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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