September 2018 Reads, Part 2

(continued from Part 1)

L. M. Montgomery Short Stories 1909-1922
From: Free Kindle Book
"It's better to be yourself with mousy hair and freckles than somebody else who is ever so beautiful."

I'm trying to read all of the Anne of Green Gables author's lesser-known works, and this is, I think, the final collection of short stories by L. M. Montgomery. Note: all of her short collections and a few of her novels are available for free on Kindle.

This is along the same lines of the others that I've previously reviewed, so I don't have too much new to say. Overall, they're light, predictable reading and an interesting window into the time period. I will note that one of the stories in particular was, disappointingly, pretty racist towards Native Americans - and it isn't the first time I've run across this in Montgomery's short story collections.

The Golden Road - L. M. Montgomery (1913)
From: Free Kindle Book
"There is certainly something a little supernatural about fireflies. Nobody pretends to understand them. They are akin to the tribes of fairy, survivors of the elder time when the woods and hills swarmed with the little green folk. It is still very easy to believe in fairies when you see those goblin lanterns glimmering among the fir tassels."

This is the sequel to The Story Girl, which I read a couple of years ago. I would say that since this book kind of jumps right in and doesn't introduce the handful of main characters, having read that first would be helpful. This is pretty much a more structured form of short stories, all told within a main story. It focuses on the growing up/adolescent years, and is an interesting window into the differences of childhood during that time (more seriously, chronic illness, death of playmates, etc. being treated as not unusual). It's generally a pretty soothing read, with Montgomery's lyrical and nostalgic nature descriptors sprinkled throughout.

As a side note of interest, a lengthy passage of the book (a piece of it below) seems to describe a character that has Synesthesia:
"The idea! As if thoughts were colored," giggled Felicity.
"Oh, they are!" cried the Story Girl. "Why, I can always SEE the color of any thought I think. Can't you?" ...
She said that everything had color in her thought; the months of the year ran through all the tints of the spectrum, the days of the week were arrayed as Solomon in his glory. Morning was golden, noon orange, evening crystal blue, and night violet. Every thought came to her mind robed in its own especial hue. Perhaps that was why her voice and words had such a charm, conveying to the listeners' perception such fine shadings of meaning and tint and music.

Related Reads:
The Story Girl (Montgomery)

A Conjuring of Light - V. E. Schwab (2017)
From: Local Library
"The more we love, the more we have to lose. But the only way to avoid loss is to avoid love. And what a sad world that would be."

This is the third book in the in the Shades of Magic trilogy - I read the first in January of this year and the second earlier this past month. I probably liked this final one the best out of all of the books, but it's a little hard to say why. It's along the same lines as the previous two, but maybe I felt this just wrapped up things and was representative as a whole for me? As with the other books, there are pieces of the book that I particularly like - the ship that deals in rare magical items, for instance.

The Butchering Art: Joseph Lister's Quest to Transform the Grisly World of Victorian Medicine - Lindsey Fitzharris (2017)
From: Local Library
"Lister's instrument case had everything a novice surgeon would need at the start of his training: bone saws to hack off limbs; forceps to pick apart tissue; probes to root out bullets and foreign bodies. But there was one tool Lister had carried with him to UCL that very few in his class possessed: his microscope."

This well-researched historical book earned a place on my yearly favorites list almost immediately after I started reading. Fitzharris focuses on the life, struggles, and accomplishments of Joseph Lister (1827-1912) - the "pioneer of antiseptic surgery."

One thing I appreciated was that the book paints a complete picture of the surrounding time period and lead-in to Lister's eventual career, giving decent quick backgrounds to many famous medical and pioneering men of the time (including Pasteur). The author also draws from personal letters, contemporary medical journals, and newspaper op-eds (often written by very opinionated doctors).

I personally didn't find the book overly gory, but readers should note that it goes into detail of numerous medical cases and describes what surgery was like at the time. For me, it was amazing to get a complete picture of the context of the time and the huge changes that took place (and the fight it took to create that change) - namely, of course, the effect adopting sterile and antiseptic practices had on mortality rates in hospitals.

Related Reads:
In the Heart of the Sea (Philbrick)
Half a Century (Swisshelm)
Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers (Roach)

Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur: King Arthur and the Legends of the Round Table - The Classic Edition by Keith Barnes (original: 1485; this edition: 1962)
From: Had since high school
"The feast continued, with merriment and good will, for in those days true chivalry was well appreciated."

Embarrassingly, this book has lingered on my to-read shelf since high school. I finally started it back in April of this year, so it took me a good five months to complete.  The middle third was the hardest to slog through - basically, it was tournament after tournament with seemingly endless names. This necessitated reading just a few pages at a time.

However, the first and last portions genuinely  held my interest. And was interesting to compare these stripped-down retellings with the various forms of stories that I've read throughout the years. I gained a new appreciation for the Legends in general.

So, if you're looking for a straightforward, encompassing collection of the Knights of the Round Table, this is pretty much the resource, and is really a necessity for anyone intrigued by the Legends of King Arthur. But candidly, embellished tales are more interesting, so I would tend to recommend reading this after having some knowledge of King Arthur and his knights.

Related Reads:
The Sword in the Circle (Sutcliffe)
The Once and Future King (White)

September 2018 Reads, Part 1

Fall has already fallen upon us, and I'm hoping we're in for some nice, cozy, reading weather. Full disclosure, I still read mostly books from the local library or little free libraries this past month rather than working on more of my to-read stack, but I did complete a book I'd been meaning to read since high school (Le Morte d'Arthur).

Dark Lord of Derkholm - Diana Wynne Jones (1998)
From: Local Library
"I'm quite excited to know you read minds," he told the dragon. "There aren't many who can these days."
"Nobody bothers to practice, that's all," said the dragon.

I've been slowly working on reading more of Howl's Moving Castle author Diana Wynne Jones' books. This one was hard to find, but my scouring of local libraries and waiting finally prevailed. Like many others on my to-read list of hers, Dark Lord of Derkholm is a YA fantasy book. The story is generally different than your mainstream fantasy and is clever, humorous, and interesting. It has rather a lot of main characters, which I had a little trouble keeping track of at first, but I appreciated that they "filled out" the world a bit more.

There were some things in the book that bothered me, though - I'll try to give mostly spoiler-free examples (content note: mention of sexual assault).  I weirdly had some trouble distinguishing between the wizard Derk and his son Blade, as they come across as quite similar in speech style, and the adult wizard's writing style reads fairly immature. Rape is stated as a passing mention of something that happens to unfortunate peasants; I think this underscores the seriousness of the Rules the book's world is bound to, but it's kind of jarring in context. There are somewhat-veiled references to (what is probably a) sexual assault on a young main character that takes a strong mental and emotional toll on them. And I struggled with the plight of the off-world soldiers - they're criminals, to be sure, but I didn't really feel it justified the book's treating them like unredemptive animals. I think Jones was trying to integrate some more adult ideas and food for thought into a YA book, but I guess to me there was a bit of a difficulty blending them appropriately, perhaps.

I wouldn't have been allowed to read this book as a child just due to the magic aspect, but I wish I had read it growing up and experienced it through the lens of an adolescent.

Related Reads:
Magic Kingdom for Sale (Brooks)
The Merlin Conspiracy (Jones)

They Poured Fire on Us From the Sky - Benson Deng, Alephonsion Deng, & Benjamin Ajak (2005)
From: Local Little Free Library
"I was fast: that was my gift. If I did something bad, I would run. If something bad happened to me, I would run, too. The night all the turmoil broke out, I ran, like my mother had told me."

This book is, simply put, powerful. The experiences of the three authors, all of whom were Lost Boys of Sudan, are told in simple, poetic language. After the forward, the boys each start off with their earliest memories in their respective villages, and we follow them all the way to their eventual arrival at an Ethiopian refugee camp. I found their memories of their family members and specific tribal cultural practices especially poignant.

After reading this book, I was left with the sense that it's amazing what people can survive - and hard to even comprehend at times. It was a little hard to keep track of which author was which at times, but this is understandable given the layout. The content of the book is difficult, but I think it could be read by mature middle-school aged and up children. And I wish the authors had talked more about their time acclimating in the U.S., but understood why the authors didn't choose to focus on that piece of their story.

Related Reads:
A Long Way Gone (Beah)
Infidel (Ali)
When Broken Glass Floats (Him)

A Gathering of Shadows - V. E. Schwab (2016)
From: Local Library
"The world is neither fair nor right, but it has a way of balancing itself. Magic teaches us that much."

This is the second book in the Shades of Magic trilogy; I had read the first at the beginning of this year. I think I have a lot of the same feelings here as I did about the first book. I generally like the world and concept, but the book somehow feels too YA-ish for a non-YA book. A number of descriptors and certain phrases seem to be overused ("sharp smile", "he tipped his head"). I also didn't feel a lot of suspense for many of the main plotlines of the book, since their conclusions seemed obvious.

That all said, I generally enjoyed the read - it kept me interested, and it wasn't a long commitment. And this book either had less violence than the first, or I was more prepared in terms of what to expect.

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian - Sherman Alexie (2007)
From: Local Little Free Library
"You start believing that you're poor because you're stupid and ugly. And then you start believing that you're stupid and ugly because you're Indian. And because you're Indian you start believing you're destined to be poor. It's an ugly circle and there's nothing you can do about it."

This is a YA, diary-style book, complete with comic-book style illustrations. The protagonist is a teen boy (it follows that there are a fair number of mild sex-related trails of thought throughout). The book gives a realistic take of life on an Indian Reservation, paired with all the related complications and difficulties. It deals with things like poverty, death, and addiction - all serious topics, but interwoven with the protagonists's self-effacing humorous style. This book may seem juvenile at first glance, but it leaves the reader with a lot to think about.

Related Reads:
The Hate U Give (Thomas)
Wonder (Palacios)

(to be continued in Part 2)

August 2018 Reads, Part 2

(continued from Part 1)

Never Let Me Go - Kazuo Ishiguro (2005)
From: Local Library
"We hadn't been ready for that. It had never occurred to us to wonder how we would feel, being seen like that, being the spiders."

It's a little hard to share even quick thoughts about this book without spoilers, but I'll give it a shot. Never Let Me Go is unexpected - the writing style and content is both calming and shocking. At its heart, it's a thought experiment that should feel more dystopian than it does.

I still feel like Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day is the strongest of the three of his that I've read so far (The Buried Giant being the third), but this novel is entrancing, thought provoking, melancholy, and uncomfortably relevant.

Related Reads:
The Giver (Lowry)
Kafka on the Shore (Murakami)

Me Talk Pretty One Day - David Sedaris (2000)
From: Local Library bookstore
"I find it ridiculous to assign a gender to an inanimate object incapable of disrobing and making an occasional fool of itself. Why refer to Lady Crack Pipe or Good Sir Dishrag when these things could never live up to all that their sex implied?"

This collection of autobiographical essays is full of the author's irreverent and self-deprecating sense of humor. The title refers to an overarching theme, drawing from the author's struggles of growing up gay in the '60s (when he was forced into ineffective speech therapy for his lisp) and his adulthood move to France (where he struggled with the language).

On the whole, the collection was a bit hit-and-miss for me; some essays I found genuinely laugh-out-loud funny, while others just kind of missed the mark for me. I recall liking the author's one other book that I've read (his 2013 Let's Explore Diabetes With Owls) somewhat better, although since it's been a few years since I've read that one, I couldn't parse out exactly why (I think it perhaps came across as a bit more mature).

Related Reads:
Let's Explore Diabetes With Owls (Sedaris)
Shockaholic (Fisher)

Stone Mattress [Short Stories] - Margaret Atwood (2014)
From: Local Library
"But how can you have a sense of wonder if you’re prepared for everything? Prepared for the sunset. Prepared for the moonrise. Prepared for the ice storm. What a flat existence that would be."

This collection of stories is - contrary to my half-formed expectations - very light on the fantasy and science fiction, and almost exclusively (save for one notable exception) centered on stories involving old people, with a heavy dose on thought-experiment. So I appreciated the different perspective, and I think it's well-written, but I didn't necessarily click with it as a whole. But I think Atwood fans will find it worth checking out.

Related Reads:
The Robber Bride (Atwood)

Kitchen Confidential - Anthony Bourdain (2000)
From: Local Library (Hold list)
"I know what I want. I want it all. I want to try everything once."

Anthony Bourdain's biography is mixed together here with his general thoughts and experiences on life in the culinary world. It feels kind of slapdash, but that's Bourdain's style, and it's certainly interesting. He gets into the good, the bad, and the ugly of working in a kitchen and the restaurant industry - it follows that there's a fair amount of vulgar language (a chapter is practically dedicated to the art of cursing/insults in a kitchen) and crude references.

Overall, this gives some good insight into Bourdain's life, personality, and drive. Read it if you work in a kitchen, or have any interest in the lives of people who do.

Related Reads:
The Apprentice (Pepin)
Down and Out in Paris and London (Orwell)
Fresh Off the Boat (Huang)

August 2018 Reads, Part 1

I read mostly books from the library over this past month. I'm thinking I may need to ban myself from the library for a while again as I still have a decent little to-read pile of books at home that I want to get through. It's hard when there's so much that the library has to offer!

This Side of Paradise - F. Scott Fitzgerald (1920)
From: Christmas gift in 2017
"Amory took to writing poetry on spring afternoons, in the gardens of the big estates near Princeton, while swans made effective atmosphere in the artificial pools, and slow clouds sailed harmoniously above the willows. May came too soon, and suddenly unable to bear walls, he wandered campus at all hours through starlight and rain."

This semi-autobiographical work is a portrait of its time as much as it is of the author. Despite its tendency towards unevenness in tone and style, I liked it better than I remember liking The Great Gatsby. I found the characters generally somewhat irritating (partially by design), but the overall book is both enlightening as to its time and unexpectedly modern.

The edition I read (Barnes & Noble) has a lengthy critical essay as the introduction, which is helpful for deconstructing the novel.

Related Reads
On the Road (Kerouac)
The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald)

The Overneath [Short Stories]- Peter S. Beagle (2017)
From: Local Library
"The power itself was never in question; but there comes a moment when a responsible wizard has to consider the danger of having such wild, uncontrollable power loose in the world in the hands of a young man with family problems."

This short-story collection is mostly fantasy-tinged, though setting varies a lot. Within the baker's dozen of stories are several (of varying tones) featuring unicorns, and there are a couple that are The Last Unicorn-related. A few stories that veer a bit into the horror category - not generally something I prefer, but oddly, one of my favorites was the Poe-esque "Great-Grandmother in the Cellar". And to round it out, a couple of stories (including the titular one) dip into science fiction territory.

I generally liked this mix, although I can't say I loved it. At the very least, I appreciated that the stories presented are such a mixed bag. And I was somewhat pleasantly surprised that Beagle is still writing (given that The Last Unicorn was published in the 1960s).

For a slightly spoilerish review that goes more in-depth into many (though not all) of the stories included, see this post from Barnes & Noble.

Related Reads:
Fragile Things (Gaiman)
The Line Between [Short Stories] (Beagle)

Gorilla and the Bird - Zack McDermott (2017)
From: Local Library
"People say that excessive drinking is often used as an escape from reality. In my case, I felt erased, so why not erase myself? It was easier to chip away at what was left of me than to try to recover the self I'd lost."

This book grabs you and pulls you into the author's world almost before you can catch a breath. In very readable language, McDermott describes everything in his life - including his psychotic breakdowns - with candor and humor. Interlaced throughout his story of Bipolar disorder and struggle with addiction is his mother's unwavering support, his family background (in poor/rural Kentucky), his sometimes soul-crushing work as a court-appointed public defender, and his hobby of stand-up comedy.

Although I quickly got caught up in the story, at times I struggled with McDermott's storytelling and comedic style - the line between exploiting/making fun of others, himself included, and portraying a humorously-realistic picture seems a little thin at times. There's also a fair amount of language and crude sexual references as part of the mix.

Oftentimes, books like this are written by a family member who had a front-row observation seat. I really applaud McDermott's willingness and ability to tell his story and talk about his struggles in his own words.

Related Reads
Ben Behind His Voices (Kaye)
Everything is Horrible and Wonderful (Wachs)

Spinning Silver - Naomi Novik (2018)
From: Local Library
"The only thing that had ever done me any good in my father's house was thinking: no one had cared what I wanted, or whether I was happy. I'd had to find my own way to anything I wanted. I'd never been grateful for that before now, when what I wanted was my life."

This hit a lot of sweet spots for me as a fantasy book. It's long enough to be sufficiently world- and character-building, but not too long. It switches first-person viewpoints between several characters; this isn't always my favorite, but I felt it really worked here. There are strong Russian and Jewish influences in the story's world, which I thought that made the book more interesting and realistic (tempering the overall fantasy element with reality). And it manages to have serious and dark elements without feeling overly heavy.

There are caveats, to be sure. Yes, it shares more than a few similarities with some other recent popular fantasy books. Yes, a few plot points are a bit weak upon closer inspection. But as an overall opinion, I enjoyed Novik's other fairy-tale-esque fantasy book, Uprooted, and I'd say that this one was even better.

Related Reads
The Bear and the Nightingale (Arden)
A Court of Thorns and Roses (Maas)
Ella Enchanted (Levine)
Russian Magic Tales from Pushkin to Platonov

The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice - Christoper Hitchens (1995)
From: Local Library
"Saints, it seems, are immune to audit."

So, first off, I should establish that I think that it's important to look critically at revered figures. I don't think it's inherently "mean" to dig into issues related to religion. And I knew that I was going to come into this short book with a background quite different than the author's.

My main issue with this book, then, wasn't that Mother Teresa was being critiqued, or that the author is an avowed atheist. My main issue was that I found it disappointingly detrimental that the author was coming at the subject from an angle that seemed so biased due to his use of leading and deliberately provocative language. I don't disagree that Mother Teresa and her order had some issues that should be brought to light and further explored, and I think the book does provide some interesting food for thought. But I do think the overall explorations here would've been much better served though a style that seemed less like a personal attack and more like detached reporting.

As a side note, some of the examples given seemed to be more due to the author's misunderstanding of Christianity/Catholicism rather than an actual crime or failing of Mother Teresa's. For instance, Hitchens uses the example of Mother Teresa talking about her personal relationship with Jesus as being a sign of grandiosity and lack of humility. However, most Christians would take this the opposite way - that someone expressing that Jesus was working through them would be a sign of humility that the person was not taking credit for their actions.

(Continued in Part 2)

July 2018 Reads

I ended up with a varied little mix of summer reads this past month. Onward to my quick thoughts!

The Girl with Seven Names - Hyeonseo Lee (2015)
From: Local Library (Hold List, waited 4+ months)
"I was already hiding beneath so many lies that I hardly knew who I was any more. I was becoming a non-person."

This is the story of a young woman who escaped from North Korea, but it's not a gritty and horrifying read along the lines of Escape from Camp 14 or The Aquariums of Pyongyang where the atrocities of the NK gulags are exposed. Rather, it's a story of a more "ordinary" life. Hyeonseo didn't flee across treacherous deserts at the mercy of traffickers (like many others that she meets later on did); she "merely" illegally crossed the river that borders China on a teenage adventure to visit a family friend, only to realize too late that her decision was irreversible. The Girl With Seven Names exposes not only the lengths that many North Korean citizens go through to escape, but the difficulties that they face once outside. It's an interesting and important read, and a good pick for anyone unfamiliar with the subject.

Related Reads:
In Order to Live (Park)
Nothing to Envy (Demick)

Fire and Fury - David Wolff (2017)
From: Local Library (Hold List, waited 6+ months)
"This was the peculiar and haunting consensus - not that Trump was guilty of all that he was accused of, but that he was guilty of so much else. It was all too possible that the hardly plausible would lead to the totally credible."

I'll be honest and admit that I had a hard time finishing this. Part of the issue is that the book, though published within the last year, is already fairly dated. There are also a lot of names thrown about, and while most who pay attention to the news will have at least passing familiarity with many of the political figures, it's hard for someone like me (who tends to need to pair faces with names) to keep track of all the players mentioned.

That all said, it's almost gossip-column-esque, weirdly quotable, and an interestingly terrible read - taken with several grains of salt.

Related Reads:
Nothing is True and Everything is Possible (Pomerantev)

Magic Kingdom For Sale - Terry Brooks (1986)
From: Bought at local library book store in early April
"Visions born of fear give birth to our failing. Visions born of hope give birth to our success."

This is the first Terry Brooks book I've read, so I went in not really knowing what to expect. I think I was assuming something a little more along the lines of Terry Pratchett - that is, a story that didn't take itself very seriously. And there is a little bit of that aspect here. But at other points (and again, this may just be the unfortunate result of me having recently read a good amount of Discworld novels), it seemed to be trying a little too hard. I also had a problem taking the title of High Lord seriously because of playing Ni no Kuni (wherein a comical character repeatedly proclaims himself to be the "Lord High Lord of the Fairies").

My weird quibbles aside, though, I rather enjoyed the read (notwithstanding that it was a bit slow and uneven), and I think it was a pretty good introduction novel to the author. I was left with the overall sense that it read like a book that just happened to have fantasy elements, not like a fantasy book per se [perhaps this is a) somewhat due to the decade it was written, and/or b) very intentional given the main character's background and arc, but I'm interested in seeing if I get the same impression with other Brooks novels].

Related Reads
The Merlin Conspiracy (Jones)
Mr. Penumbra's 24-hour Bookstore (Sloan)

Coming Clean - Kimberly Rae Miller (2013)
From: Local Library
"Before there was ever a word for hoarding, I knew that whatever driving force drew my father to garbage was beyond his control. I never felt like he loved stuff more than he loved me. He loved stuff. And he loved me."

This is squarely in the memoir rather than the self-help genre, but it still is a potentially-enlightening read for those who haven't experienced living in a hoarding situation first-hand, and a possibly-cathartic read for those who have.

I appreciated Miller's honesty throughout the book, and it's obvious that the book was somewhat of a therapeutic exercise for her - experiencing PTSD as an adult became a catalyst for her starting to finally deal with her childhood, and she doesn't shy away from the ways that she enabled her parents as an adult. I did notice a section or two that seemed repetitive and/or out of place, and I was slightly annoyed by the author's focus on how smart she was as a child. Overall, though, it's a helpful read for people who have experienced similar situations or have loved ones who have.

Related Reads:
Dirty Secret (Sholl)
The Secret Lives of Hoarders (Paxton)

In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex - Nathaniel Philbrick (2000)
From: Local Library
"Backlit by the red glow of a dying island, the twenty men of the Essex ventured into the farthest reaches of the Pacific, looking for another whale to kill."

This book is a new favorite of mine; the events surrounding the sinking of the Essex in 1819 inspired Melville's book Moby-Dick. It should come as no surprise that In the Heart of the Sea is fascinating and full of history. Philbrick makes good use of the historical material and accounts available, bolstered by his drawing from similar accounts and situations throughout. He also explores the history of Nantucket and as delves into cultural backgrounds and psychological explorations for the various figures. One particular thread of note throughout is the havoc that 19th-century sailors played on the biodiversity of the sea and the islands that they visited.

Read this if you're at all a history buff and intrigued by adventure/survival stories. It made me want to read and learn more (perhaps yet more accounts have been uncovered since this book's publication?), and my only wish was that the book was longer.

Content note: the book does include descriptions of cannibalism, butchering animals, and the effects of extreme hunger and dehydration on people.

Related Reads:
Moby-Dick (Melville)
Alone: Orphaned on the Ocean (Logan)
Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder, and Piracy (published by Hurst & Co; free on Kindle)

June 2018 Reads

Summer's in full swing - we'll see what that does to my reading habits! This year, I've been trying to focus on getting through books that have been in my to-read pile for far too long. I decided that I'm going to include where I obtained each book from in my reviews through the summer just for funsies.

Wonder - R. J. Palacio (2012)
From: Local Library (Hold List)
"I wish every day could be Halloween. We could all wear masks all the time. Then we could walk around and get to know each other before we got to see what we looked like under the masks."

This is a Y.A.book, so my thoughts on it will be colored by that. I liked the different first-person perspectives given throughout the book - I felt this made the book more compelling than it would've been to just focus on one character. My general overall thought is that Wonder a powerful and illuminating book for kids, especially, who are still grappling with many of the life difficulties portrayed. And (given the Y.A. nature of the book) although it deals with some difficult subjects, the story is positive overall.

Related Reads:
The Sun is Also a Star (Yoon)

We Were Eight Years in Power - Ta-Nehisi Coates (2017)
From: Local Library (Hold List)
"In such revisions of history lay the roots of the noble Lost Cause - the belief that the South didn’t lose, so much as it was simply overwhelmed by superior numbers; that General Robert E. Lee was a contemporary King Arthur; that slavery, to be sure a benevolent institution, was never central to the South’s true designs. Historical lies aside, the Lost Cause presented to the North an attractive compromise. Having preserved the Union and saved white workers from competing with slave labor, the North could magnanimously acquiesce to such Confederate meretriciousness and the concomitant irrelevance of the country’s blacks. 
That interpretation served the North too, for it elided uncomfortable questions about the profits reaped by the North from Southern cotton, as well as the North’s long strategy of appeasement and compromise, stretching from the Fugitive Slave Act back to the Constitution itself."

I had a hard time picking out just one quote from this book. This is a collection of essays written by the author during the years of the Obama presidency (previously published by The Atlantic). Coates gives an introduction to each of his eight essays, putting them into the context of the time he wrote them and evaluating how he thinks they held up, and concludes with a final essay. In a nutshell, this collection gives some necessary historical context to many past and present issues, and it's definitely recommended reading.

Related Reads:
Between the World and Me (Coates)

Commonwealth - Ann Patchett (2016)
From: One of the Little Free Libraries in La Jolla a few months ago
"'There’s no protecting anyone,' Fix said, and reached over from his wheelchair to put his hand on hers. 'Keeping people safe is a story we tell ourselves.'"

This isn't the sort of book I usually tend to read, and it probably would rate higher in my mind if I read more of this genre. The story deals with a lot of serious and common issues, such as divorce, infidelity, death, and grief. Some of it also takes place in the area I grew up in, which was a nice little surprise.

On the whole, although I generally liked the read, Commonwealth left me feeling like something was wanting by the end, and I'm not sure if it's because it was good and I was left wanting more, or if it was more because it just wasn't fleshed out enough. I also had a little bit of trouble keeping all the characters in the families straight, but I'm inclined to chalk that up to a personal failing rather than a problem with the book itself.

Related Reads:
The Husband's Secret (Moriarty)
The Little Friend (Tartt)

A Clergyman's Daughter - George Orwell (1935)
From: Bought at D.G. Wills Bookstore in La Jolla last year
"Dorothy pulled a frond of the fennel against her face and breathed in the strong sweet scent. Its richness overwhelmed her, almost dizzied her for a moment. She drank it in, filling her lungs with it. Lovely, lovely scent - scent of summer days, scent of childhood joys, scent of spice-drenched islands in the warm foam of oriental seas!
Her heart swelled with sudden joy. It was that mystical joy in the beauty of the earth and the very nature of things that she recognized, perhaps mistakenly, as the love of God."

If you've read other books by Orwell, you can see this as a continuation of him drawing from his personal experiences of "living rough" on the streets in London and the surrounding countryside. This book a fascinating, bleakly realistic window into the time period and setting, and Orwell takes the opportunity to probe into several contemporary social issues (schooling, religious community, women's place in society).

Quick content notes: The main character engages in self-harm throughout the book as a form of religious penance. And although most curse words are censored out with a dash (as was common for literature at the time), there are a couple of racial pejoratives that are freely used - in one case, as a nickname for a character.

Related Reads:
Down and Out in Paris and London (Orwell)
A Little Princess (Burnett)
Tess of the d'Urbervilles (Hardy)

Wild Beauty - Anna-Marie McLemore (2017)
From: When I trialed a month of OwlCrate in October 2017
"These memories took root, turning into rows of uncountable trees. They became the orchard Fel had once run through. They bloomed into almond and cherry blossoms, fluffy as the cotton candy Estrella had set in his palms. They splintered into the thin leaves of olive trees."

I have to describe the prose here as flowery - very flowery. I didn't necessarily dislike the style, but it felt like a lot of the same after a short while, and the story itself is fairly slow-moving. At times, it seemed like a lot of flowery language covering up little substance. But anyone who has a love of flora will certainly appreciate the sensory experience of the descriptions here.

Some positives of Wild Beauty are its relative uniqueness (compared to my usual reads) of having the majority of main characters being LGBT+ and the book focusing heavily on Latinx characters and culture. I also enjoyed the fairytale-esque setting, although I was somewhat annoyed that I couldn't place what the time period was supposed to be.

Related Reads:
A Court of Thorns and Roses (Maas)
One Hundred Years of Solitude (Marquez)

May 2018 Reads

I'm finally getting around to posting this halfway through the month rather than at the beginning, but better late than never!

I didn't end up reading a whole lot in June due to lots of stuff going on (including some travel). And according to Goodreads, I only read two books in May because Pat of Silver Bush and Mistress Pat were paired in a Kindle collection that I found for 99 cents. Ah well.

Soul Music - Terry Pratchett
"It was sad music. But it waved its sadness like a battle flag. It said the universe had done all it could, but you were still alive."

This was another Discworld novel in the Death story line (the one I've been focusing on of late). It was a little random and jumping around a bit much for my tastes - there was something of a whiplash effect from switching between modern-cultural-references humor and surprisingly moving and deep scenes - but I generally enjoyed it. I appreciated the Welsh-inspired main character with the various little references (using ll's and w's in speech, his devotion to harp-playing, etc). All in all, Soul Music isn't necessarily the best Pratchett novel to start out with, but it's fairly solid.

Pat of Silver Bush - L.M. Montgomery 
"The only marked talent she had was for loving things very greatly, and that did not help you much with Greek verbs and dates."

This novel (by the same author as Anne of Green Gables, for the unfamiliar) follows the title character from about age six into her late teenage years. I found it an interesting window into daily life for the time period and place (1920's-ish Prince Edward Island). The main character's deep and abiding love for her home is forefront in her story, and this makes for a somewhat unique (for me) perspective in that all her ambitions are tied up in her family's house and land. Though it feels a bit incomplete without its successor, Pat of Silver Bush still manages to stand on its own, and should certainly be picked up by fans of any of L. M. Montgomery's other books.

Mistress Pat - L.M. Montgomery 
"At the top was the old gate, fallen into ruin, and beyond it the path through the spruce bush where silence seemed to kneel like a grey nun, and she felt that Bets must come to meet her, walking through the dusk with dreams in her eyes."

This continuation of Pat and Silver Bush follows the main character into her late twenties. I enjoyed particularly the continuing window into life back then - things like the unquestioned societal rules like single women continuing to live at home and the strained dynamics that come from of marrying into a family and moving in with them are portrayed here as I've not really come across elsewhere. And even though I have to say that I didn't particularly like some aspects of the main character (as well as certain plot points), there's a true charm here in the blend of the practical and romantic.

Side note: I did have some issues with a few things that were normalized due to the time period in which the book was written, namely (minor spoilers) the treatment of the servant Judy when she wants to travel (the family acting as if they can't get on without a servant taking care of them), as well as some fat-shaming that made me actually root for the antagonist (you wear that swimsuit and show off your thighs if you want to, May Binnie!).