Review: The Floating World

The Floating World by C. Morgan Babst
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book was recommended on The Bustle, and I really liked it. It was about the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. As the city falls apart after the storm, so too does the family this book follows. One adult daughter goes missing, and the other arrives from New York to help out, but finds herself confused by her grandfather's dementia and her parents estrangement, while the parents' marriage is at its breaking point. It was hard to read parts of this book - they were quite sad and tragic - but I also think it important to remember. I had watched Treme on HBO years ago, but this was a fresh look at one of the worst humanitarian crises in the United States' recent history.

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Review: Born a Crime: Stories From a South African Childhood

Born a Crime: Stories From a South African Childhood by Trevor Noah
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I don't know much about Trevor Noah. I catch clips of his show on YouTube or Rolling Stone occasionally, but I'm not a regular fan. However, this book was still pretty interesting. Noah was born to a black mom and a white dad in South Africa during Apartheid. This gave him and his mother (who raised him) a strange status in South Africa, which followed him throughout his life there. I enjoyed reading about his antics as a young kid, his mother's iconoclast and determined personality, and Noah's rise from CD bootlegger to party DJ to comedian. Also notable was his depiction of Apartheid, which I was previously familiar with mostly from reading Long Walk to Freedom and My Traitor's Heart: A South African Exile Returns to Face His Country, His Tribe, and His Conscience.

My beef with this book, as it is with many memoirs, is one of editing. Both the voice and development of his narrative could have been better presented.

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Review: The People We Hate at the Wedding

The People We Hate at the Wedding by Grant Ginder
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This book was completely mediocre. I loved the title, but the rest of the story was just not that compelling. It was about a woman who is getting married, and invites her two half-siblings to the wedding. They always perceived her as prissy and privileged, and dread the wedding. Her sister is involved with a married man, and her brother lives with his self-involved boyfriend, so they resent her current happiness as well. From there, the plot takes no surprising turns, and the characters fit into predictable molds. I wish I had liked it more.

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Review: Sing, Unburied, Sing

Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Found this book on the New York Times notable list, but it was hard to miss - it seems to be a publisher's darling with great publicity. With good reason - this was a devastating story. It was about a black family in Mississippi - while the mother is addicted to drugs (and to her incarcerated (white) husband), her adolescent son takes good care of his younger sister and their grandparents look after both of them. The bulk of the book takes place on a road trip the mother takes the kids on to retrieve her husband from prison, though there are flashbacks to each of their stories, and some other plotlines woven in.

This was just a beautiful novel - just the right length, alternating voices, and excellent, just excellent, description of relationships. I found some parts hard to read because of their tenderness and how broken some of the relationships were, but that was just a sign of its poignancy and its rich description.

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Review: The Book of the Unnamed Midwife

The Book of the Unnamed Midwife by Meg Elison
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I really enjoyed this book. It was listed on a BuzzFeed list, and I'm glad I chose it. It follows the story of a woman who miraculously survives a plague that kills most women and children in the world. She fights her way through the post-apocalyptic world, surviving on canned goods, good decisions, and luck. Eventually she connects with other people and begins to figure out what the "new normal" is. It reminded me most of Station Eleven.

This book had some beautiful descriptions of human relationships, and some shattering depictions of a society that has lost its morality.

Overall a great book. Looking forward to the sequel.

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Review: Gone to Soldiers

Gone to Soldiers by Marge Piercy
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This. Book. Was. Amazing. Piercy's Woman on the Edge of Time was one of my favorite reads a few years back, so I had made a mental note to read another book by her. This far exceeded my expectations - it was a sweeping story of 10 different people and their lives during WWII, reminiscent in its scope of Exodus. The storylines in this book ranged from people in the French Resistance to others in concentration camps to others who are soldiers in the Pacific to others who are living in the United States. Their lives intersect in both obvious and unexpected way; this book is a classic saga not to be missed.

This ought to be a miniseries....

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Review: The Twelve-Mile Straight

The Twelve-Mile Straight by Eleanor Henderson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book was great - I love when that happens with a book I just find at the library, rather one that is recommended to me. This was about a young woman who gives birth to two babies in Georgia in the 1930's, one black and one white. After accusing a black field hand of rape, he is lynched and she and her family are thrown into the middle of the aftermath. The book tells both the history of many of the characters and their families, as well as what happens to them once the babies' parentage is discovered.

I am surprised this book wasn't heralded more. It was well-written, with developed characters who had intricate back stories, a great depiction of time and place, and a compelling plot.

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Review: Exit West

Exit West by Mohsin Hamid
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I really, really liked this book, another one from Don't Mind the Mess. This takes place in an unnamed country in the Middle East, where headstrong Nadia and gentle Saeed fall in love just as a war breaks out. After surviving in their war-torn city for a while, they find an opportunity to leave, which leads them to numerous other options in different parts of the world.

Partially a love story, and partially a meditation on how places can change us forever, this book was extremely well-written and inventive. It reminded me both of Blindness and The Underground Railroad, which, if you've read both of those books, may be leaving you scratching your head as to how a book can remind me of both of those. This only speaks to its quality and to its uniqueness.

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Review: Chemistry

Chemistry by Weike Wang
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Saw this in Jess' year-end round up at Don't Mind the Mess and picked it up at the library. It was great! On the short side, and sparse in its detail, but also very carefully written. One of those books that you finish only to realize that you learned more about the characters than you realized, and that you doubt there was a spare syllable used anywhere. Reminded me somewhat of When the Emperor Was Divine in that way.

This is about a Chemistry PhD candidate who is in love with another researcher. She comes from a traditionally strict Chinese-American household, while her boyfriend is from a loving Midwestern home. Her struggles with her research begin to overwhelm her just as her boyfriend's career begins to soar. He wants to marry her, but she worries about her own career, her ability to have a happy marriage, and what, ultimately, she wants. As he gets impatient waiting, her life begins to spiral and she panics. The following two years of her life are chronicled, as she begins to work out how to deal with her childhood, her failed career, and how to accept love - or not.

A book I was sad to have end...

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Review: This Is How It Always Is

This Is How It Always Is by Laurie Frankel
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This was a lovely book - timely, and complex, and lovely. The story follows a family of six, the youngest of which is a boy who declares in his early elementary years that he is a girl. The family, in as progressive and honest and well-meaning way I can possibly imagine, gives her the space to be a girl, while helping her navigate school, friendships, and, eventually, impending puberty. Knowing the author is the mother of a transgender child allowed me to trust the characters more than I would have otherwise; I fell in love with both of the parents in the family, wishing I had married either or both of them myself.

Each book like this and each article about this begins to thaw the idea of transgenderism, which I believe to be the next frontier in equality and acceptance. This was a great leader in that canon.

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Review: Between the World and Me

Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I had this on my bookshelf for a while, and kept meaning to read it. Finally got around to it and now believe this to be a book everyone living in America in 2018 should read. You may recognize Coates' name as the author of the controversial Atlantic cover piece from a few years back making the case for reparations for slavery. This book is beautiful, discouraging, encouraging, and perhaps a small great example of why even those of us who are "not racist" really don't get it.

The form of the book is Coates writing a letter to his son about growing up black in America. He talks about everything from his childhood to the murders of Trayvon Martin and Tamir Rice, from his years at Howard University to the micro- and macro- aggressions he faces daily. He covers slavery, his own love and marriage, fatherhood, and what is fair and unfair in the world in a dense, short 152 page "letter."

This book is beautifully written, truly, and several times caused me to stop and think and really pay attention to what is happening to the people of color in our country, and to feel great shame about it.

The two passages that hit me the most follow. I will leave them without comment, and hope that they encourage you to read the book:

"Always remember that Trayvon Martin was a boy, that Tamir Rice was a particular boy, that Jordan Davis was a boy, like you. When you hear these names think of all the wealth poured into them. Think of the gasoline expended, the treads worn carting him to football games, basketball tournaments, and Little League. Think of the time spent regulating sleepovers. Think of the surprise birthday parties, the day care, and the reference checks on babysitters. Think of checks written for family photos. Think of soccer balls, science kits, chemistry sets, racetracks, and model trains. Think of all the embraces, all the private jokes, customs, greetings, names, dreams, all the shared knowledge and capacity of a black family injected into that vessel of flesh and bone. And think of how that vessel was taken, shattered on the concrete, and all its holy contents, all that had gone into each of them, was sent flowing back to the earth."

"Slavery is not an indefinable mass of flesh. It is a particular, specific enslaved woman, whose mind is active as your own, whose range of feeling is as vast as your own; who prefers the way the light falls in one particular spot in the woods, who enjoys fishing where the water eddies in a nearby stream, who loves her mother in her own complicated way, thinks her sister talks too loud, has a favorite cousin, a favorite season, who excels at dressmaking and knows, inside herself, that she is as intelligent and capable as anyone."


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Review: Beartown

Beartown by Fredrik Backman
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book was amazing! I had seen it on some end-of-year lists, and didn't realize it was by the same author as A Man Called Ove, or I wouldn't have read it so soon after that book. A good thing, as it turned out, because I really loved it.

The story takes place in a small town in Sweden that is quickly losing its youth, its industry, and its middle class. All its hope is placed in the success of their local kids' hockey team, which, should they win the championship, would bring a major hockey training facility (as well as related industry, tourism, and hope) to the town.

Into this drama Backman carefully places several complex characters, both coaches, owners, and boosters, as well as players and kids who wish they were players. Each characters has a strong, well-developed back story. The plot has some predictable turns in it, but overall the book is *so* well-written and so well-thought-out that they are easily forgivable.

Think a Swedish Friday Night Lights, but with hockey...

I can't wait for the sequel to come out.

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Review: Manhattan Beach

Manhattan Beach by Jennifer Egan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The most notable things about this book is the author - Jennifer Egan is so versatile, between A Visit from the Goon Squad and Look at Me, I was not expecting a straightforward historical novel, which this is. This was a cool story - it was about a young woman who begins to work at the Naval Yard in NYC during WWII. This part of the story is interwoven with her childhood, where her beloved father has some shady connections to mysterious men. It's not until the end of the book where the stories meet, but both narratives are fascinating, both with moving plots and with great descriptions of time and place.

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Review: Her Body and Other Parties

Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I saw this on NPR's end of year list. While I don't usually read short story collections, I saw that Roxane Gay had recommended it, so I decided to give it a try. It was a really unusual book. Each story was about a woman, and there were typical themes like marriage, lost love, and relationships. What was unusual was that each story also had some sort of magical realism or science-fiction component. Like most short story collections, the quality of them was somewhat uneven; I really liked a few and found others less accessible. That said, I enjoyed reading the collection as a whole, particularly enjoying the surprise of some of the magical realism.

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Review: The Orphan Keeper

The Orphan Keeper by Camron Wright
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I wasn't sure about reading this book. I thought Wright's last book The Rent Collector was a great story but really poorly written. I found this similar. The story, about a young Indian boy who is kidnapped and brought to an orphanage, then sent to the US to be adopted as if he were an orphan, was heartbreaking. His search for his birth family, which begins after an unexpected connection as a young adult, was similarly heartbreaking as well as uplifting. It was definitely hard to remember it was a true story. However, the writing was just as in the previous book of Wright's I had read. Poorly edited, and a strange combination of third-person memoir and fictional creation. I don't think I'll be sucked into another of his books any time soon.

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