Review: All Grown Up

All Grown Up by Jami Attenberg
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I joined Book of the Month Club and I'm not sure I've learned how to pick the right book each month. This was my first or second pick, and I didn't love it. It's about a single woman in NYC, somewhat self-absorbed, whose brother and his wife have a baby with a chronic and life-shortening condition. Told in (confusing) vignettes, the book jumps around different parts of their lives, building characters through fragments rather than full character development. The main character isn't particularly likable, nor was the non-linear plot compelling in its presentation.

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Review: Mess: One Man's Struggle to Clean Up His House and His Act

Mess: One Man's Struggle to Clean Up His House and His Act by Barry Yourgrau
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is a memoir about a man's attempt to address his hoarding. Prompted by his exasperated girlfriend and her mother, Yourgrau decides to investigate hoarding - its history, famous hoarders, and different treatments - in an effort to, quite literally, clean up his act. He is in some ways successful, thought moreso in his delving into his own underlying issues from which his hoarding sprouted than in understanding it more broadly. I applaud his sharing of this experience with readers, but found some of the book purely self-indulgent. His self-awareness only sometimes made up for that.

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Review: The Woman in Cabin 10

The Woman in Cabin 10 by Ruth Ware
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A beach read to be sure, but one I enjoyed. This story is about a travel writer who gets her big break - an assignment to report on the experience of being on a luxury yacht. She observes what she thinks is a murder, but all the evidence disappears, and she is questioned as being mentally ill. It was fun to play along, and decide if I believed her or thought she was losing it. While not exceptional in its writing, the plot and character development were well-done. I looked forward to reading this each night.

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Review: A Man Called Ove

A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This was a lovely, clever book. It reminded me both of the charm of Major Pettigrew's Last Stand and the unlikely friendships formed in Plainsong. Curmudgeonly Ove has lived a very measured and stern life, oddly paired with a sweet, pleasant, non-deceased wife. Her death makes his life unbearable, but his efforts to end his own life keep getting foiled (at first unintentionally) by a young family who moves in next door. This books lets you root for the bad guy who you know isn't really bad underneath.

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Review: The Underground Railroad

The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Well there's nothing the Pulitzer Prize, National Book Award, and Oprah hasn't already said about this book that I can tell you here. It's spectacular. It's about a slave named Cora who seeks freedom through the Underground Railroad. Except in this telling, the UR is an actual railroad, not a metaphorical one, built under the ground by slaves.

Whitehead does an amazing job characterizing the devastating and horrible nature of her life as a slave, as well as the challenges, hopes, disappointments, and lost opportunities of pursuing her freedom. She has several long stays along the way, including one at a "model citizen" community for escaped slaves, and one in a stationmaster's attic, that well detail the life-and-death difficulties that awaited escapees like Cora.

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Review: Before the Fall

Before the Fall by Noah Hawley
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This was a fun read - better written than a beach read, but similarly paced.

It's about a charter plane crash whose only survivors are a loner artist and the young son of a media mogul. Meanwhile, several of the people on the plane are high profile and rich. The mystery of what happened to the plane - whether (as the media suggests) it was purposeful and strategic, or was just an accident - becomes half of the story, while the development of each of the passenger and crew's backgrounds becomes the balance. Great character studies, and a good mystery with a satisfying ending I didn't expect.

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Review: The Flight of Gemma Hardy

The Flight of Gemma Hardy by Margot Livesey
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I liked this book. I didn't realize until after I read it that it was a homage to Jane Eyre, which is probably a good thing. I haven't read Jane Eyre (yikes!) and wouldn't have chosen it otherwise.

Anyway, the story is a somewhat classic rags-to-riches-to-conflict-to-resolution story. Gemma's life has several ups and downs from a happy childhood to awful relatives who reluctantly take her in to a boarding school that is not as advertised to a job as a companion for a petulant 8-year-old. I really found myself rooting for Gemma, and I enjoyed all the plot twists. While not as gothic as, say, Fingersmith, it did have a classic feel to it.

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Review: Fire Shut Up in My Bones

Fire Shut Up in My Bones by Charles M. Blow
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This was a lovely and beautiful book. I'm making an effort to read a more diverse set of memoirs, and this one, by a gay journalist who grew up in rural Louisiana, was an excellent read. Growing up in abject poverty, and sexually assaulted at a young age, Charles Blow may have ended up just another poor black man living on the margins in the South. Instead, he took his love of books and learning, attended college, and catapulted himself to be a leading liberal commentator for the likes of CNN, the New York Times.

I was struck by his honesty regarding his shame around his assault, and by his forgiveness to his younger self of the decisions that it lead to. He lifts himself out of poverty (like, "eat dirt as a snack" poverty) only to face extreme physical hazing as a fraternity pledge in college. Not until years after does he come to terms with all of it.

I kept thinking, "when he sits in the green room at CNN, does he think to himself, how the hell did I get to a place where someone brings me cut up cheese and fruit and sparkling water?" Not only is he a great champion for the politics I believe in, but he is also a great champion of overcoming childhood trauma.

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Review: Watch Me Go

Watch Me Go by Mark Wisniewski
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This was a really unusual book. The story is about two different people - one, a young man who is from the Bronx who is accused of a murder he didn't commit, and the other a young woman whose family and friends are involved in horse-racing. Their paths cross when she has information that may exonerate him; the contrast of their stories was well-written and the story moved at a good pace for me. I thought the author relied on enough coincidence for the book to make sense, but not to seem unrealistic. And I liked learning more about horse-racing. I'd read another one by him in the future.

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Review: Dept. of Speculation

Dept. of Speculation by Jenny Offill
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I read about this book in the NY Times and had high hopes for it. Alas, it was a disappointment. The story followed a marriage, really diving into what it means to commit to someone and to have a long, complex relationship. While I liked the premise, the execution wasn't as good. It was written in a beautiful, poetic style, but one that was sometimes too obscure for me to understand the plot. While I enjoyed the writing, I'm still confused about what actually happened, versus what was the main character's reverie imagination. For me, that's a deal breaker - I like plot.

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Review: Wolf in White Van

Wolf in White Van by John Darnielle
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Meh. This book was on a list I picked up somewhere or other, but it didn't really do it for me. It was about a loner of a man who maintained a "choose-your-own-adventure" style game by mail after being disfigured by an "incident" as a child. His otherwise uneventful life is suddenly complicated when two of the players of his game are injured while playing it. I was drawn into the story at many junctures but ultimately just didn't like the main character enough to care what happened. The writing was fine, but the character development, while comprehensive, didn't create enough empathy for me.

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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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