April 2018 Reads

I didn't read a large number of books this past month, but what I did read was more fantasy-heavy.

The Lost World - Michael Crichton (1995)
"Looking at the fossil record is like thumbing through a family photo album. You know the album isn't complete. You know life happens between the pictures. But you don't have any record of what happens in between, you only have the pictures. So you study them, and study them. And pretty soon, you begin to think of the album not as a series of moments, but as reality itself. And you begin to explain everything in terms of the album, and you forget the underlying reality."

I didn't like this book as much as its predecessor (Jurassic Park), but it was still very readable. It didn't feel as polished, but it still contained a good blend of action and discussion of science. Some of the personal dislikes issues that I had with the previous book (namely violence, i.e. fairly graphic descriptions of people being eaten by dinosaurs) still apply.

Related Reads:
Jurassic Park (Crichton)

Coming Up for Air - George Orwell (1939)
"I looked at the great sea of roofs stretching on and on. Miles and miles of streets, fried-fish shops, tin chapels, picture houses, little printing shops up back alleys, factories, blocks of flats, whelk stalls, dairies, power stations - on and on and on. Enormous! And the peacefulness of it! Like a great wilderness with no wild beasts ...
But how about five years from now? Or two years? Or one year?"

This is one of Orwell's lesser-known books, but if you're a fan of his works in general, it's certainly worth picking up. Though fictional, its setting gives us a slice of history and opinion into a period - immediately-preceding-WWII Britain - that one doesn't often think about. It's nostalgic, pessimistic, dryly funny at times, and strangely sad.

Related Reads:
Boy (Dahl)
Babbitt (Lewis)

The Buried Giant - Kazuo Ishiguro (2015)
"After a while Axl could no longer remember how talk of this journey had started, or what it had ever meant to them."

The tone of this book is meandering and dreamlike. It's strangely hard to place in terms of genre, too, though the setting is an interpretation of an immediately post-Arthurian Britain. At its core, it's a sort of fantasy, but it has echos of science fiction/dystopian. There are some changes of perspective throughout, which I felt added some interest.

Overall note: this book is really not going to be for everyone. Even though I personally appreciated it, I'll still admit that it's slow-paced, repetitive, and even largely unsatisfying. All that said, I still found that I could immerse myself in it, and I appreciated the out-of-the-norm interpretation.

Related Reads:
The Once and Future King (White)
Le Morte d'Arthur (Malory)
The Name of the Rose (Eco)
Riddley Walker (Hoban)

Mort - Terry Pratchett (1987)
"History has a habit of changing the people who think they are changing it. History always has a few tricks up its frayed sleeve. It's been around a long time."

Mort is one of Terry Pratchett's earlier Discworld novels. I really liked it - it's about on the same level as Equal Rites, which is another early Discworld favorite of mine. It's fairly straightforward story line full of a healthy blend of humor and seriousness (especially considering the subject matter). If you haven't read any Discworld novels yet, this isn't a bad place to start.

Reaper Man - Terry Pratchett (1991)
"People get exactly the wrong idea about belief. They think it works back to front. They think the sequence is, first object, then belief. In fact, it works the other way."

This is the second book in the "Death" storyline of Discworld novels, so it's the sequel of Mort in a way. I didn't enjoy it quite as much as its predecessor; it's a little odd and rambling at times (arguably a Pratchett trademark, but I digress). Still, it's likable overall, with the same balance of serious/humorous tone.

March 2018 Reads Part 2

(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)

March 2018 Reads Part 1

I read quite a lot in March, which means I'm a little behind in my quick write-ups! A good portion of what I read over the past month was in the autobiography/memoir category.

L. M. Montgomery Short Story collections: 1902-1903; 1904; & 1905-1906
"She was all sympathy - or, at least, as much sympathy as a woman can be who must listen while the man of men sings another woman's praises to her. She sent Roger away in perfect good humour with himself and all the world, then she curled herself up in the snuggery, pulled a rug over her head, and cried."

In March, I finished off three more of Montgomery's short story collections that Amazon had for free on Kindle. I think that Montgomery shows more refinement in her stories as time goes on; that said, the main storylines and themes are pretty consistent throughout all the collections I've read. Everything turns out all right in the end, good decisions are rewarded, long-lost family members are suddenly found again, etc. etc.

On the whole, these collections make for wholesome, calming reads. They're definitely worth perusing if you're a fan of Anne of Green Gables or any of the author's other books; for me, these short stories have served to round out the settings and tones of her novels.
(Bonus, I learned a new word: snuggery!)

Maus & Maus II - Art Spiegelman (1986 & 1991)
"You heard about the gas, but I'm telling not rumors, but only what I really saw. For this I was an eyewitness."

The format of this two-part graphic novel series about the author's father's experiences as a Polish Jew during WWII is rather unique. Spiegelman portrays the characters as anthropomorphized animals (Jews are mice, Germans are cats, Poles are pigs, etc). He also switches between present time, where he's interviewing his father, and the past as his father is telling his story. The result is a sobering, somewhat jarring read that is sprinkled with moments of humor and unexpected intensity. The author's distinct art and storytelling style allows for a way of looking at a familiar story with new eyes and introducing topics such as survivor's guilt, the rift between generations, and generational trauma, and at times, it serves to further underscore the horrors of the Holocaust.

Related Reads:
Kiss Every Step (Martin)

Rings Around Us - Ernestine Gilbreth Carey (1956)
"...The incessant comments about women drivers would come again and again.
'Where does that stupid daughter-of-misery think she's going today?'
'Please, Chick, watch your tongue'...
Soon Charlie was copying him. 'What else can you expect from a woman? Eh, Dad?'"

Because this book was written by one of the co-authors of the beloved book Cheaper by the Dozen, I was eager to get my hands on it. However, it ended up being a rather disappointing read. Ernestine writes rather blandly about her life after marriage and having two children and hardly references her childhood at all, and she makes barely a mention of her parents. While on one hand it's interesting to see one of the "dozen" as an individual, it also makes for a rather dull and ordinary book.

The main thing that stood out to me when I was reading was Ernestine's husband Chick; even by her trying-to-be-humorous portrayal, he comes off as a terrible person. Granted, this book was written in the 1950's about marriage during the 30's-40's, so I suppose some misogyny was a given, but reading again and again about how Chick was rude, dismissive, or overtly chauvinistic got old fast. And while Ernestine's writing style blended well with Frank's in Cheaper by the Dozen to create a riotous, colorful prose, here, without the polishing of Frank's style, the prose is somewhat grating and annoying.

I'd only read this if you're looking to completely round out your Gilbreth family knowledge or want to get a view into marriage in the 1930's. Otherwise, give it a pass.

Related Reads:
Time Out for Happiness (Gilbreth)

Breaking Free - Rachel Jeffs (2017)
"I realized Father was causing a lot of people to turn into lunatics."

Rachel writes from a unique perspective of being the first child born into polygamy of the infamous FLDS (Fundamentalist Mormon) cult leader Warren Jeffs. Breaking Free is written in a fairly matter-of-fact, straightforward way, which makes Rachel's story (which is full of genuinely gripping events and perspective) suffer a little in terms of reader engagement. But at the same time, I can't really fault this overall style because, as she notes near the end, part of the book's purpose is to lay out the facts of what she experienced to her extended (mostly still FLDS) family. Because of Rachel's unique position within the FLDS before she escaped, this book is necessary reading for anyone interested in learning about Warren Jeffs and the cult as a whole.

I'll include a content note that throughout the first 50 pages or so, Rachel recounts the sexual abuse that she suffered as a young child from her father. And throughout the book, she makes brief references to her sex life in the context of being a plural wife under the headship of her husband, someone she was taught to obey as if he spoke for God, as well as noting her father's practice of marrying (and sexually abusing) increasingly younger girls.

Related Reads:
Lost Boy (Brent Jeffs)
The Witness Wore Red (Rebecca Musser)
Church of Lies (Flora Jessop)
Escape (Carolyn Jessop)

A Very Fine House: A Mother's Story of Love, Faith, and Chrystal Meth - Barbara Cofer Stoefen (2014)
"I wasn't sure I had the answers to all my questions, but I knew I had to do something. I had to save Annie. So I began by chasing after her."

If you're looking for a book that describes what life with a close family member who's a serious drug addict looks like, this is it. A Very Fine House is honest and straightforward without crossing into raw or gritty territory like many others within this category. Normally I would consider this tempering to be something of a detriment, but Stoefen manages to convey real emotion and honesty while at the same time censoring out swear words and summarizing certain difficult situations rather than digging into them. This "cleaning up" makes the book more widely accessible to readers, and I can appreciate that. Stoefen also writes honestly about her struggles with her faith and her issues with codependency, something many other similar books don't address.

To summarize, A Very Fine House, though not necessarily stellar in terms of prose, is a relatively easy and engaging read on a difficult subject. It's deep without being emotionally shattering. It's hopeful without being trite or overly optimistic. It educates about the subject without getting dry or political. And I could relate to pretty much every experience the author writes about, so I'll attest that it's a good window into the lives of families affected by severe addiction. If you read this - and I think you should - you'll gain some understanding and insight, and that's always a good thing.

Related Reads:
Beautiful Boy (Sheff)
Ben Behind his Voices (Kaye)
(see also author's list in back of book)

When Broken Glass Floats - Chanrithy Him (2000)
"It's only been about eight hours since I first encountered war, but already I am beginning to worry like an adult... Oh, how much I want to tell Pa that I'm scared, but I'm even too scared to tell him this. I've learned from grown-ups that you don't think about or say terrible things or else they will come true."

In this memoir, Chanrithy Him writes about her childhood during the Khmer Rouge regime. It's a well-written and at times shockingly detailed recounting of her experiences. It should come as no shock that the book is fairly heavy and depressing. But it's an important and necessary story from a survivor.

Him focuses more on her country's culture than many others similar books I've read, using Cambodian proverbs, terms, and phrases throughout (usually translated into English for the reader's benefit). While I appreciated this and felt it made the book all the more true-to-experience and immersive, I personally found it a little confusing at times, particularly because Chanrithy (nicknamed Athy or Thy) had nine siblings and many relatives and family friends, all of whom went by various nicknames and titles.

Related Reads:
First They Killed My Father (Ung)
Children of the River (Crew)

(continued in Part 2)

February 2018 Reads Part 2

(continued from Part 1)

The Shifting Realities of Philip K. Dick: Selected Literary and Philosophical Writings (1995)
(edited by Lawrence Sutin)
"But I have never had too high a regard for what is generally called "reality." Reality, to me, is not so much something that you perceive, but something you make. You create it more rapidly than it creates you. Man is the reality God created out of the dust; God is the reality man creates continually out of his own passions, his own determination."

This collection includes (along with a helpful introduction and brief context-notes for each section by the editor) a variety of pieces by Philip K. Dick: speeches, autobiographical writings, science fiction essays, plot ideas, and excerpts from Exegesis, his collection of writings about the inexplicable spiritual events he experienced throughout his adult life.

Perhaps surprisingly to those looking for a strictly SciFi collection, the collection of writings here is pretty philosophy-heavy as a whole. PKD references a number of philosophers (Spinoza, Kant, Xenophanes)  as he's parsing out his own thoughts on God and life in general throughout his essays, so it's helpful to have at least a brief background on general philosophy. He also references his own works throughout (probably most heavily The Man in the High Castle and Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said, though Ubik gets a good amount of space, too), so it's helpful to have read at least his key works.

So, on the whole: read this if you're interested in learning more about PKD's worldview (politically, spiritually, and otherwise) and background into his stories, or if you just want to broaden your understanding of SciFi writers of the 70's and 80's and stretch your mind a little bit by reading more about concepts of time and reality.

The Polygamist's Daughter - Anna LeBaron (2017)
"According to my father, lawbreaking and lawlessness were justified because the US government and culture were both corrupt. The disciples who followed him were God's chosen people, which meant that we could go outside the normal bounds of rules and regulations. The ends justified the means. Although at times I was worried about getting caught stealing, I kept my concerns to myself."

I've read a number of books by ex-FLDS women over the years, but this one stands out a little bit for a few reasons. Unlike most other published books that deal with the specific, larger sect of Warren Jeffs (the Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints Church), The Polygamist's Daughter is about a different Fundamentalist Mormon offshoot sect started by the LeBaron family (the Church of the Firstborn of the Lamb of God).

Author Anna LeBaron's mother was one of the 13 wives of sect leader Ervil LeBaron. This book is an autobiography in the fullest sense, charting Anna's life and experiences from as early as she can remember to present day. Though Anna only saw her father a few times before he died in prison, his larger-than-life personality and psychological hold is a constant overshadowing presence throughout her life.

Though I found the writing style a little simplistic (though I'm not sure how much I can fault this, since much of the book is being told from a young child's perspective), the book is interesting and eye-opening in regards to cults as a whole. Anna details her long recovery from cult mentality with admirable frankness, crediting time, therapists, God, and close friends.

I'll add a footnote to say that Anna, through some of her other relatives, got involved with Fundamentalist Christian organizations (including Bill Gothard's IBLP teachings) after leaving the FLDS church. She doesn't note what particular denominations or organizations she's currently a part of, but she does make it clear that she considers her Christian faith an integral part of her life, escape, and recovery from the spiritual abuse and the plethora of other things she dealt with as part of her father's church.

Related Reads:
Under the Banner of Heaven (Krakauer)
Stolen Innocence (Wall)
Church of Lies (Jessop)
My Story (Smart)

A History of Food in 100 Recipes - William Sitwell (2012)
"Only now are we once again yearning to preserve fruit and pickle vegetables. Many today even dream of keeping a pig, yet where it once was for necessity, now it is for flavor and fun, in sharp contrast to the Victorian age in which presentation was everything and the showy trifle, however tasty, simply vulgar." p.185

I'll note up front that though this book starts off each chapter with a recipe, it's not a cookbook. Many of the recipes included (especially the early ones) aren't at all exact, and their purpose is more to illustrate certain things about the given time period and culture than to be an example of something you should make at home. And many of the recipes are chosen because they showcase certain contemporary inventions, like the gas oven, the self-serve grocery store, and TV cooking shows.

A History of Food is really quite interesting, although I felt that it had a bit of a slow start and that the author's writing style (casual British humor interspersed with some grammatical errors) was a little hard to get used to. Sitwell traces food  and food culture throughout history and tells a broader story of how we got to where we are. If you're into food and/or history, this book will become your new Kryptonite.

Related Reads:
Cookery and Dining in Imperial Rome (Apicuis)
The Apprentice (Pepin)

Embroideries - Marjane Satrapi (2005)
"To speak behind other's backs is the ventilator of the heart."

This book is basically an offshoot of the Persepolis graphic novels, taking place around the time that Satrapi arrived back in Iran after living in Austria as a teenager. In this short graphic novel, Satrapi's female relatives and family friends gather around and share their (and other's) stories related to love, marriage, and sex. Though it's generally lighthearted in tone, the medium is used to discuss difficult things (i.e. child marriage, FGM, husbands cheating) in an unexpected way.

This book isn't by any means a necessary addition if you've read Persepolis, but it does help add an extra layer of understanding to Satrapi's overall culture and story.

The Hate U Give - Angie Thomas (2017)
"Funny how it works with white kids though. It’s dope to be black until it’s hard to be black."

This is a well-written and necessary book. It's realistic, it's uncomfortable, and Thomas uses her easy-to-read prose to dig into difficult-to-discuss issues.

I often have several qualms when reading YA books, but here the main issue I had was that some themes were spelled out a little too obviously in direct conversations/exposition.

Related Reads:
The Sun is Also a Star (Yoon)
Between the World and Me (Coates)

L. M. Montgomery Short Stories, 1897-1901
"When she came out they started off, and presently found themselves walking down a grassy, deep-rutted lane that ran through mown hay fields, green with their rich aftergrowth, and the sheets of pale ripening oats and golden-green wheat, until it lost itself in the rolling sand hills at the foot of the slope."

This is the earliest of  L. M. Montgomery's short story collections (and available, like the others, for free on Kindle). Compared to the few later collections that I've read, the stories here seem slightly more simplistic and less refined. Generally, the stories hold to the "soothing, harmless" descriptors that I used for my last Montgomery review. Everything is wrapped up tidily and happily in the end, and bursts of nature-descriptions and large-eyed, pale heroines abound.

However, this particular collection surprised me by having a couple of things to take pause at, namely, a rather nasty sentence containing a few racial pejoratives ("squaws" and "half-breed" women being contrasted unfavorably with apparently more-beautiful-by-default white women), and a story ending with a romantically-portrayed suicide.

February 2018 Reads Part 1

Though it was a short month and I've been working more hours, I packed in a good variety of books in February, including Marjane Satrapi's three graphic novels. I also picked up a couple of things by Ursula Le Guin that I hadn't read before, brought to the forefront of my list due to her death on January 22.

Hercule Poirot: The Complete Short Stories - Agatha Christie
"Hercule Poirot sat on the white sand and looked out across the sparkling blue water. He was carefully dressed in a dandified fashion in white flannels and a large panama hat protected his head. He belonged to the old-fashioned generation which believed in covering itself carefully from the sun."

This collection includes over 50 short stories featuring that famous detective, M. Poirot. I've seen the entire TV series starring David Suchet (highly recommended), so I was already familiar with most of the stories here. But they were still quite enjoyable and occasionally surprising reads. With its easily-digestible stories (of varying lengths), this is an ideal collection for both fans and newbies of mystery stories to peruse on rainy afternoons.

Related Reads:
Agatha Christie's Miss Marple books
The Complete Works of Sherlock Holmes (Doyle)

Unafraid: Moving Beyond Fear-Based Faith - Benjamin L. Corey (2017)
"So we have a choice: we can stay in these systems of false binaries and remain loyal to Christian labels, settle into groupthink, and submit to the pressures of tribalism. Or we can step out into a world that is far more difficult to define with word or categories."

On the whole, I felt that this book was a bit simplistic and repetitive, and I was a little disappointed that the author didn't seem to use many sources to back up his thoughts. This was kind of a shame, because I didn't necessarily disagree with what Corey was saying - it just felt like this was more of a series of opinion posts at times rather than a carefully researched book. I also think that the lack of sources and the emphasis on feelings would be a hard thing to get over for some of Corey's intended audience.

I'd still say that the book comes across as a heartfelt, personal journey that I (and probably lot of people who also come from Fundamentalist/Evangelical Christian backgrounds) could relate to and reflect on. The author's honesty about his struggles (particularly a point where his therapist had him do an exercise where he addressed God as if addressing someone who he'd had a toxic relationship with) was refreshing.

Related Reads:
In the Grip of Grace (Lucado)
Jesus Feminist (Bessey)

Persepolis and Persepolis 2 - Marjane Satrapi (2003 & 2004)
''That night I stayed a very long time in the bath. I wanted to know what it felt like to be in a cell filled with water.
My hands were wrinkled when I came out, like Grandpa's."

Persopolis is a graphic novel about the author's childhood in Iran. I was going to note that it's not for young kids, but it simultaneously hit me that the author lived through the events portrayed (including her exposures to war, relatives being tortured, and extremist ideologies) as a young child.

The followup novel picks up immediately where the first left off and details Satrapi's teen years in Austria as well as her return to Iran and the difficult adjustments that she experiences. Like the first book, the tone is generally that of discussing her life and opinions with a friend.

Both novels end fairly abruptly, but I can't really fault that as that'ss true-to-life, too. The first book is more history-heavy, but both books are compelling and poignant and really worth the read - they won't take long to finish, but will sit in your mind for a while.

Related Reads:
Reading Lolita in Tehran (Nafisi)
Day of Honey (Ciezadlo)

The Left Hand of Darkness - Ursula K. Le Guin (1969) 
(my version: 1976 with author introduction)
"The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty: not knowing what comes next."

This is a slow-building, political, introspective story. The Left Hand of Darkness is perhaps best known for its ahead-of-its time take on gender; the alien people on the planet Winter are ambisexual, and the human main character struggles to see them as such (falling back on the pronoun "he" and becoming confused or even disgusted at signs of "femininity"). Much of the book is a slow build towards his - the Envoy's - growing understanding of the people and world around him.

Le Guin is known for really fleshing out worlds and societies in her novels, and this book is no exception. The focus here is much more on descriptors, world-building, and defining terms; there are even interspersing chapters that contain Winter's oral traditions and history. Thus, to me the book had the feeling of a fantasy novel at times, though as a whole it's fairly firmly in the science fiction category. 

Quiet, powerful, reflective, and slow-paced, this book won't be for everyone, but it's rewarding for those who appreciate the genre and tone. Once in a while, I check out a book from the library that I wish I'd purchased so I could spend more time in introspection with it. This is one of those books.

Related Reads:

Ancillary Justice Trilogy (Lecke)

The Sparrow (Russell)

The Lathe of Heaven - Ursula K. Le Guin (1971)

"A machine is more blameless, more sinless even than any animal. It has no intentions whatsoever but our own."

This is a contemporary novel that deals primarily with the concept of time. It felt very similar to the Philip K. Dick novels that I've read, particularly in its way of pushing the boundaries on certain concepts and in the way the imperfect characters are portrayed. At the same time, it's not a difficult read.

I recommend reading this if you're a fan of Philip K. Dick novels (or reading PKD novels if you like this book). As a side note, I found it particularly interesting parsing out the similarities and differences between the authors as to how they dealt with certain subjects, as Le Guin was an avowed atheist and Dick (who had deeply personal spiritual experiences throughout his life - more on this in Part 2) considered himself a theist.

Related Reads:

Martian Time-slip (Dick)

The Man in the High Castle (Dick)

(Continued in Part 2)

January 2018 reads part 2

(Continued from Part 1)

Writers Gone Wild: The Feuds, Frolics, and Follies of Literature's Great Adventurers, Drunkards, Lovers, Iconoclasts, and Misanthropes - Bill Perschel (2010)
"When Richard Burbidge was playing the lead in Shakespeare's Richard III, he arranged an assignation with a lady for after the performance. Shakespeare heard about it, got there first, and seduced her. When Burbidge arrived and sent word up that her Richard III had arrived, Shakespeare sent a message back that William the Conqueror came first."

This book is basically what the subtitle says: short blurbs about the various deeds and misdeeds of authors, arranged loosely by type in chapters. I thought it would be a fun read - and at times, it was - but a number of the incidents veer towards the serious or depressing rather than fun. All in all, while a little funny or interesting at times, the collection felt somewhat voyeuristic and thus sort of uncomfortable to read. It might be an interesting coffee-table or road-trip read, but I'd recommend just checking out full-on biographies on authors of interest if you're looking for interesting facts on certain figures.

Codependent No More: How to Stop Controlling Others and Start Caring for Yourself - Melody Beattie (1992[2nd ed.])
"Overinvolvement of any sort can keep us in a state of chaos; it can keep the people around us in a state of chaos. If we're focusing all our energies on people and problems, we have little left for the business of living our own lives." 

This is an easy-to-read, widely-applicable self-help book. There are activities and exercises throughout that help the reader really think through and absorb what's being said, and I appreciated that the author encourages community through going to supportive meetings and/or therapy.

The author is obviously a fan of 12-step programs, and her advice, though widely applicable, is written in the frame of having an alcoholic/addict in your life. Thus, if your situation is different or if you're not a fan of 12-step programs like AA, you'll have to do a little mental work to separate that out. Overall, though I'd recommend this book to just about anyone, especially those who have a "difficult person" in their lives.

Related Reads:
Boundaries (Cloud & Townsend)

Kiss Every Step: A Survivor's Memoir from the Nazi Holocaust - Doris Martin (2009)
"I got a chilling reminder of how my life hung by a thread when, one morning, Mrs. Unucka informed me that in the middle of the night she had overheard me talking in my sleep. She couldn't understand what I was saying, but it sounded like some language other than Polish. Oh, my God! I had never expected this... All of my self-training to speak only Polish had not converted into my unconscious mind, which still operated in Yiddish, and I was in grave danger of discovery even in my sleep."

I actually briefly met the author of Kiss Every Step a year or two back at a Barnes and Noble book signing where I picked up my copy. This book was surprisingly better than I thought it would be - I didn't have terribly high expectations as it's a self-published book. Though there are some scattered typos throughout, it's well-written and well-organized as a whole.

All in all, this is a good example of a compiled family history, and its unflinching and detailed accounts from Martin and some of her family members make it worthy of being more well-known and widely-read.

Related Reads:
The Hiding Place (ten Boom)

The Sentinel [Short Stories] - Arthur C. Clarke (1983)
"But Captain Saunders, like all spacemen, was fundamentally a romantic. Even on a milk run like this he would sometimes dream of the ringed glory of Saturn or the somber Neptunian wastes, lit by the distant fires of the shrunken sun."

I'd started this book a few times in the past, but had never got past the first few stories. The stories included here (10 of them, if you include Clarke's introduction/biography) span Clarke's career, from the 40's to the 70's, and all include brief blurbs by author that I found helpful.

I haven't read any of Clarke's novels yet, so it'd be interesting to compare the short stories I've read so far with his other works. While I didn't love all the stories included in this volume (and I probably would've preferred to read his stories in a larger anthology with a greater mix of authors and types), I still found it interesting to read through the collection. I'd call this a good choice for anyone who's a fan of Clarke's, and/or anyone who's interested in how Science Fiction morphed through the 40's to the 80's.

Related Reads:
The Oxford Book of Science Fiction Stories

January 2018 Reads part 1

New year, new books! I'm still using Goodreads, but I'm planning on posting my thoughts here as well for the time being. And I have a large stack of to-be-read books that has built up over time at home that I'm going to try to be working through throughout the next few months, so some of this month's choices will reflect that.

A Darker Shade of Magic - Schwab (2015)
"That was the thing about magic. It was everywhere. In everything. In everyone. And while it coursed like a low and steady pulse, through the air and the earth, it beat louder in the bodies of living things. And if Kell tried - if he reached - he could feel it. It was a sense, not as strong as sight or sound or smell, but there all the same, its presence now drifting toward him from the shadows across the street."

First, the good: At its best, A Darker Shade of Magic is a stripped-down fantasy that warrants comparison to some Neal Gaiman novels (high praise indeed!). It drew me in immediately, and I felt the world-building and explanations made sense without overburdening the reader with lots of explanation and exposition. I loved the concept of the different Londons, the magical items described, and the colorful scenes and characters dotted throughout.

However, I had some issues with the book. There was something of a YA feel to it that kept cropping up in tone and in the way the characters were portrayed (a little too heavy on the descriptors for character appearance, for one). There was a dark feeling to the blood-linked magic in the book, which I didn't necessarily dislike, but I didn't care for the (sometimes seemingly purposeless) cruelty of the various antagonists in the book. And I liked the tie-ins with the real world (the mad King George III, for instance) but felt a little cheated out of reading more of that. In the end, I was left with the feeling of wanting to like this book a little more than I did.

Overall, the book is clever rather than surprising or brilliant, and it's a generally solid pick for those who like darker-toned, realism-tinged fantasy, and I'm planning on reading at least the next book in the trilogy.

Related Reads:
Neverwhere (Gaiman)
A Court of Thorns and Roses (Maas)
Howl's Moving Castle (Jones)

More Soviet Science Fiction - forward by Isaac Asimov (1952)
"But we could put it this way, too: man's conquest of space, his knowledge of the Universe, clashed with the primitive thinking of the individualistic property-owner. The future and the very life of humanity hung in the balance for years before progress triumphed and mankind joined into one family in a classless society. Before that happened people in the capitalistic half of the world refused for a long time to see any new paths into the future and regarded their mode of life as eternal and unchanging, with war and self-destruction as man's inevitable lot."

I picked up this random little book from my late cousin's large SciFi collection over a year ago. There are five rather long short stories included here, as well as an enlightening forward by Isaac Asimov. I found the included stories a little on the dull side generally, but still intriguing as a whole due to the specific Soviet worldview and school of thought displayed throughout.

For me, the thought of what else was going on in the USSR during the time that these stories were written (the Gulag labor camps, for instance) was particularly striking and sobering. Read this to round out your knowledge of both earlier Science Fiction and 20th century Russian history and political thought.

Related Reads:
The Oxford Book of Science Fiction Stories
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (Solzhenitsyn)

Beasts of Extraordinary Circumstance - Ruth Emmie Lang (2017)
"Two weeks later, I wore a coat for the first time that year. Fall had made its presence known in the form of wet, earthy smells and shivering tree limbs shedding leaves in various shades of exotic cat. I walked to school that morning, listening to the crisp sounds that punctuated each one of my footfalls and the honks of geese flying overhead. I found it strange that there could be so much beauty in the death of all these living things. Maybe it was only beautiful because we knew they would be resurrected next spring."

I didn't actually care too much for this book, which was somewhat of a surprise and disappointment to me. I can't say I really disliked it, nor do my lukewarm feelings stem from the format of the different voices throughout the chapters (I actually thought the format was fitting and found that I related especially to one or two of the particular storytellers). I think I just was expecting something a bit different than what the story ended up actually being - maybe I was looking a little too hard for mystery and magic and missing general overall themes (misfits, choices, family, fate). But I wasn't in love with the writing style or tone, either. I'm left with feeling like this is a more average book than I was expecting, but a bit of a loss explaining exactly why. Maybe that's as good of an overview-thought as any.

Related Reads:
Maniac Magee (Spinelli)

(Continued in Part 2)