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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Review: Modern Lovers

Modern Lovers by Emma Straub
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I liked this book well enough - an easy read but well-written and well-developed. It is the story of several friends who had been in a band in college. One woman breaks out into general fame, then dies young. Years later, a movie is produced about her, and the rest of the band, now "grownups" with families, problems, and marriages, need to consent to their music and likenesses being used. I liked the characters and the neighborhood they lived in, and I appreciated how well the plotting was done.

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Review: Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman

Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman by Lindy West
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A new friend (Liz) recommended this to me. It's a memoir of sorts - or at least a meditation on society told through one women's point of view. West is a comedian, one who is physically and personality-wise large. She writes about how women are expected to be neither of those things, and how society treats them (us). I found the first few chapters difficult to relate to, as she references several characters and people I didn't really know. However, as she continues on, she makes some very astute and sadly unfortunate observations about how we treat overweight people and how we treat women who speak their minds.

The final section of the book was a retelling of a story I had heard on This American Life, of her finding and confronting an Internet troll who was abusing her online. No less shocking in print, it's a remarkable story of anger, hurt, and reconciliation - sort of. Overall, a really interesting read as a woman in today's world.

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Review: The Girls

The Girls by Emma Cline
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This was one of the "it" books this summer, but I didn't love it. It was memorable, and well-written, but it left me feeling - icky? Maybe that is a good thing, and a testament to the book's accomplishing its goal. The story follows a young woman whose rocky adolescence leads her to a cult. While she is taken under the wing of the cult's leader as well as a powerful ally of is, she somewhat remains on the outside, still connected to her family and comfortable way of life. She narrowly misses being involved in a violent crime, and that - the crime, as well as her lack of participation - defines the rest of her life.

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Review: Commonwealth

Commonwealth by Ann Patchett
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I mean, I just adore Ann Patchett. She writes such rich characters and puts them in such impossible situations. In this book, a set of step-siblings who spend summers together encounter tragedy together, which they each bury in their minds. However, as an adult, one of them falls in love with an author and tells him the story - which becomes the basis for his bestseller. This book spans many decades and several generations, from the affair that breaks up a first marriage to the children and grandchildren who come after. I got lost in this book - in a good way.

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Review: Fates and Furies

Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Oooh this one was a doozy. I loved it. It told the story of a married couple, first from the husband's point of view, then from the wife's. And after reading her telling, you realize that nothing was quite as simple as it seemed in his telling. The characters were great, and the plotting very intelligent. It was a kick to get to the second half and hear her point of view. There was also a Greek chorus of sorts who butt into the story now and then, which I found amusing and clever. Part Gone Girl Gone Girl, and part A Reliable Wife, maybe?

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Review: Rich and Pretty

Rich and Pretty by Rumaan Alam
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This was an easy read, and an enjoyable one. It follows two friends, who have known each other for most of their lives, as young adults. One is planning a wedding, the other perpetually single, and their friendship ebbs and flows through several big and small occurrences. I thought the author did a great job of depicting the complexity of adult friendships and their imperfections. I really liked the character development and the development of the relationship the women had with each other. This could be a great beach read that surprises you with substance, or an easy, more literature-y book.

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Review: The Heart Goes Last

The Heart Goes Last by Margaret Atwood
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This was great. I have always loved Atwood's speculative fiction, and this was no exception. It follows a couple who is really struggling in a post-apocalyptic world, who decide to join a commune. The commune seems to offer a stable and comfortable life, with the simple odd exception that each month the community members take turns being imprisoned. While it is significantly better than their life "outside", as they discover the truth about their new environment, they realize that nothing is as perfect as it seems. Atwood's writing, characters, and plot development were, as is usual, extremely well-done.

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Review: My Brilliant Friend

My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This book was such a disappointment to me. I had read much about these "Neapolitan Novels" and looked forward to enjoying the saga of two women's friendship in Italy. The author writes under a pseudonym which I thought was cool. And I had read rave reviews of the books. Unfortunately they were not for me. Too much description, not enough plot, and I didn't really care that much about any of the characters.

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Review: Truly Madly Guilty

Truly Madly Guilty by Liane Moriarty
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I had read a lot of heavy books lately (and been doing a lot of introspection) so it was nice to read some fluff. That said, I did not enjoy this as much as her other books. Like her other books, it was a story about women and friends, and secrets. It was about two women who had been childhood friends, one from a friendly, healthy home, the other not. Their interdependence on each other grew as they grew older, and one asks the other for a favor. But all of this is revealed in flashbacks. And there is a terrible event, but it is only teased and not revealed until late in the book. All in all, I was frustrated by the teasing, and turned off by how much is revealed in flashbacks. The plotline itself was kind of cool - but the frame ruined it for me.

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Review: The Nest

The Nest by Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I thought this book was fine. It was about a set of siblings who expected to inherit a large trust fund, but before its maturity, one of them gets in trouble and his mother uses the money for himself. The characters were richly developed, and alternated telling the story. However, I didn't find them likable or sympathetic. The plot was interesting enough, but overall not too memorable a book.

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Review: When Breath Becomes Air

When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Another book club pick. I had heard about this book - an unfinished memoir by a young neurosurgeon diagnosed with incurable cancer - but hadn't been attracted to read it. One of those book club benefits when you read stuff you weren't planning on. I really liked this. I expected it to be very sad, and indeed the story is sad, but the author isn't writing a dirge. He writes of how he decides to become a neurosurgeon, what his relationship is like with his wife, and what his plans are for the future. Then once diagnosed, he chronicles his disappointment, treatment, optimism, and his family's support. I enjoyed it without feeling too sad reading it.

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Review: Here I Am

Here I Am by Jonathan Safran Foer
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This was great. In fact, since A Little Life I have had a hard time finding anything I like since then. But I am a big fan of Foer's, and eagerly awaited the release of this book.

The story is of a Jewish family whose Israeli cousins come for a visit on the eve of several major events - the bar mitzvah of their son, the dissolution of their marriage, and an unexpected collapse of Israel. All of these plots intertwine, but it is really the dissolution of the marriage that takes center stage. It was frustrating at times to read, because there were such obvious things that both the husband and wife could have done (and whose internal monologue knew it) to make things better. Or maybe not frustrating as much as tragic. In any case, one of the most perfect depictions of the internal workings of a marriage (and of the American Jewish experience) I've read in a long time.

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