(Continued from Part 1)
On the Road: The Original Scroll - Jack Kerouac (2008; first ed. 1957)
"At night in this part of the West the stars, as I had seen them in Wyoming, are as big as Roman Candles and as lonely as the Prince who's lost his ancestral home and journeys across the spaces trying to find it again, and knows he never will. So they slowly wheeled the night and then long before ordinary dawn the great red sun appeared far over entire territorial areas of dun land towards West Kansas and the birds sang above Denver."
This book - the first draft of the edited-down, originally published version (which, by the way, I haven't read) - is full of a rollicking, occasionally-breathtaking type of prose. Keroauc's descriptions and portraits are often crude and unflattering (including those referencing himself), but his story of his ramblings across the U.S. is still somehow engrossing and infectious. I can't hate it even though sometimes I was thinking that I probably should. Side note: It's apparently great being a white male in 1950's America.
This edition also includes four introductory essays, which seemed a little excessive to me. At the very least, they're better read after reading the book itself (or at least after having read the original version).
Related Reads:
Travels with Charley (Steinbeck)
Walden on Wheels (Ilgunas)
When Helping Hurts, 2nd edition - Steve Corbett and Brian Fikkert (2012; 1st ed. 2009)
"One of the biggest problems in many poverty-alleviation efforts is that their design and implementation exacerbates the poverty of being of the economically rich - their god-complexes - and the poverty of being of the economically poor - their feelings of inferiority and shame."
I picked this up because I was semi-interested in a local book study group (which I never ended up attending). When Helping Hurts is really written for church groups and ministry leaders, and thus I didn't find it terribly applicable as just an individual. But it does have some good advice and food for thought - actually listening to the people you're trying to help, for instance (go figure). There are also lots of thought-and-action-provoking questions at the end of each chapter. And I appreciated how the authors take on the uncomfortable tasks of addressing things like problematic short-term missions trips and how systemic racism affects churches, and they ask readers to really examine and confront their own motivations and assumptions.
Are there better books out there for the casual reader? Certainly. But I do think that this book is a necessary one for its audience intended audience: conservative churches who are trying to do what's right. Side note: I took some issue with the authors' insistence that organizations and programs must be spiritual (read: Evangelical Christian) in order to effectively help people, but views along these lines shouldn't be a surprise to anyone reading this.
Related Reads
Toxic Charity (Lupton)
Just Mercy (Stevenson)
The Art of Asking - Amanda Palmer (2014)
"It’s really easy to love passing strangers unconditionally. They demand nothing of you. It is really hard to love people unconditionally when they can hurt you."
Full disclosure: I knew very little about Amanda Palmer going into this book aside from what I'd read written about her by her husband Neil Gaiman. This book is part self-help, part memoir (Palmer doesn't really touch on her childhood and adolescence, but does discuss quite a bit of her life and pursuits from college and onward). Palmer's relating of her experiences and life-lessons results in a heady blend of messy, real, fascinating, and instructive thoughts. It's different, it's quotable, and it made me think about things in ways that I normally wouldn't. I've had a hard time coming up with more of a description for this book, so I'm just going end by blanket recommending it.
Related Reads:
Bird by Bird: Instructions on Writing and Life (Lamott)
Stories of Your Life and Others [Short Stories] - Ted Chiang (2002)
"What if the experience of knowing the future changed a person? What if it evoked a sense of urgency, a sense of obligation to act precisely as she knew she would?"
To me, this collection of Science Fiction stories both stands out as well as integrates with the variety of other collections I've read within this genre. Chiang's style is more thought-based than necessarily story-focused, and he tends to heavily incorporate explorations of various subjects, including philosophy, religion, language, architecture, and physics. Overall, I really enjoyed the variety of tone and subjects here, though overall there's a sense of vague melancholy that pervades. Anyone who's even remotely a fan of the genre should pick this up, and those unfamiliar with scifi should give this a try.
Related Reads:
The Line Between [Short Stories] (Beagle)
Smoke and Mirrors ["Murder Mysteries"] (Gaiman)
The Golem and the Jinni (Wecker)
The Merlin Conspiracy - Diana Wynne Jones (2003)
"'...They can't both be real.'
'Why not?' he more or less snapped. 'You have a very limited notion of what's real, don't you?'"
This is technically a sequel to Jones' book Deep Secret, which was a favorite of mine from last year. It's not strictly necessary to read Deep Secret first (my husband picked up the book and enjoyed it without any prior context), though it is helpful to have a smattering of knowledge about Arthurian legends. Like the preceding novel, The Merlin Conspiracy switches between perspectives, although here it's all in first-person point of view.
This book seems a little more solidly in the YA category than its predecessor, possibly because most of the protagonists here are younger than those in the preceding book. Perhaps because of this, it didn't seem quite as polished. The book has its imperfections, to be sure. And the end leaves the reader wanting more. But on the whole, it's a nice adventure book of the type of reality/magic mishmash that I'm particularly fond of.
Related Reads:
The Sword and the Circle (Sutcliff)
The Black Cauldron (Alexander)
Equal Rites (Pratchett)
Raising Demons - Shirley Jackson (1957)
"Naturally a husband presents enormous irritations no matter what he is doing, and I think it is unreasonable to regard a teaching husband as necessarily more faulty than, say, a plumbing husband, but there is no question but what the ego of a teaching husband is going to be more vividly developed, particularly if if teaches in a girls' college."
To be completely honest, I had a hard time with this book and almost gave up after the first chapter - turns out it's not a great idea to start reading a dryly humorous book about a woman complaining about how her children have too much stuff right after you read memoirs about surviving the Khmer Rouge and having children with drug addictions. But I picked the book up again after a cooling off period, and I'm glad I stuck it out in the end.
I went in expecting something perhaps a little darker, given the title and Jackson's fiction. But this really is simply an autobiography that's a slice of her life with her husband and four children in 1940's America. It's certainly more readable than Ernestine Carey's Rings Around Us (written in almost the same year), and you can feel Jackson's struggles with embracing her role as housewife and chafing against the restrictiveness of it. I probably should've read the predecessor (Life Among the Savages) first for context, and I wouldn't say this book is a necessary read for Shirley Jackson fans, but it's palatable.
Related Reads:
My Family and Other Animals (Durrell)
Everything is Horrible and Wonderful - Stephanie Wittels Wachs (2018)
"No one could've saved you. Not a girl. Not a sponsor. Not a mother or a father. Not a sister.
No one."
This memoir was written by comedian/producer Harris Wittels' older sister and only sibling, Stephanie. Harris died of a heroin overdose in 2015 at age 30, and his death - coming just months after he proclaimed his sobriety publicly - shattered his family and stunned fans.
This book, then, while a tribute to Harris, is also a window into grief as well as an unflinching look at the effects of serious drug addiction on a family. As Stephanie writes, she switches between the past - the years and months leading up to her brother's death - and the present, where she and her family process their grief and move forward in varying ways. Everything is Horrible and Wonderful feels like part journal, part letter to Harris; Stephanie often writes as if addressing her brother ("What happened between clicking send and sticking a needle in your arm?"), and her raw emotions of grief and anger - both at her brother's addiction and his senseless death - are palpable. But so, too, are the good memories and anecdotes that she shares about her family and Harris' accomplishments.
There's a common thread to addiction that makes all affected families share the same basic story despite sometimes wildly different circumstances. The Wittels' childhood was permissive as mine was strict, and I wasn't coming into this book as a particular fan of Harris' work. But the common thread of the addiction of a sibling meant I could deeply relate to all the things that Stephanie shares that go hand-in-hand with addiction - the secrets, the anxiety, the lies, the grief, the anger, the judgement from others. In summation, anyone who's dealt with the grief that comes from the addiction or the death of a family member will find this memoir entirely relatable, and any fans of Harris will find it true-to-life: an honest, messy, and loving tribute.
Related Reads:
It's Okay to Laugh (Crying is Cool, Too) (Purmort)
On the Road: The Original Scroll - Jack Kerouac (2008; first ed. 1957)
"At night in this part of the West the stars, as I had seen them in Wyoming, are as big as Roman Candles and as lonely as the Prince who's lost his ancestral home and journeys across the spaces trying to find it again, and knows he never will. So they slowly wheeled the night and then long before ordinary dawn the great red sun appeared far over entire territorial areas of dun land towards West Kansas and the birds sang above Denver."
This book - the first draft of the edited-down, originally published version (which, by the way, I haven't read) - is full of a rollicking, occasionally-breathtaking type of prose. Keroauc's descriptions and portraits are often crude and unflattering (including those referencing himself), but his story of his ramblings across the U.S. is still somehow engrossing and infectious. I can't hate it even though sometimes I was thinking that I probably should. Side note: It's apparently great being a white male in 1950's America.
This edition also includes four introductory essays, which seemed a little excessive to me. At the very least, they're better read after reading the book itself (or at least after having read the original version).
Related Reads:
Travels with Charley (Steinbeck)
Walden on Wheels (Ilgunas)
When Helping Hurts, 2nd edition - Steve Corbett and Brian Fikkert (2012; 1st ed. 2009)
"One of the biggest problems in many poverty-alleviation efforts is that their design and implementation exacerbates the poverty of being of the economically rich - their god-complexes - and the poverty of being of the economically poor - their feelings of inferiority and shame."
I picked this up because I was semi-interested in a local book study group (which I never ended up attending). When Helping Hurts is really written for church groups and ministry leaders, and thus I didn't find it terribly applicable as just an individual. But it does have some good advice and food for thought - actually listening to the people you're trying to help, for instance (go figure). There are also lots of thought-and-action-provoking questions at the end of each chapter. And I appreciated how the authors take on the uncomfortable tasks of addressing things like problematic short-term missions trips and how systemic racism affects churches, and they ask readers to really examine and confront their own motivations and assumptions.
Are there better books out there for the casual reader? Certainly. But I do think that this book is a necessary one for its audience intended audience: conservative churches who are trying to do what's right. Side note: I took some issue with the authors' insistence that organizations and programs must be spiritual (read: Evangelical Christian) in order to effectively help people, but views along these lines shouldn't be a surprise to anyone reading this.
Related Reads
Toxic Charity (Lupton)
Just Mercy (Stevenson)
The Art of Asking - Amanda Palmer (2014)
"It’s really easy to love passing strangers unconditionally. They demand nothing of you. It is really hard to love people unconditionally when they can hurt you."
Full disclosure: I knew very little about Amanda Palmer going into this book aside from what I'd read written about her by her husband Neil Gaiman. This book is part self-help, part memoir (Palmer doesn't really touch on her childhood and adolescence, but does discuss quite a bit of her life and pursuits from college and onward). Palmer's relating of her experiences and life-lessons results in a heady blend of messy, real, fascinating, and instructive thoughts. It's different, it's quotable, and it made me think about things in ways that I normally wouldn't. I've had a hard time coming up with more of a description for this book, so I'm just going end by blanket recommending it.
Related Reads:
Bird by Bird: Instructions on Writing and Life (Lamott)
Stories of Your Life and Others [Short Stories] - Ted Chiang (2002)
"What if the experience of knowing the future changed a person? What if it evoked a sense of urgency, a sense of obligation to act precisely as she knew she would?"
To me, this collection of Science Fiction stories both stands out as well as integrates with the variety of other collections I've read within this genre. Chiang's style is more thought-based than necessarily story-focused, and he tends to heavily incorporate explorations of various subjects, including philosophy, religion, language, architecture, and physics. Overall, I really enjoyed the variety of tone and subjects here, though overall there's a sense of vague melancholy that pervades. Anyone who's even remotely a fan of the genre should pick this up, and those unfamiliar with scifi should give this a try.
Related Reads:
The Line Between [Short Stories] (Beagle)
Smoke and Mirrors ["Murder Mysteries"] (Gaiman)
The Golem and the Jinni (Wecker)
The Merlin Conspiracy - Diana Wynne Jones (2003)
"'...They can't both be real.'
'Why not?' he more or less snapped. 'You have a very limited notion of what's real, don't you?'"
This is technically a sequel to Jones' book Deep Secret, which was a favorite of mine from last year. It's not strictly necessary to read Deep Secret first (my husband picked up the book and enjoyed it without any prior context), though it is helpful to have a smattering of knowledge about Arthurian legends. Like the preceding novel, The Merlin Conspiracy switches between perspectives, although here it's all in first-person point of view.
This book seems a little more solidly in the YA category than its predecessor, possibly because most of the protagonists here are younger than those in the preceding book. Perhaps because of this, it didn't seem quite as polished. The book has its imperfections, to be sure. And the end leaves the reader wanting more. But on the whole, it's a nice adventure book of the type of reality/magic mishmash that I'm particularly fond of.
Related Reads:
The Sword and the Circle (Sutcliff)
The Black Cauldron (Alexander)
Equal Rites (Pratchett)
Raising Demons - Shirley Jackson (1957)
"Naturally a husband presents enormous irritations no matter what he is doing, and I think it is unreasonable to regard a teaching husband as necessarily more faulty than, say, a plumbing husband, but there is no question but what the ego of a teaching husband is going to be more vividly developed, particularly if if teaches in a girls' college."
To be completely honest, I had a hard time with this book and almost gave up after the first chapter - turns out it's not a great idea to start reading a dryly humorous book about a woman complaining about how her children have too much stuff right after you read memoirs about surviving the Khmer Rouge and having children with drug addictions. But I picked the book up again after a cooling off period, and I'm glad I stuck it out in the end.
I went in expecting something perhaps a little darker, given the title and Jackson's fiction. But this really is simply an autobiography that's a slice of her life with her husband and four children in 1940's America. It's certainly more readable than Ernestine Carey's Rings Around Us (written in almost the same year), and you can feel Jackson's struggles with embracing her role as housewife and chafing against the restrictiveness of it. I probably should've read the predecessor (Life Among the Savages) first for context, and I wouldn't say this book is a necessary read for Shirley Jackson fans, but it's palatable.
Related Reads:
My Family and Other Animals (Durrell)
Everything is Horrible and Wonderful - Stephanie Wittels Wachs (2018)
"No one could've saved you. Not a girl. Not a sponsor. Not a mother or a father. Not a sister.
No one."
This memoir was written by comedian/producer Harris Wittels' older sister and only sibling, Stephanie. Harris died of a heroin overdose in 2015 at age 30, and his death - coming just months after he proclaimed his sobriety publicly - shattered his family and stunned fans.
This book, then, while a tribute to Harris, is also a window into grief as well as an unflinching look at the effects of serious drug addiction on a family. As Stephanie writes, she switches between the past - the years and months leading up to her brother's death - and the present, where she and her family process their grief and move forward in varying ways. Everything is Horrible and Wonderful feels like part journal, part letter to Harris; Stephanie often writes as if addressing her brother ("What happened between clicking send and sticking a needle in your arm?"), and her raw emotions of grief and anger - both at her brother's addiction and his senseless death - are palpable. But so, too, are the good memories and anecdotes that she shares about her family and Harris' accomplishments.
There's a common thread to addiction that makes all affected families share the same basic story despite sometimes wildly different circumstances. The Wittels' childhood was permissive as mine was strict, and I wasn't coming into this book as a particular fan of Harris' work. But the common thread of the addiction of a sibling meant I could deeply relate to all the things that Stephanie shares that go hand-in-hand with addiction - the secrets, the anxiety, the lies, the grief, the anger, the judgement from others. In summation, anyone who's dealt with the grief that comes from the addiction or the death of a family member will find this memoir entirely relatable, and any fans of Harris will find it true-to-life: an honest, messy, and loving tribute.
Related Reads:
It's Okay to Laugh (Crying is Cool, Too) (Purmort)
