Julia
Great, great, great! Nearly perfect. I'm a psychologist, and I think I might actually like this even better for the general public than The Body Keeps the Score. Perry & Winfrey's conversational format could have been hokey, but instead it feels fluid and engaging, and there's a fantastic mix of anecdotes (both clinical from Perry's work and Winfrey's interviews, and personal from Winfrey's life), neuroscience, and application. I might change this to a full 5 stars, but for now, I found myself wanting a bit more practical/policy stuff at the end. Still, would recommend this without reservations for anyone who wants to understand trauma, and already have, both to several therapy clients and to multiple colleagues practicing in spaces where trauma-informedness is central.
This was a lending library find, but clearly I'm a Kleypas fan, so I was happy! I think I like her historical romances better - just a little more transporting? Although the San Juan Island setting of this one is charming. My main quibble is that I could have done without the magic; regular romance is just fine. Might still pick up the rest of the series? As is usual for her, good female friendships, this time complicated by sisterly angst.
I don't think I've read anything by Banerjee Divakurani since pre-goodreads day (2006?), but this was a pleasurable, although heart-rending, return. My bestie got me 3 months of Book of the Month for Christmas, and this was my January pick. Calling this historical fiction feels like typecasting it a bit. The title is a reference to both India's independence and that of the three sisters the plot follows, but I think the most powerful themes are really about interdependence within families: how to find ways back to relationships after deep betrayals, grieve losses, and move forward with love and integrity. This was a 3-star for me until about the middle, when everything just clicked in to place and I was enthralled for the later portion.
Might be my favorite of the 5 in the Hathaways series?? In part because by now the rest of the Hathaways are beloved family members, even when we only get glimpses of them. Good spice, though, Beatrix is a female Dr. Doolittle if ever there was one, and who doesn't love a romance that starts with some good, old-fashioned love letters? I will also begrudgingly admit that I now know more about the original Crimean war (your typical geopolitical battle of egos/tragedy/travesty, when will we ever learn) than I ever suspected I would.
I'm familiar Maté's more recent work on addiction and the myth of normality, but was so happy to realize this older but still so useful book existed. Attachment and its related interpersonal sequelae are my main ways of viewing/conceptualizing the clinical work I do, so his attachment/attunement-based perspective on ADHD was just a breath of fresh air. It's maddening, however, to realize how non-mainstream his perspective still is. Anyway, this is a great book for clinicians, people with ADHD, and people who love people with ADHD (I fit in both the first and third categories). Maté is wise, COMPASSIONATE, and always aware of how the way we view “problems” can also circumscribe our solutions. Will definitely read more of his book-length work based on this one.
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.
Great; necessary. Half of my book club read this while the other half reading Indigenous Continent, and I think based on David Treuer's review in The New Yorker, I'm happy about my pick. Dunbar-Ortiz has a sweeping comprehensive view of the historical details plus a searing vision of the completely cohesive through line between our founding (and ongoing) genocide against Indigenous peoples and current imperialist foreign policy (and the delusional moral bankruptcy and hypocrisy at the center of it). I also especially appreciated the last chapter on what the future may hold. I occasionally had trouble tracking the geography of what she recounts because she tended to organize by theme/time period, but I think this also reflects that the Indigenous experience included both forced relocation and resistance through geographical flexibility.
Poppy Hathaway is the smartest Kleypas heroine yet, even more so than Daisy Bowman, so she's my new fave. She might also be the funniest, although I can see her younger sister Beatrix swooping in for a win in The Hathaways, #5. So I loved this one, with a hero is sort of “reformed rake” but not as stereotypically so as St. Vincent (not that I don't also love St. Vincent), and some of Kleypas' best embedded commentary on patriarchy and what it really means to respect someone's autonomy.
I am...very much still processing this! The bookstore employee told me he thought I'd like it when I picked it up, and I asked what his impression was. He said, “Well, for the first half, you're just going to be like, ‘What the fuck is happening??',” and he was almost correct, except it was more like the first two-thirds. I would describe this as a punishing read! But I'm aware it's intentionally so: Harrow the Ninth is like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind crossed with Memento, crossed with A Memory Called Empire. I cannot imagine a better representation of the chaos of someone frantically running from grief. And then Gideon reappears and I have never been more relieved to reencounter a fictional character. I need a break before reading Nona the Ninth, but damn does Muir swing for the fences.
Normally I'm a Kleypas fan, but I just didn't love this one! Can't put my finger on exactly why: I like both Kev & Win, the protagonists, and liked the structure of both of them having roughly equal interiority, but I found myself leaning toward skimming as opposed to savoring. There is also a lot going on plot-wise: half-Roma/half-Irish brothers separated since childhood realize they're related, grandfather who turns out to be a murderous, racist asshole, charlatan doctor trying to poison people. Some of the additions I liked, like getting to see more of Cam and Amelia, but others felt less welcome: based on the set up for Married by Morning in this book, Leo Hathaway's change of heart regarding Catherine Marks is going to induce whiplash.
I'm a long-time fan of Casey's extremely funny and incisive writing and cultural commentary (her “She's a Beast” newsletter is a genuine treasure that I highly recommend), and I used Liftoff as a starting point to resume weightlifting. I'm in somewhat unique circumstances: rural area with no gym closer than 45 minutes, and currently in a 31' travel trailer with no room for a barbell. But! Casey's encouraging focus on the well-established basics of how to get stronger and ability to hilariously lambaste diet culture/hustle culture/capitalism/patriarchy bullshit made me feel confident enough to adapt her program for my purposes with an adjustable kettlebell. Unsurprisingly, I'm stronger again! And happy about it! I actually need to get a second kettlebell, yeehaw. Liftoff would be great for someone totally new to lifting, someone who wants a refreshing refresher of the basics, and everyone in between.
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.
For me, rating and describing this book are both silly endeavors (as Machado De Oliveira might say, I can see my own cuteness and patheticness in any urge to do so), especially given how clearly she explicates how thoroughly modernity's “wording the world” impacts our ontology and epistemology, forestalling our ability to imagine other ways of being, let alone solutions to our current issues. Machado De Oliveira's work is invaluable, necessary (but I think she would be the first to argue also insufficient), and searing. I finished this yesterday, have already re-read some, and am sure I will continue to do so. I would recommend sitting and struggling with this book (while also being bedazzled by it!) for anyone wondering what the future might hold, and what part(s) we may or may not play in that future.
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.
I was suitably entertained, although I preferred Quick's “Close Up” in this same series for being more explicitly feminist. My quibbles are that the syndicated crime plot was more complicated than entertaining, and the “hero with special powers” bit would be better if it either didn't exist at all, or Quick (really Jayne Ann Krentz) more fully committed to the magical realism. Still, I like her smart heroines and egalitarian action.
This is not really a book one likes, per se, so the 3 stars reflect that I learned a lot while reading it, and am grateful for that. It came recommended by the curator of the Quinault Cultural Center and Museum because it is a (the only?) comprehensive Quinault ethnography, and much of the book is direct quotes from the Quinault members interviewed for the project. In that sense, the book is invaluable. The stuff I could do without is Olson's 1936 worldview, frankly. It shows up in everything from remarks on Quinault work ethic because there were times that, once subsistence needs for the year were met and surpassed, people didn't always continue to work (Hah! Imagine that!), and some comments that didn't even hold water within the text itself: like saying that Quinault language didn't have words for a calendar, when in fact it had two sets that Olson then describes, one based on a year starting in the fall and going roughly by the lunar cycle, and another that was anchored by seasonal changes. So, no, there wasn't a 12-month calendar, but there were two others I imagine worked quite well! None of that is surprising, and I know there is utility in seeing such a clear example of bias that is often implicit but still insidious. I am grateful to the Quinault members who shared their lives and experiences in this format, and am sure I will return to their words as a reference.
Lending library find. This is the closest I've gotten to not finishing a book, and I still can't totally articulate what compels me to slog to the end. In this case, I think it was sheer bafflement? Coulter's book is...almost like a cartoon of a romance novel? Or of any novel? The dialogue is laughably wooden, the flirtation between the two sets of lovers is meant to be playful and clever but ends up being more like playground back-and-forth, and...I don't even know what else to say. We get Merlin at the end, which is not a spoiler, because it's not really related to the plot? I can tell from goodreads that many of Coulter's other books are better loved, so I'm sure she is too wise to take this one's reviews to heart, and I will continue on my merry way, amused & bemused by this book and my compulsion to finish it.
Read this for a book club with a colleague who does mental health consulting work in Hawai'i, and is feeling increasingly conflicted about her presence there - what exactly can a colonial modality of healing practiced in an illegally occupied place do for greater wellness? Anyway, I'm very grateful to have read this. I read slowly, because Osorio approaches the sticky (to put it mildly) issue of translation with “rigorous paraphrase” (I really appreciated her explication of this approach), but I enjoyed the frequent stops to look up Hawaiian words she leaves untranslated to see both how I could understand them in part through Osorio's context, and also feel hints of the ways that I might not be grasping the meaning and resonance they have when they are fully embedded in the language and worldview of their creation. My 4-star rating is related to my fit as a reader of this work, not its quality or power: Osorio notes that readers unfamiliar with more than the basics of Hawaiian history and culture may be best served getting more introductory context elsewhere, which I'm sure is true, and it is a little challenging to read books that include chapters that were dissertations, because dissertations are challenging to read! But back to the book: it's hard to summarize what Osorio has accomplished, except to say that I experienced it as an ‘upena of poetry, legend, Indigenous activism, and queer theory that speaks movingly to Native Hawaiians' love of and reciprocal obligation to the land and each other, and what understanding intimacy in this context might mean for Hawai'i's future and decolonial movements in other areas of the world, as well.
Side note: Osorio is, as a poet, also a very powerful speaker, and there are several great All My Relations episodes in which she and other nonviolent activists share their resistance work related to safeguarding Mauna Kea that I highly recommend.
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.
All Hillerman's characteristic elements are here: nicely sustained pace without gimics to create suspense, a meandering tour of Dineh geography, and Leaphorn & Chee's observant, analytical minds. I've read these all out of order, so it was fun to see them circling each other warily in this book, not yet accomplices so measuring each other's virtues and vices. There are also some interesting subplots here related to the insufficiency of translation and the ongoing settler-colonialism of academia.
I picked this up at a lending library kind of surprised I've never read it before it turned out that Ephron's vinaigrette recipe from this little book still has power over people. Caveat to this is that parts have aged POORLY (along with many, many, many other things that have aged poorly): for example, I don't think I realized that Ephron was privileged enough that her life included multiple domestic workers, etc. Obviously, it's very, very funny. Ephron's zest for life, even when things are going very poorly, is omnipresent, and her humor is multipurpose in a really excellent way: at times totally avoidant and at times instead deepening the pathos of whatever she is joking about. Finally, Carl Bernstein is an idiot. Maybe he and Ephron shouldn't have stayed married, but GEEZ was he an emotional fuckwit to her.
I'd already recommended this book to quite a few colleagues even before finishing it. Blume's articulation of an Indigenous American Psychological Paradigm is incisive and visionary. There is so much to process over time in his work: from the assumptions of colonialism that have created the “relational psychopathology” that much of modern psychology misconceptualizes (at times willfully!) as individual issues, to how psychologists might move from dispassion to compassion in using the wisdom of behavioral science to further the well-being of all, not just humans. I could go on, but really just read the book. This is a must-read for anyone interested in the work of decolonizing psychology, and I would argue also a must-read for anyone interested in the longevity of psychology as a field at all (which, as Blume makes clear, is only really a worthy goal if psychology can be more expansive in what we mean by well-being and to whose well-being we attend).
I was discussing this with a colleague/friend, and we stumbled into “gobsmacking” being the most-right word for Orange's astounding prologue, and that's how I felt about the especially stunning, agonizing, beautiful last chapter, too. Lots and lots of other beautiful/powerful moments throughout, and this strikes me above all as a love letter to Orange's community (both people and place). A favorite quote: “Being Indian has never been about returning to the land. The land is everywhere or nowhere.”
I'm sure part of why this ended up in a local lending library is that it's set on the Washington coast (where I live). I like a romance-suspense blend in theory, but this was fairly flat. One half of the mystery is fairly mysterious until the end, but the other half was obvious within the first few chapters, and the primary male character is so unrelentingly bossy that I'm not sure why his female counterpoint didn't smack him, let alone get serious with him within...a week of meeting? Now I'm just being peevish. It's fine. It was fine.