Julia

I liked this a lot better than the other Philippa Gregory one I've read, “The Other Boleyn Girl.” I can't tell if it was because my little feminist heart appreciated reading about a woman in Tudor England whose life wasn't totally at the mercy of the men around her, or the protagonist's love interests were more appealing. Either way, consider me entertained. And pleased by the slightly cheesy happy ending.

Robinson achieves something fairly rare in this novel–although her second effort, Gilead is an even more stunning example of it–each character, both large and small, is treated with the utmost compassion. Things move slowly, this being the Midwest, but everything is beautiful. Really, quite a treat.

I read this New Yorker profile on St. Aubyn (https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/06/02/inheritance) a few years ago, and then recalled it when I stumbled across a used and very cheap version of this compilation at Powell's last year. I'm tagging this as memoir as well as novels because the interview, as well as other things St. Aubyn has said, make clear how closely aspects of the novels hewed to his own life. I really enjoyed these for two reasons. First, St. Aubyn's prose is phenomenal. Second, he created art out of significant childhood trauma in a very psychologically savvy way. “Never Mind” and “Mother's Milk” are easily my favorite of the four, because one of St. Aubyn's unusual gifts is narrating children's interior lives in an evocative way that is both developmentally astute and respectful of their intelligence. A few quotes about developing language in “Mother's Milk” particularly bowled me over, I think because St. Aubyn shines the most when narrating a child's character not based on his own experience:

“Something had started to happen as he became dominated by talk. His early memories were breaking off, like slabs from those orange cliffs behind him, and crashing into an all-consuming sea which only glared back at him when he tried to look into it. His infancy was being obliterated by his childhood. He wanted it back, otherwise Thomas would have the whole thing.” (p. 449)

“Once you locked into language, all you could do was shuffle the greasy pack of a few thousand words that millions of people had used before. There might be little moments of freshness, not because the life of the world has been successfully translated but because a new life has been made out of this thought stuff. But before the thoughts got mixed up with words, it wasn't as if the dazzle of the world hadn't been exploding in the sky of his attention.” (p. 461)

It'll be interesting to read “At Last” to finish off the Patrick Melrose cycle.

This was where my summer of 2016 “Anne” obsession came to an end. Honestly, I'd rather have read Rilla of Ingleside if I had found it. But I'll take what I can get for free and easy summer reading :)

My first reaction to this frank and frequently painful memoir is a strong desire to pick Alexandra Fuller's brain. And ask things like, “Describe your changing perception of racial inequality in post-colonial Mozambique/Zambia/Zimbabwe. Go!” and “Have you ever been in therapy? If not, how have you survived?”. I imagine there are people in her life who read her account of a childhood filled with upheaval and felt pain and anger at what she has written. However, I think Fuller has managed, and written about, what so few of us are able to do: to understand that whatever our pasts hold, they are absolutely necessary in making us who we are today. That the acceptance is crucial to the moving on. If you are at all interested in post-colonial studies (which it is a veritable goldmine for), or would just like to read the memoir of a woman with a strong sense of self, I'd strongly recommend this book.

Lending library find. I can see why this was so popular. I liked Larsson's pacing, and the intertwining of large-scale financial crimes, when government oversteps the bounds of people's rights and dignity in the name of helping them (Salander's situation is an absolute mockery of the idea of guardianship that I think is closer to real life than many people might realize), and the more run-of-the-mill (at least for the genre) psychopathic sexual sadism. I went back and forth as to whether the detail of the sadism was gratuitous or not, and perhaps this is a weird and/or counterintuitive place for me to be, but it didn't bother me. I think that's in part because I'm getting an extra onslaught of vicarious trauma at work right now, and it has been an unfortunate reminder that truth is stranger than fiction: in this case, I mean more horrifying. What actually irritated me about this book is the “good guy” male protagonist, when I think Lisbeth Salander is the real hero. Which is sort of how Larsson wrote her, but also sort of not? I have no idea if a female and/or queer author would have done it differently, or if Larsson's treatment of her was lost in translation, but the most annoying part of Lisbeth's character is her bisexuality feels like a plot device to convey liberalism that to me just felt more like queerbaiting, written at a time I think before people had that word to call it out as such. Anyone who follows me on goodreads knows sometimes I return to series I didn't like somewhat inexplicably, so I won't say I won't read the others, but now am not feeling interested in doing so.

Once in a while, I am vaguely amused after finishing a book to find that the description on the back cover actually did the novel justice. In this case, someone described “Blindness” as “a magnificent parable of loss and disorientation and a vivid evocation of the horrors of the twentieth century.” Indeed. Now, normally I am not one to shy away from the depressing. I fall more into the “bring it on” camp. Literature is about life, and life is frequently tragic. Tolstoy, happy families, blah blah. That said, SWEET JESUS. A glimmer of hope doesn't appear until the last five pages, but Saramago spent the previous 300+ pages doing a pretty damn fine job convincing me that even when there is goodness in the world, we squander it. And I'm an optimist! Retrospectively, I am glad that I read this, and appreciate the challenges that reading it entailed. However, Nobel prize be damned, I'm going to need some literary pep in my life before I attempt to digest any more of his work.

Look, I realize anyone who gives James Joyce two stars for anything is kind of an asshole. My feeling on having read this (on plane rides to and from my little brother's college graduation–fatal mistake?) is not that it's objectively just okay, but that I probably need a college-level English lit class to appreciate it. Literature that makes me work as a reader is just sooooo not my scene right now, and I get that that's my failing, not Joyce's. In other news, I stole half my little brother's books from his “Humanistic and Existential Psychology” seminar, and am currently tearing through Viktor Frankl's “Man's Search for Meaning” (review forthcoming). I'll definitely credit Joyce with some of my current fervor for anything that attempts to tackle the field of inquiry of what it means to be human.

Found this in one of my neighborhood lending libraries, and am glad I did! I will say that it was profoundly uncomfortable, probably in a useful way, to read Nafisi's account of how living through the Islamic Revolution had both terrifying and mundane moments. Eighteen years after Nafisi wrote this and on another continent, American democracy is shuddering along the fault lines of our original sin of racism coupled with unbridled individualism, and it is both terrifying to feel those jolts and also terrifying how the mundane stuff of life carries on. Anyway, given that Nafisi is a professor, it was interesting to me that I enjoyed this memoir much more when she wrote as a memoirist concentrating on her own personal response to the events unfolding around her. The parts she devoted to imparting lessons from the literature she taught often feel clunkily didactic for my current mood (I appreciated the parts about Pride & Prejudice best, having just watched the most recent version before it left Netflix; this is a controversial opinion, but I prefer Matthew Macfayden to Colin Firth as Darcy!). Overall, however, she wrote a remarkable memoir about a remarkable era, and I am glad to have read it.

Lending library find. Reading this in the coastal Pacific Northwest during winter, I would agree with the trade blurb that this is “densely atmospheric” - Guterson's abiding attention to the ecosystems and weather of this area is clear, as both are close to characters in this novel. Style-wise, he's a bit reminiscent of Richard Ford, but without the humor, and Marilynne Robinson, without being so transporting. Good, but not great. I really appreciated the timespan he brought to the subject matter (the unjust incarceration of Japanese Americans during WWII is central to the plot), so that the antecedents and aftershocks of trauma also rise to the surface. I was briefly irrationally angry in a few later chapters when I got worried there might be a sad ending (spoiler alert, I guess), but Guterson allows his flawed humans, for whom his affection is also clear, to muddle forward into an imperfect future.

Wow. Really enjoyed it. I feel like Gilbert hit her stride with this book much more so than with “[b:Eat, Pray, Love 19501 Eat, Pray, Love Elizabeth Gilbert http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1269870432s/19501.jpg 3352398].” It is such a talent to be able to capture someone sensitively, warts and all, but that is exactly what Gilbert did for the obviously complex (although I suppose we're all complex) Eustace Conway, not to mention provide some interesting and unique insight into the idea of American masculinity. Conway is endearing and infuriating in equal amounts, and I finished the book wanting desperately to know what he is up to this very minute. My one complaint is a small one–given Conway's evident desire for privacy and peace of mind, it seems curious that Gilbert, even though she and Conway are obviously close friends (I think Gilbert dated one of Conway's brothers?), would allow her completely unfettered access to his diary and personal letters. I think this truly excellent work of non-fiction would have been even more excellent had Gilbert examined how Conway's motivation to allow her to explore his life is another–at times conflictual (is that a word?)–facet of his personality.

I first read my mom's tattered copy of this triology in college. 10 years later, I couldn't recall the plot, but knew I was spellbound by it, so dove back in. It's great. Davies managed what seems to be a tricky feat in trilogies - weaving together three novels (novellas?) with different narrators (one narrator appears twice, at different phases in life) and distinctly different feels that shed light on the same captivating plot. Picking a favorite feels impossible, although on the one hand, “The Manticore” introduces the belligerent narrator to a formidable (and formidably compassionate) opponent in the form of a female psychoanalyst, so of course I love that, and on the other, “World of Wonders” links past and present in a way that feels satisfying, but not too pat. But “Fifth Business”! Ahhh! Just read them. Also, notably given my own personal preferences, the female characters are as multidimensional as the males, and Davies has some interesting and subtle thoughts on the cultural phenomenon of masculinity.

I just realized I never wrote a review for this, but I can't even remember when I read it. I definitely liked it, and recall being pleasantly surprised–Egan's characters aren't always sympathetic, and I wondered how she was going to write an ending that actually satisfied. Then she did.

For my final pre-internship year, I'm going to be working with individuals with eating disorders. I figured I'd try something completely new. When I asked my supervisor what books she'd recommend as introductory readings, “Intuitive Eating” is where she sent me, telling me that it's the only self-help nutrition book out there that she not only tolerates, but actually likes. In short: her assessment is spot-on.

People ask me for book recommendations fairly often (and I'm only a grad student, so I'm guessing it'll get more frequent). It's a tricky question because so many books are so deeply cheesy, and I'm not exactly going for “deeply cheesy” as a psychologist-in-training. Well, hallelujah. “Intuitive Eating” is not cheesy. It is not patronizing. It is not preachy, simplistic, or annoyingly cheerful. It is compassionate, straightforward, and wise. It brims with good, old-fashioned common sense that is too often overwhelmed by the dieting hysteria that has gripped the U.S. for...well, decades, now.

I am sure this book will be invaluable when doing eating disorder treatment. But, if you're reading this, and you're experiencing even just a niggling iota of doubt that maybe you don't have as healthy of a relationship with food as you could (TRULY healthy, none of this sanctimonious all-raw-food-all-the-time crap), then do me a solid, and get yourself to a bookstore ASAP.

Ladinsky translating the luminous Hafiz. Probably my favorite collection of poetry in the entire world.

This one took me a while to read because Jacob and I started as a “read out loud on road trips” book, but I ended up finishing it solo. I also feel a weird and complicated attachment to it, because my dad read almost exclusively non-fiction, and this was the next book on his reading list when he died. Anyway! I loved the first half of the book much more than the second, completely related to content. Hariri summarizes the origins of humanity in sweeping early chapters that feel dazzling, the way you want the best intro courses in college to feel. He excels at synthesizing huge swaths of information punctuated by witty asides, and it's just a fun read. The second half of the book, especially the fourth part, however, has chapters on science and empire, capitalism, industry, etc., and thus the tour continues with the various ways we have more recently exploited each other, other animals, and the earth itself at a scale never before seen. I took some solace in Hariri's obvious distaste for the current situation: the book ends with the question, “Is there anything more dangerous than dissatisfied and irresponsible gods who don't know what they want?” I sometimes hear people talk about the challenges humanity faces now as just another iteration of the challenges humanity has always faced. If there's anything Sapiens makes clear, however, it's that our ability to wreak havoc quickly is unprecedented in our history, and our now-vastly-interconnected species means that such havoc can spin out exponentially quickly, likely far faster than our ability to reverse course (ahem see climate change and nuclear war). I think the importance of reflecting on this reality is more important than whether I “liked” the book.

So this wasn't my favorite. I do, however, like the ending of the trilogy with respect to the plot arc across the books. Jacob pointed out that Collins, like Rowling in the later Harry Potter books, excels at writing with the voice of a sullen teenager. That's a great quality in a YA writer, obviously, but it left me spending a lot of this book waiting for Katniss to...grow up. And then she did, just a little too quickly in a somewhat rushed denouement. Still, I'd recommend the series to anyone looking to become obsessed with the outcomes in a fictional world for a few days/weeks, or wanting to dive right into some pop culture without regretting it later.

You know, sometimes Oprah is right. In fact, a lot of the time. Beautiful, dense, complex, and a surprising mix of African history with traditional Southern narrative.

The honest truth is that I re-read this for the same reason I re-read The Corrections. I'm moving again soon, and these are big, fat books that I figured I'd be better able to relinquish after revisiting.

I was glad to re-read this. I Know This Much Is True is kind of schlocky, in the sense that Lamb clearly wants to deal with All. The. Big. Issues. and enable his readers in experiencing All. The. Big. Feelings. It's also kind of unschlocky, in that I think he succeeds admirably well, despite his intention to do so being clearly evident.

The spoiler alert below isn't related to the end of the novel, but I put it in because it does relate to potentially triggering content.

For example, on a fellowship interview this spring, an interviewer asked me about a novel that had influenced my clinical work. The first thing that popped into my head, nearly a decade after first reading this, was how Lamb created a narrator who rapes another main (and beloved) character, and the rape felt believable, strongly increased both my empathy for and anger (but not disgust) at the narrator, and Lamb's treatment of all of that didn't feel like a gratuitous portrayal of violence against women as a mean to an emotional end. It just felt like the way life really (often tragically) happens. I think about that a lot when working with people who have perpetrated violence instead of (or in addition to) being on the receiving end of it. We need to really understand both the aftermath of sexual violence, and what leads people to commit it in the first place. .

So, I think this is a good novel to read if you feeling like reading something that will likely make you cry, but not likely to make you feel as if you've been manipulated into crying.

Dodger the ferret has always been a charming member of the Hathaway family, but he really takes the cake here; easily best character of the book. I did really like Leo & Cat's banter in this one, and the further you get in this series, the more fun it is to get cameos from the rest of the Hathaway crew. Kleypas was perhaps too good at detailing Leo's past in the previous novels, however, so I wasn't as invested in a happy ending for him (and therefore Marks) as I might otherwise have been. Still - zippy! Fun! I like the series as a whole.

Well, gosh. In a lot of ways, I wish I'd known about this series so I could read it in bits and pieces, like Harry Potter. Because taken as a whole, read in less than a week, a lot of shit went down in these books. Crazy vampire shit. My reading pace, I will admit, may not have left me time to enjoy all the detail that was included given my fervor to figure out the plot. I stand by my opinion that the 3rd book is the most fun to read, but credit where credit is due, I never in five million years would have guessed the direction the 4th book took, so hats off to Meyer for that. All in all, if you need an airport read, a beach read, a read something that doesn't require a lot of thinking read, a moved across the country and broke up with your boyfriend read (who? me?), these books are your new best friends. Not quite Harry Potter (could anything be?), but close.

Oh, Pema. The trick to what she writes about is that it is so easy to understand intellectually, and so incredibly challenging to know emotionally, much less to actually pull off in the mess of day-to-day living. But that's the point, really: to keep trying. To let things be messy (and there's good messy and bad messy) and be in the messiness and know that the messiness isn't what we're supposed to escape from to our real lives, the messiness IS our real lives. Which we're constantly trying to run from. So, as usual, she's given me lots to think about in a few precious pages, and I know it's a book I'll be going back to.

One of my favorite passages:
“People have no respect for impermanence. We take no delight in it; in fact, we despair of it. We regard it as pain. We try to resist it by making things that will last–forever, we say–things that we don't have to wash, things that we don't have to iron. Somehow, in the process of trying to deny that things are always changing, we lose our sense of the sacredness of life. We tend to forget that we are part of the natural scheme of things.”

(Re-read this book - I think for the 3rd time? - five years after this first review. It just gets better, and this is the quote that I'm loving the best these days: “To be fully alive, fully human, and completely awake is to be continually thrown out of the nest.”)

If goodreads would let me, my rating would be 3.5 stars. I think Imperial Radch #2 is my fave of the trio, but this was still an enjoyable read in many respects. It's easily the funniest book of the set, with the introduction of an intergalactic translator providing some absurdist social commentary on her new surroundings. I appreciate how Leckie's close to this series had a pleasing sense of finality regarding the plot without closure of the universe she created, if that makes sense, and the narrator, while still beloved, becomes more morally ambiguous as she reflects on her transition from ancillary to no-longer-exactly-an-ancillary, which her culture has no real framework for understanding. I think the only reason this wasn't a complete knockout for me is that although this end to the series is deeply focused on relationships, which I appreciated, I could have also used a little more space drama. Not that there wasn't! I'm just a drama queen.

This is one of those books that I am hesitant to attempt to review at all, other than to describe it as heart-rending. Finkel has given a great gift to these service members in bearing witness to what it was like to be in the worst part of Baghdad during a terrible part of a terrible war. Reading this now, against a backdrop of grim ISIS-related headlines, merely underscores the importance of the book, and the importance of not growing numb to the plight of an area of the world still very much war-torn.

Oh, you know. Just starting off 2023 with a romance novel! After a spate of really awful lending library finds, I invested in Kleypas' Hathaways series, and this is a good start. I really liked Cam from Devil in Winter of the Wallflowers series, and he's the male half of this novel's love interest. He's smart and sexy and completely unabashed about expressing interest in his paramour. He's also Roma, as is another character I'm sure will reappear in the series. I'm completely unqualified to comment on the accuracy of Kleypas' research, but there's more (pleasant) didactic stuff about Romani culture and prejudice against and persecution of them in England at the time than you would expect for a romance novel. The main issue with this novel is the heroine! Kleypas typically writes less neurotic protagonists than Amelia Hathaway, to be honest, and she's a character who really takes her outsized sense of obligation to her family to annoying, not endearing, lengths. I don't think she has much of a developmental arc in that regard, which is another nice feature of other Kleypas novels. Still! I was suitably entertained and will certainly read the rest of the series.