Julia

A dear friend recommended this as honeymoon reading, and as soon as I was a chapter in, I was just so, so appreciative of how well she knows me :) As she told me, it's a mash-up of Austen's dry humor (set in Europe during the Napoleonic Wars) and delicious magical realism. I could not believe this book had been kicking around for just over a decade without me already enjoying it. I suppose someone's mileage might vary based on their level of appreciation for Austen and/or magical realism, but that would really leave me questioning whether they read for transportative pleasure or masochism. Life's short, but not too short to read these 800 pages.

This was a slow start for me, but the momentum kept building and I felt inspired and lucky to be reading this by the end. This is despite the subject matter but because of Driskill's handling of it: their central thesis is that settler-colonialism needed to erase Cherokee queerness (of both gender and sexual orientation, which are themselves hegemonic ways of thinking about human behavior) in order to carry out the colonial project, in conjunction with the promotion of chattel slavery and lateral oppression. Even still! Queer and Two-Spirit memory and energy persists and can point a way toward a decolonial future. Driskill is so expansive in their scope, captured beautifully by a quote in the introduction: “Because if you can see that far into the past, you can see that far into the future.” I love the phantom of memory they make space for in revisiting the historical record, and the voices of queer Cherokee activists at the end. These are connected by Driskill's double-walled basket metaphor, because there is space hidden between the walls that can be revealed if the weaver chooses to undo and then reweave their work.

This book is clearly a labor of love from the Quinault Indian Nation to its members. I really appreciated the gorgeous photos and extensive history. There were times when I felt a bit overwhelmed by the level of the detail about the logging industry in this area in the 19th and 20th centuries for my particular purposes, but as I type that, I think it's really that I could have used an update in the 31 years that have elapsed since this was published, especially as the climate continues to change.

This is a very useful book. It is, of course, of its era/discipline; at one point, Gunther observes that none of her “informants” had distinct names for the 3 different varieties of blackberries out here, but then reminds herself and the readers that only the most horticulturally-focused people in any culture tend to have language that specific. I agree with Kelda's review that a known response to settler-colonialism on the Olympic Peninsula was for Indigenous people to give ridiculous answers with a completely deadpan delivery to nosy White question-askers, but I have to say I'm glad that such answers might also be documented in this book! My major complaints about its ease of use is that I really hate how the drawings of the plants are in an index at the back, and I wish the pronunciation guide was embedded, instead of also appearing as an index. BUT, if you're into ethnobotany, all the flipping is worth 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.

I am so glad to have found this in the bookstore at Seabrook (https://www.facebook.com/joiedeslivres.seabrook/, if you ever need a great beach bookstore)! I've recently relocated to the Olympic Peninsula, and had not found many readily accessible options for tribal history, so this book, by the Olympic Peninsula Intertribal Cultural Advisory Committee, was a great addition to resources I've been collecting. There are chapters by S'Klallam, Skokomish, Squaxin Island, Quinault, Hoh, Quileute, and Makah tribal members, and each chapter covers so much ground - everything from origin myths, historical and ongoing cultural traditions and events, to treaty signing (which, on the part of the U.S. government, was in bad faith from the beginning and then shamefully and criminally additionally exploitative), and the status of language maintenance. This is 4/5 stars because I wish it was longer! As it is, however, this would be a lovely guide for someone visiting the Olympic Peninsula. Each chapter includes opportunities for visitors to engage with each tribe, their history, and the land they steward.

This was pleasant! I would file this under “true romance” as opposed to “steamy romance,” and my preference is for the latter, so this was never going to be 5 stars for me based on personal taste. If you'd like an easy read with likable characters, however, this fits that bill. It's also great to read a romance with diversity in its characters that feels true to life, neither central to the plot in a didactic way nor a side bar that is only addressed as lip service - there's a moving scene when the protagonist goes from dreading meeting her love interest's friends to relief when she realizes that the friend's girlfriend is also Black, with a restaurant bathroom conversation about it between them that is funny and joyful. One thing I did notice is that there's something about witty banter in modern romance novels that can feel a bit clunky to me - I can imagine a reader in the not-so-distant-future being baffled about the references to whatever the current technology is at the moment in a way that would distract from the actual interpersonal connection being depicted that ends up feeling distracting for me in the present (like the last romance novel I read before this had a subplot about the male love interest not having a mobile phone, but the novel was set during the present day based on references to social media, so that issue felt more like one that would have cropped up 15 years ago...but I digress). Like, I'm sure I'm missing TONS of context clues reading Austen, but that somehow doesn't seem to interfere with the zippiness of the dialogue for me, which can feel more forced in romances with modern settings. Overall, I was happy to pick this up in a lending library, even if I'm not sure I'd seek out the rest of the series. But writing this, now I'm thinking I would? Time will tell!

I'd like to buy Richard Ford a drink. In honor of Frank Bascombe, I'd like to make it an old fashioned.

I first read Richard Ford when I was far too young to appreciate him–I think I stumbled across “Independence Day” in late elementary school. I was glad to revisit him at the beach this summer.

In terms of logistics, “The Lay of the Land” is the third in a set of novels about Frank Bascombe's life (Who is he, you ask? A modern-day self-deprecating Renaissance man of a sort). The first two, “The Sportswriter” and “Independence Day” (which won a Pulitzer), will go down in family history as the only two works of fiction that both of my parents have read in my entire years of being cognizant of their reading habits. So Ford's got pretty wide appeal.

The end of the trilogy is...sweeping in its attention to the minutiae of life, and our idiosyncratic and fumbling reactions to said minutiae. Which I mean in a completely excellent way. Easy description of the book's many & subtle virtues is escaping me at this point, but suffice it to say that I really, really liked it.

White Teeth is one of my favorite books ever, and in comparison, On Beauty was good, but a little disappointing. The Autograph Man somehow manages to split the difference between the two, so I feel quite pleased at having had another opportunity to enjoy Zadie Smith's ongoing literary sparkle. Her writing style is a little hard to pin down, which I think is part of the fun; there's a sprinkling of magical realism, her obvious passion for historical detail (and I'm a sucker for Judaism), unusual plots than somehow avoid being twee, and her incisive ability to tap into the chaos and messiness of life. In sum, Ms. Smith is on my short list of people I'd love to have at a dinner party, and she'd better keep up the novel-writing game so I can continue to enjoy the fruits of her labor.

What can I say...weakness for historical fiction. Anyway, this one was certainly a page-turner. But, apparently Gregory's interpretations of the confirmable history of Anne Boleyn are occasionally a little wild, and I figured that out (thanks, Wikipedia!) after feeling like some of the plot twists were just flat out implausible. However, adultery, incest, homosexuality–you want it, this book has it.

It's hard to compare to my totally sublime experience reading Smith's first novel, “White Teeth,” for a fabulous class taught by a fabulous professor that elicited fabulous discussion. I hesitate to say that “On Beauty” is gloomier than “White Teeth.” Instead, I think “White Teeth” beautifully straddled the line between tragedy & comedy (often being both at once), and I either (quite possibly) need a class on “On Beauty” to appreciate it fully, or it was more plodding than Smith's first effort.

I felt compelled to finish this because I always feel compelled to finish books, but doubly so when I've borrowed it from a friend. In fairness, there was a point in the middle when I cared about what happened to the characters. But that point was a long time coming. Chalk it up to the economic climate, my general disdain for unhappy people who don't DO anything about being unhappy, or the barometric pressure, but I was bored and uninterested in the beginning. Things did get better, but that had more to do with twists of plot than character development, and by the end, the several characters I did feel invested in were mostly dropped from the arc of the story. Yes, work, life, and love can be complicated when you're a thirtysomething in New York, but I feel like that story has been told before. Better.

I still suspect that if you think realllllly hard about Niffenegger's conceptualization of time travel, there would be some practical holes, but who wants to think too hard about a novel? I stole this off a friend's bookshelf on a weekend trip to Berkeley, and was done in time to return it to her. I enjoyed the prose style and the characters, flawed in all their glory, but I think the real triumph of the book is her exploration of how a few simple folds in our linear conception of time might result in life-altering wrinkles. Also, I'm a sucker for a messy love story, and for novelists who let their characters have great sex.

It is so satisfying when a lending library find is enjoyable! If you are like me, this novel will make you fall head over heels in love with Martha Gellhorn, both the historical figure and this fictionalized version of her, her terrible taste in men and all, briefly contemplate if you also love Ernest Hemingway at his very most charming, and then decide that he just really, really needed to sober up and go to therapy (no, that is not anachronistic, I'm confident he was only several degrees of separation from some great psychoanalysts). McLain's writing especially sings when she works to capture both the atrocities and the “new normal” of the war zones Gellhorn traveled to for her reporting - there was much in here, especially about pre-WWII Spain, that made me think of and feel pangs for Ukrainians right now. I think there were times that she was a bit too heavy-handed with Gellhorn's internal monologue about Hemingway (OF COURSE most other writers would have feelings about being married to the author of “For Whom the Bell Tolls” when it came out, and I wish there had been a bit more nuance in her struggle that I suspect existed in real life), but overall, McLain's achievement here is to introduce me to a remarkable person and journalist (She was one of the only journalists who landed on Omaha Beach on D-Day! And here is her searing account of the trial of Adolf Eichmann, which I suspect is unfortunately perennially relevant to humanity) that I don't think I otherwise would have gotten around to googling.

I heard Kristen Neff give a keynote at a conference in 2016, and have been a fan since then (her website, https://self-compassion.org, is a great resource if you want to explore the concept of self-compassion before purchasing), dabbling in incorporating self-compassion with my other clinical work. It's a pretty seamless blend with Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, mindfulness, and interpersonal approaches I often use with patients. This book is a really excellent combination of psychoeducation and practice. It's accessible enough that some people could use this without the aid of a therapist, and it's challenging enough (in a good way!) to deepen therapy work that is already creating positive change. Neff & Germer explain things kindly without being patronizing, and are encouraging without being saccharine. The self-reflection exercises are thoughtful, and the mindfulness exercises are introduced in a nicely sequential manner. I've been using it pretty much constantly since buying it, and would recommend it widely.

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 found this extremely compelling. Like, it jumped ahead of two already-started books on my list and I stayed up too late to finish it compelling. Westover gives a harrowing account of her childhood, capturing the survivalist mentality still prevalent in parts of the inland northwest and how that intersects with Mormonism, but viewed through the painfully complex lens of the emotional ties that bind us to our families. She has a remarkable degree of empathy for all the people who shaped her in childhood, and deftly resists moralizing and an overly optimistic ending. Based on this, I would read anything she ever cares to write.

I am supremely confident that life in the Australia outback in the early 20th century was not for the faint of mind or body, but at some point, the tragedies befalling the Clearly family got just a wee bit melodramatic. I read another goodreads review that captured the feeling well: you end up reading a lot about things that happened to the characters, without quite as much balance based one what they did as one might need to keep the plot from feeling like a string deus ex machina (not sure how to pluralize that??). The characters are also divided in a bit too pat of a fashion between “saintly” and “not saintly” for my personal taste. Also...I could write way more about this, and no spoilers here, but the subplot about a romance between a Catholic priest and his teenaged parishioner has not aged well. (although that's not to say that such encounters don't happen, and McCullough did write in a way that casts light on the dark corners of the priest's mind that justify his behavior to himself). But look at me, being all negative! On the plus side, I hung on because I really enjoyed the sense of place McCullough conveys about the geography, climate, flora, & fauna of rural Australia, and there were moments of painfully accurate psychological acuity in some of the characters' struggles.

So I live in Utah now, right? I think I am beginning to have a pretty good grasp of Mormonism's pros (on average, they're really nice people, plus SLC Mormons provide way better support for local farmers than a whole bunch of self-righteous yuppies I know) and cons (um...patriarchy and homophobia?), and enjoy learning more the longer I live here. It's intriguing, and Jon Krakauer has come along and woven a fascinating, often terribly disturbing tale of Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints, and how such a sinister strain of fanaticism grew out of the mainstream Latter Day Saints. When you hear about crazy shit going down in the American southwest, it's FLDS, not LDS, that's at the bottom of it (Warren Jeffs and his polygamist compound being a prime example). LDS abhors the connection when it is made (which, in fairness, is mostly made by non-Mormons who don't understand that the LDS doesn't recognize FLDS as a valid offshoot of their faith), but historically speaking, the more colorful stories of Mormonism became the backbone of much of the FLDS theology and practice. Which Krakauer explores.

This book is gripping and well-written. And might give you nightmares based on the descriptions of more than a few murders, massacres, and rapes. I definitely had one or two. But the Mormon faith is one of the only homegrown American ones, I think for particularly American reasons, and it rivals (perhaps exceeds?) the conversion pace of Islam, so you'd best get reading now, because there are projected to be 265 million Mormons worldwide by 2080.

I...wish I liked this more. I really loved both of Eugenides' other novels. I think I get where he was trying to go, with regard to tongues in cheeks, but my main struggle as a reader was with consistency. I felt grabbed once in a while, but variations in tone both within and across characters really left me feeling disconnected. I found myself wanting to finish not because I was desperate to find out how things wrapped up (too neatly, in my opinion), but because I wanted to stop reading. I feel sad about that. Finally, for the first time in reading Eugenides, I got the vibe that he's Franzen adjacent, which I don't mean as a compliment. I want more from fiction; in particular, I want bigger risks and more authorial commitment to them.

As you might guess, my yoga practice has helped me become even more aware of how important I think a holistic approach to health is. And I think that, in a vast majority of respects, American attitudes (often including my own) about food, cuisine, nutrition, health, bodies, and the interactions between all those things are the antitheses of holistic. So, I'm obsessed with Michael Pollan because he presents a simple, logical, yet compassionate possible answer on how to allow food to make you both happy and well: Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. It says that right on the cover, but like Omnivore's Dilemma, Pollan expands his guidelines in the book with humor, research, and an investigative journalist's eye. Don't read this book if you want to be told WHAT food to eat (or what food you should feel bad about eating). Read this book if you want to learn a kinder, gentler (dare I say exponentially healthier?) way HOW to eat food.

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?”

This is one of those books for which assigning a star rating confounds me. Two stars doesn't adequately capture that I tore through it, but does reflect that there were times that I just really disliked the narrator, based on the author's grandmother. My cousin's wife gave it to me, and thought I would enjoy the themes related to women's agency in an unencouraging world. She was right, and I think the unlikeable narrator is perversely part of what I liked - we're still talking about women and likeability in 2019 (especially, unfortunately, as it relates to electability), so bless Forsythe Hailey for fictionalizing her grandmother in a complicated, sometimes confounding, manner. Overall, I found it oddly compelling.

I started this book somewhat begrudingly, as it was “recommended” reading for my fellowship. I finished it gratefully. Solomon's work is one of the most compelling pieces of non-fiction I have encountered. It's long, but that is because, as he explores parent-child relationships from a number of poignant lenses (from physical disability to musical prodigiousness), Solomon approaches the subject and all of his interviewees with great compassion, honesty, and an exquisite eye for philosophical, psychological, and ethical nuance. Highly, highly recommended.

It's possible I love this book because a small (perhaps larger than small?) part of me loves the restaurant industry. I might gripe, but it's fast-paced, sometimes scandalous, and always a sure-fire way to meet interesting people. Bourdain's book is a testament to that, and more. He's had quite a life, and is quite a writer. It's a quick, dirty, and entertaining read, plus I have a feeling if you're in New York and can figure out his thinly-veiled references, super-juicy biz gossip as well.