Julia

My aunt gave me this Granta as a joke (be sure to look at the cover for the full title) after a very enjoyable conversation on extended family dynamics. The issue was...less enjoyable just because the first two pieces are difficult to read because of how acutely they hew to the subtitle. Mikal Gilmore's essay about his brother who died by firing squad and Sappho Durrell's diaries (she later died by suicide; I'm not sure I want to revisit her dad's Alexandria Quartet now) were two very different but very adept portrayals of intense psychological pain. Oh! Plus later a story of a family of four that dies by roadside fire. Yeesh. There are some great photography series in other parts, and a story by Gregory Wolff (older brother of Tobias) is a palate cleanser at the end, but overall, this felt really uninterruptedly heavy to read. Not bad; just consider yourself forewarned should you ever come across it.

I just loved everything about this. Taylor's approach to this history (and present importance) of the Combahee River Collective through interviews with its founding members as well as Alicia Garza & Barbara Ransby was just such a powerful way to usher readers into the issues they raised and fought for that are just as critical now as they were then. I realized I really didn't have good context for understanding how closely Black and socialist feminism were aligned at the time, and how deeply other progressives (ahem White feminism ahem) failed in recognizing the full potential and necessity of coalition building. The interviews were a fantastic medium for getting a really powerful blend of theory, advocacy, and personal history, and there is so much wisdom in this little book. I would strongly recommend this for anyone who wants a deeper understanding of why Black feminism and intersectionality matter for us all.

Another Airbnb beach read. I don't think I've ever read Evanovich before, and was pleasantly surprised. Although this is #9 in the Stephanie Plum series, you can definitely hop in without prior knowledge and still enjoy.

The pros: A more diverse cast than is typical for these types of novels, which felt both true to the New Jersey setting and refreshing. Evanovich has a good sense of humor, so the novel doesn't take itself too seriously, either, which is always a plus. Finally, the heroine gets to enjoy two different love interests with no pressure to make a choice at the novel's end. Good for her!

The cons: A weird amount of fat phobia, actually? Which caught me by surprise. There are also moments when character diversity gets flattened into caricature, especially at the intersection of race/size/past history of sex work in ways that I don't think would have been funny when this was written, and certainly aren't funny now. Also, while Stephanie is a great protagonist in many ways, she is actually written as too smart to have it be fully believable that she missed the plot twist that the reader can clearly see coming at least as early as halfway through.

So, I don't feel a need to dip my toes in these waters again, but don't regret that I did.

I definitely originally read this book on a beach trip with a friend while a teenager, so this had the glow of nostalgia for me, calling my name from the cart outside a used bookstore. It's certainly very readable (took me less than a day), and has a few things going for it: I think the third-person narration of multiple characters could have felt choppy, but was more successful than I would have anticipated. I also find the pearl-clutching in goodreads reviews about how the sexuality of teenage girls is portrayed pretty funny - I think Blume is particularly gifted at capturing the hormonal cyclone (for both genders!) of adolescence, and there were many parts of the intensity of teenage crushes and unfocused-yet-persistent drumbeat of sexual energy that rang exquisitely true to my own experience. There's also some compelling observations about typically unspoken socioeconomic differences that I definitely missed as a teenaged reader. What didn't feel particularly enjoyable overall, however, is that although the characters all make complicated and interesting moral choices, Blume doesn't really provide them adequate interiority for the reader to see how each of the characters grapple with and/or avoid feelings related to those choices. This is particularly true because there's no narration for one of the two “summer sisters” (the one who isn't the protagonist), so she (and arguably the other characters as well, although to slightly lesser degrees) flattens further and further as a character as they move into adulthood. I'd summarize it in saying this is one of those 3-star reviews that feels like a 3-star when you're reading it, but doesn't leave a memorable aftertaste, so slides down into 2-star territory.

I hadn't read any Patchett since State of Wonder, and the oranges on the cover grabbed my attention in a used bookstore - there are evocative vibes of several geographical areas in the novel, including descriptions that made me homesick for the stifling humidity of Virginia in August, which is quite a feat. Both Commonwealth and my recollection State of Wonder make me slightly curious about how I'd feel about Bel Canto upon re-reading, by which I remember being totally, positively stunned. Anyway, I very much liked but did not love this. This is a novel about family culture(s), the ties that bind (or don't), and how we each have to make peace with shared history in our own ways. Patchett clearly feels great affection for her characters, which engendered empathy in me as a reader, as well, but there's something about the structure (I suspect it may be too many “main” or “main-ish” characters to invest in any one too deeply, although I appreciated the chance to view the same family tragedy from different viewpoints) that made things feel slightly cursory when I wanted more depth. My primary feeling upon finishing was gratitude for novels in general, but a hankering to re-read some Marilynne Robinson or Richard Ford, not more Patchett.

Okay, first of all, J. K. Rowling is unrepentant about her transphobia, so I won't be buying her books or reading her stuff in the future. But September was really stressful, and I confess that I comfort re-read Half-Blood & Deathly Hallows, which normally function as my yoga blocks. I could just not put this re-read on goodreads, but that wouldn't be very honest! So here we are. I think my favorite part of this one are the Harry and Dumbledore interactions, definitely the deepest and most complex of the series. One irony there is that relationship is all about wisdom, compassion and mentorship, so it feels pretty ironic that she's not using her platform for more inclusive good. TERFs, sigh.

As noted in my review of Half-Blood Prince, J. K. Rowling's transphobia is a big problem, and is worth explicitly denouncing. And good on the celebrities in the movies using their platform to do so; I found Bonnie Wright's words on the matter particularly moving. It was hard (as it should be) to re-read the end of the series knowing more about the author's flaws, and in particular her lack of willingness to consider them as such. The series is still quite something. This book drags in the middle due to too much time in that stupid tent, and I really dislike that Hermione ended up with Ron, but this is a compelling end to a complex series that still resonates upon re-read. I think part of why I gravitated back is I have a few therapy patients who are big Harry Potter fans, and there is material in here that continues to resonate with them in deep and effective ways. Like in the train station with Dumbledore at the end: “Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?”

OMG, this was several orders of magnitude better than my last venture in old romance novels from the Pacific Beach, WA lending library! I learned about pagan sheela na gigs (worth the Wikipedia read), the relationship was pleasantly egalitarian despite the Regency time period, and the protagonist and her beloved had both hot sex and witty repartee. Exactly what you want in a beach read!

Belc's memoir of nonbinary parenthood is a pleasure to read from start to finish. He grapples with what gender means in the context of personal development, relationships, pregnancy, being an embodied human generally, and parenting. Actually, grappling is the wrong word. More like, thoughtfully contends with all those areas of intersection and more, while creating a memoir that also reads like a love letter to his wife and their children. The inclusion of family photos and archival bureaucratic paperwork highlighting the discrepancy between parenting as it really occurs and societal ideas about “natural mothers” feels effortless, not forced. I'm just grateful he shared this story with the world.

This was good! A total palette cleanser from my other recent romance novel. Rochon is clearly a feminist romance novel writer without being didactic about it, and this novel has all the elements I want in the genre - zippy plot, believably flawed characters you root for, genuine heat that doesn't fall into tired sexual tropes. I think I get a little distracted by plots that are so “of the moment,” like how the protagonist works at a tech start-up. My eyes glazed over a bit when she described the details of the app she was creating, but not in a way that diminished overall enjoyment. I'm not sure I'll seek another of Rochon's out soon, but next time I'm in the mood for a romance novel, this would definitely be where I head.

In this case, my four-star rating doesn't actually mean I “really liked” this novel, more that three stars wouldn't have properly communicated how impactful I found it. It generated lots of discussion in my queer psychologist consultation group, in a good way! It is hard to find stories that honor the complexity of people's real lives when that complexity is highly politicized, and Peters deserves all the accolades for writing a novel that is a form of activism without trying to do that advocacy by presenting the world with “acceptable” trans* characters - perhaps her love letter to the trans* community as it actually can be is this novel's real activism. The issues this novel raises are pressing, compelling ones, and I am glad to have thought more deeply about them. My quibbles are the following: 1) Although it's a character, not plot-driven novel, the character development is uneven. I don't think I ever really understood how Ames managed his dysphoria in his relationship with Katrina, and we get so much information about Reese in the present, but much less about her “origin story” than the other characters. 2) The characters, regardless of gender identity, are all a little exhausting in their own ways. Of course a therapist is going to suggest therapy, but...I think they might benefit from therapy?? I'm more into escapism in my reading these days. One last upside, however, is I really like how Peters nailed the dismount by ending on a solidly ambiguous note. That's the kind of frustration I don't mind handling as a reader.

I found this in a lending library replete with romance novels in the tiny town of Pacific Beach, WA (as all lending libraries in tiny beach towns should be). It is very representative of the genre (which I like!), but not exceptional, and grating in one significant way. The author is totally up on her medieval history, so I did actually enjoy and learn from the political intrigue aspects of the plot, but the central romance is just way too consistently about rape fantasy for me. I don't want that to sound judgmental, because there is a wide swath of things that people find sexy and enjoy in consensual ways, but if a relationship is all “hate sex,” that's just not my particular cup of tea. No matter how satisfying the characters are written as finding it afterwards. But my feelings aren't hurt, and it was exactly the sort of thing you zip through at the beach and then never think of again (or at least, once you write your goodreads review).

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.

I liked Ancillary Justice, so to feel the second novel in the series upping the ante was pretty fun as a reader. I think one of the most interesting plot points of this part of the trilogy is how Breq's identity as an ancillary (i.e., non-human-but-made-from-a-murdered-human AI; this isn't a spoiler alert as that's clear from from the first novel) gives them passing privilege among humans, with the downside passing always also includes: hearing in an even more unfiltered manner how clearly and easily humans distinguish between themselves and other (read: lesser) life forms. Breq also struggles with themes about what privacy and consent mean in a hyper-connected world, and those around her and under her command wrestle with whether individuals have the power for change in vast, slow moving, inequitable systems. There's a quote from a review of the front of the book that refers to the trilogy as a “space opera,” and opera doesn't speak to me personally, usually, but I get what they mean: thematically, the scope of this trilogy really feels like what it means to be a person (human or otherwise) in the world.

A dear friend gifted me this book. My star rating might be a bit misleading - for another anchor, I liked it enough that I plan to buy & read the other two books in the trilogy. My two favorite things about the book are both interesting philosophical issues: first, what does it mean to be human (deftly explored from many compelling angles by a protagonist who is not seen as human by the world she inhabits); and second, what is it with our obsession with gendering? The protagonist's primary language doesn't use gendered pronouns, and as someone who works really hard to embrace gender fluidity both professionally and in my personal life, it was very instructive to notice my own desire to “know” the gender of characters all described as “she,” and then reflect on why that felt important for me to know. I think it's a great example of a way of raising a complex and important issue in a novel that never felt didactic, but more truly experiential. Plot-wise, I think Leckie introduced but then didn't fully explore spiritual/existential issues as effectively as she could have, and there were times in the first half when the timeline & characters were a little harder for me to follow than I normally find sci-fi in a way that felt accidental, not intentional. Overall, though, I enjoyed this, and want to find out what the narrator does next in what promises to be a sequel full of moral ambiguity.

My rating for the first half of the novel is higher than the second half, particularly the end. I got a copy of the 10th anniversary edition, and it was interesting to read Okorafor's notes a decade later. The protagonist, Onyesonwu (whose name means “who fears death”), undergoes female genital mutilation (using the author's descriptive phrase here) as a preteen, and based on controversy around Okorafor's depiction of the practice, the novel was originally banned in Nigeria (Okorafor is Nigerian American). She doesn't regret her authorial choice, and I'm really glad it's in the book: it's a nuanced portrayal of the very complex cultural issues that surround any practice that is controversial to those outside a culture (and often, as the novel portrays and real life makes clear, to those within it!). Okay, I need to lay off the parentheticals. Anyway, I wish other equally interesting plot points had been treated with similar intricacy. The novel is essentially Onyesonwu's bildungsroman blended with a hero's journey, set in a futurist Sudan during a genocide in which rape is frequently used as a weapon of war, and I felt a little let down on both major themes. Onyesonwu's development and personal growth is beautifully traced in the first half, but flattens noticeably in the second half, and the issues related to genocide and the problem of evil, are similarly flattened into overemphasis on a singular villain as opposed to the social circumstances that give such people the opportunity to reach for and wield incredible destructive power. There is tremendous moral ambiguity in the final chapters, which I actually appreciate, but very little exploration of that ambiguity, especially Onyesonwu's penultimate actions, and I think that lets down a great character. Overall, though, I'm glad I read this, and am curious about what else Okorafor has written. I'm also glad that this was optioned by HBO, because although it would be tempting to get sucked into the magical elements of the plot, I think a great actress could take what's there and run with it in a way that would add depth to Onyesonwu's later choices that would adjust for the weaknesses at the end.

This was another find from one of my neighborhood lending libraries, and I delayed on starting it for the silliest reason: I loved Americanah so much, how could Ngozi Adichie's skill from two novels before that be comparable? Like I said, silly. Calling things “coming-of-age” stories tends to flatten them a bit, and that's only the starting point here: this is a coming-of-age story that is also about all kinds of violence: domestic, religious, political/governmental, colonialist. The character studies are beautiful, Ngozi Adichie has apparently always been tremendously skilled at visual imagery, and the complex emotions ring true. My one complaint, which may actually reflect that this was her first novel, is that the denouement is paced differently than the rest of the novel, in a way that feels a little off-kilter. Still, such a great book.

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.

Just finished this for my queer psychology consultation group. It took us forever to get through, which was partially 2020, and partially this text. I'm not one of those people who have a low tolerance for post-modern academic writing: I read & loved Judith Butler in college. Butler was actually Salamon's dissertation adviser, and I don't want to be overly critical, but Salamon's writing is Butler-esque without the benefit of being, ya know, Butler. There are just so many textual flourishes that feel obfuscating instead of clarifying. I do think that Salamon's phenomenlogical point is a very important one: people like trans-exclusionary radical feminists (TERFs) fall into a error of wanting two incompatible things to be true at once, that gender is both a completely social construct and a fixed biological Truth (TERFs hold this untenable position by wanting cisgender women to break free of the wholly constructed category of “women” in a patriarchy, while denying that same freedom to transwomen because of their essentially and irrevocably “male” bodies - obviously this is a very harmful viewpoint for trans people, often in a concrete way, as well as intellectually sloppy). I appreciate her use of psychoanalytic texts to posit that all of us experience dysphoria about our bodies to some degree (like does anyone know anyone who is always 100% unsurprised and pleased by what they see in the mirror and/or photos/videos/audio of themselves), meaning that the trans experience, while of course unique in very important ways, is also part of a spectrum of human embodied experience. I just wish her arguments had been more clearly stated, and although this was never intended to be clinical reading, more closely linked to the lived experiences of trans people in a transphobic world, and more frequently and effectively using their voices to illuminate those experiences.

In the ongoing nightmare of 2020-2021, I bought this YA quartet for a rush of nostalgia, recalling loving it in elementary school. I'm writing about it as a set because I really wouldn't read any of the novels individually now. Instead, I just polished them all off in a single weekend, and I think the best thing I can say for them is that they actually made me feel rested and restored to head to work again on Monday and take actions amidst the political chaos of the U.S. right now. Which is not an understatement in the current era!

Here's what held up: Alanna is a great protagonist. She's not perfect, but you really root for her, and her growth is believable. Pierce manages to capture the very distinctive personalities of the various supporting characters without too much explication, and the fantasy/magical elements are interwoven organically throughout the other plot elements. If you want a captivating story that doesn't punish you as a reader but still chugs along with good moments of suspense, all the elements are here.

Here's what I didn't realize as an elementary schooler: Pierce is a second-wave feminist through and through. There are great parts of that (SPOILER ALERT), like how Alanna gets to have premarital sex with three hot men with no judgment about her sexual identity being just another aspect of her lived experience (get it, girl; also, the only sexual descriptions are of kissing, but the steam is still palpable, and it makes me LOL sometimes to realize what I read when quite young as a generally unsupervised reader). But, BUT, the book is insufficiently intersectional. This shows up the most in the 3rd book, when Alanna is living among the Bazhir in the southern part of Tortall, where Pierce slips into some tropes about the sexism of “tribal” populations, and a few things that are just totally gratuitous, like Alanna's servant struggling with the pronunciation of an unfamiliar name at first (actually, now that I'm thinking about it, there's some white savior nonsense at the end of the first book, too). It's not a complete disaster - multiple characters rightly point out that sexism is rampant in the rest of Tortall, as well, and the plot makes clear that Alanna learns a great deal in a cultural exchange that is ultimately pretty balanced, which the clear result in her development is broader, more compassionate thinking. The supporting Bazhir characters are as wholly envisioned as the others, too. Still. I don't think these issues make the novels unsalvageable, but I would never give these books to a child now without some explicit conversation about what could & should have been better done with regard to ethnocentrism in addition to sexism.

I think this excellent book suffered from being the first thing I read after finishing The Broken Earth Trilogy; I suspect most books' sheens would be somewhat dulled in comparison to the dazzle of TBET. Still, I raced through this and enjoyed it, with two caveats. First, there's one relationship between two main characters that grated on me for most of the novel, and I have a pretty high tolerance for interpersonal tension both in real life and fiction. After a plot twist, however, it becomes clear that the reader was supposed to be squirming reading those interactions, and I wish Johnson had been willing to give me a reprieve a bit earlier. The other caveat is there's another plot twist late in the novel that relies on the first person narrator failing to disclose a significant decision with the reader. That felt a bit sneaky to me, and is a good example of the success of TBET, which involved Jemisin deftly navigating second person narration without committing narrative errors of didactic commission or tricksy omission.

STILL! I'm just being picky! I believe this is Johnson's first novel, and based on how much I liked this, I'm hoping she keeps putting great stories out there in the world. Cara, her protagonist, is a nuanced and powerful character who will stay with me for a long time.

I think this is my favorite of the trilogy. So much juicy exposition, both of characters and plot. This is easily the busiest I've been at work in my adult life, and I try to be pretty strict about my bedtime, and the best thing I can say about this book is that I kept staying up too late reading it.

The trilogy as a whole is a crystal-clear five stars from me. The finale gets 4 stars because it is so poignant to love a story so much that reading the whole last book is suffused with the resignation that the story is going to come to an end! I think the penultimate chapter is a squee bit rushed in terms of pacing, but the final chapter makes up for it. I'm sure I'm going to read the series again, and probably not even all that long from now!

I cannot recall encountering another book that used more words I didn't know. There are times that Haskell can be a teensy bit pedantic, but often, he plucked words out of obscurity that fit his usage well, and the book generally thrums with his keen intellect. I'm married to an arborist, so was predisposed to love this book, but it really is fantastic. Chapters include in-depth explorations from a ceibo tree in the Amazon to a Callery pear in New York City, and Haskell's eye for detail makes learning a great deal while reading enjoyable. Here's one of my favorite passages:

“Muir said that he walked ‘with nature,' a companion. Many contemporary environmental groups use language that echoes Muir, placing nature outside us. ‘What's the return on nature?' asks the Nature Conservancy. ‘Just like any good investment, nature yields dividends.' The masthead for the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, Europe's largest environmental group, promises that the organization is ‘giving nature a home.' Educators warn that if we spend too long on the wrong side of the divide, we'll develop a pathology, the disorder of nature deficit. In the post-Darwin world of networked kinship, though, we can extend Muir's thought and understand that we walk within. Nature yields no dividends; it contains the entire economy of every species. Nature needs no home; it is home. We can have no deficit of nature; we are nature, even when we are unaware of this nature. With the understanding that humans belong in this world, discernment of the beautiful and the good can emerge from human minds networked within the community of life, not human minds peering in from outside.”

I found this book in a donut shop in Arlington, VA, where I spent most of early 2020 before my dad died in March. It caught my eye in their lending library because Jamie has won a John Burroughs Medal, and I was partway through “The Song of Trees,” for which Haskell won a JB Medal, as well, and I've really been enjoying environmental non-fiction. My star rating doesn't totally reflect my emotional experience with this book: there was something oddly soothing reading a poet's prose about Neolithic ruins while bearing witness to someone's death, and this book was one I could come back to throughout this year without losing the connection to the story despite significant lapses in time. There are times that I think Jamie came close to exoticizing her subjects (the book includes passages about Alaska, a Tibetan town in China, and Scotland), but I think she recognized and addressed that tendency relatively successfully by the book's end, and she has a great deal of compassion for the world, both human and everything else.