, and found myself rooting - hard - for the characters. A lovely read.

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Review: Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine

Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Despite myself, I liked this book. I avoided it for some unknown reason for several months, while it was everywhere. Then one day saw it at the library and jumped in.

Eleanor is a woman who is stuck in her ways, perhaps on the autism spectrum, and who lives a very regimented life. She misses social cues and is very quick to dismiss people and ideas. When she meets an IT manager at her officer, and they save a stranger's life together, she is suddenly thrust into social situations that cause her to question her perspective, and open her life, just a little, to potential.

This was not the "fun" book its title suggests, no The Rosie Project for example, but it was a great read. Eleanor is a supremely sympathetic character, and it is impossible not to root for her. I hope Honeyman follows this up and tells us what Eleanor is up to now.

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Review: Imperfect Birds

Imperfect Birds by Anne Lamott
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Lamott is my rabbi for many things spiritual (other than my actual rabbi, of course.) I've found her fiction to be uneven, but likable. I really liked this book. It was about a teenager and her relationship with her parents, all three of them flawed. Her mother was particularly relatable - clearly the "Anne" character in the book - she discloses to the reader all her worries and flaws and fears, and has a lovely and (too?) perfect best friend who helps her with them, a husband who loves her, and a relationship with her daughter that is tumultuous and, frankly, kind of terrifying as the parent of a (now) preschooler. Like many of Lamott's books, fiction and not, I found myself wanting to save different scraps of text from the book - phrases and ideas that I loved or gave me the feels.

I just found out that there are two other books about this mother-daughter duo, so I'm off to find those...

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Review: The Last Equation of Isaac Severy

The Last Equation of Isaac Severy by Nova Jacobs
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This book was described as "an adult The Westing Game" so I jumped at the chance to choose it as my Book of the Month. Meh. It was a combination between a puzzle from a last will and testament that the characters are trying to solve, and a family psychodrama. I didn't think it did either of those things particularly well. The characters were not very well-developed, and the plot was reasonably predictable. Not a fan.

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Review: American Gods

American Gods by Neil Gaiman
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I wanted to like this book - I really did. Gaiman can be a magical writer, and I have enjoyed some of his other short works of fantasy. But this book was a slog for me! It is about a man who is released from prison, aimless as his wife has been killed in a car accident just a few days before his release, who encounters a mysterious guy who claims to be a "god." The book follows these characters, along with a rich cast of other gods and mortals, as they criss-cross the United States, seemingly living normal lives, but engaged in parallel in a war across new gods and old, as magnificent as what you'd see in classic Greek mythology.

Sounds compelling, right? But it wasn't - it was hard to follow, with twists that didn't all pay off. The social commentary was good, but not enough to carry as wide a set of characters as this had, and not good enough to make up for the convoluted plot. I know I'm in the minority here: this was optioned as a tv series, and has pretty universal great ratings. Didn't do it for me, though.

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Review: The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics

The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics by Daniel James Brown
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is one of those books that sounds like it is going to be a dry historical tome, and turns out to have as much excitement and intrigue as a Tom Clancy novel. Written in a similar tone and with similar depth as a Laura Hillenbrand book, this is about an underdog rowing team from University of Washington who make it to the 1936 Olympics. Sorry for the spoiler, but it doesn't ruin a thing to know this. I had no idea how much I could get into understanding the sport and strategy of rowing, but I did. Equally compelling were the individual characters profiled in this book. Great read.

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Review: Tell Me More: Stories about the 12 Hardest Things I'm Learning to Say

Tell Me More: Stories about the 12 Hardest Things I'm Learning to Say by Kelly Corrigan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I am spoiled. I've read Anne Lamott, so any memoirist/spiritual writer/self-help guru is going to pale in comparison. That said, Corrigan is undeniably likable and compelling. In this book, she devotes a chapter to each of 12 things that help her through difficult situations, like "Tell Me More" and "I Was Wrong." She intermixes personal anecdotes with introspection, staying away from the common traps in these sorts of books: being too preachy, or too repetitive. She comes across as delightfully likable, human, honest, brave, and flawed. I'll be following her in the future.

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Review: Idaho

Idaho by Emily Ruskovich
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I liked this book well enough - it was an engaging read and the plot had a mystery-like theme to it, which I liked. A woman finds clues that lead her to question violent acts in her husband's first marriage. However, I wasn't drawn enough to the characters; in their own ways, they were each unlikeable, and it was hard to connect to a book when I couldn't identify a hero-protagolist. I also found the author's way of suggesting events rather than being explicit about them frustrating. Overall, not as good as many other books I've read lately.

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