Well look at me! I’m writing a book blog that doesn’t have to cover the entire year! Patting myself on the back over here. Annnnnd I’m even posting right at the cusp of the new month–not even a week in or other versions of “late!” Anyway. It appears as though I’ve hardly read any books over the past two months, but Oathbringer is huge, plus I have a handful of books I’m partially through. So next book dump will be a little more rotund.
KEY:
WJ = read aloud/listened with James
AB = audiobook
RR = re-read
BC = book club
REC = recommended to me
NF = nonfiction
F = fiction
IMH = a real book I held in my hands
Circe, Madeline Miller: F, REC, BC, AB
I saw many of my friends reading and recommending this book so when my writing group chose this as a group book, I was very excited. I listened to the audiobook and thankfully the reader was great, so if audiobooks are your thing, feel confident that you’ll have a good listening experience. I really loved this book. It’s a Greek myth retelling and Miller is masterful at bringing the worlds and relationships of the gods to life in their complexity. Circe (also, isn’t that name great?) is unique among the gods and nymphs–in interests and desires, motives and powers, devotion and determination. She likes humans, who, as we know, are trouble.
Jack, Marilynne Robinson: F, BC, IMH
This is the fourth book in Robinson’s fictional midwestern town of Gilead in the 1950s. This is (obviously) Jack’s story, and while I certainly think this is a very worthwhile read–he’s not only a very pivotal character in the whole series, but also a character who you might think you’ve got figured out until you get in his head and find it is quite a different existence than your own–I think maybe I just appreciated/enjoyed being in others’ POV more. My favorite of the series is Home, told from Jack’s sister Glory’s perspective, and he–and his absence–feature very prominently there. Jack details the beginning of Jack and Della’s relationship–doomed because it is interracial. Jack’s story is tough–he just can’t get on top of things. The world just wasn’t made to be kind to those like Jack. Nor Della. It’s heartbreaking and hard. There is certainly value in entering his world and perspective.
Ella Minnow Pea: A Novel in Letters, Mark Dunn: F, REC, IMH
My brother-in-law lent me his copy with the recommendation that it’s a fun little book, and it was. It’s about a tiny fictional island nation, the home of the guy who wrote this pangram sentence: The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog. Anyway, the islanders pretty much worship him and when individual letters start falling from the statue of him that includes that sentence, the island high council decided he was speaking from beyond the grave, instructing them to stop using that particular letter. So the letters become outlawed with some crazy extreme punishments for saying or writing the offending letter(s). The book is told in snail mail correspondence between the islanders, so the letters of the alphabet start disappearing from the book itself as the book progresses. It’s a quick, zany read and a lot of fun.
The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek, Kim Michele Richardson: F, AB
A little lady in 1936 Kentucky becomes a book woman for the Pack Horse Library Project. My love of libraries runs wide and deep, so I loved learning about this rural librarian service of the era. The plot thickens with Cussy Mary’s skin color: blue. The novel is both fun and hard–life during the Depression in rural Kentucky was hard enough for most of the characters, and for Cussy Mary in particular, who also is female (unmarried at that), has an ailing father, no mother, little income, and blue skin. She’s a very warm, likable character with a lot of gumption and kindness to spare. Until I listened to the Author’s Note following the novel, I thought the blue-skinned people of Kentucky were a fiction. Wild and fascinating. There is just so much we don’t know, isn’t there?
Before We Were Yours, Lisa Wingate: F, REC, IMH
A good friend very kindly gifted this to me in lieu of our annual Christmas white elephant book exchange party that we didn’t throw due to COVID. She hadn’t read it but had heard from a few friends that it was good. I don’t give stars or ratings to books on Goodreads because “good” is a hard thing to quantify, and for me, there are just way too factors to distill into stars–or, for the purpose of this review, the definition of a “good” book. I don’t know how to answer if I thought this was a good book. Yes. No. Enjoyable? Yes, but also no. Feel-good? No, but also yes. Interesting? Certainly. Captivating? Definitely. Angry-making, heart-breaking, gut-wrenching? Absolutely. It’s historical fiction, so I learned about two things I didn’t know before: 1) riverboat shantyhouses and the families that lived on them, 2) The Tennessee Children’s Home Society. If you have heard of the Tennessee Children’s Home Society before, you know why this book is the worst: Because the Tennessee Children’s Home Society was real, and they stole real children from real families and made them impossible to find again because they changed their names and put them up for adoption. Some serious devils dressing up as angels.
I’m going to take a bit of a tangent. I read hard books. I read a lot of hard books. I read books with lots of triggers, sensitive content, hard-to-stomach plot points and people and situations, fiction and nonfiction, including topics that mirror personal trauma I’ve experienced. I’ve written before about why I think that practice is very, very valuable, and it certainly applies here. But reading this book made me feel why so many people avoid hard books, whichever triggering content that might be: I just felt so much pain. Children’s pain and mistreatment are “it” for me. I cried throughout this book and seethed with anger. I just hurt. However. I also came to greater clarity regarding why I still think it’s important to read hard books: to be a witness. I can’t imagine sitting with someone, listening to their story, and telling them to stop or walking away because of how I felt about their story. I can’t imagine a child like the ones in this novel coming to tell me their story and me not listening because children’s pain is my deepest discomfort. I think the power of being a witness, a listener, a place of refuge, is much more important than my discomfort. Every time I’ve read challenging material I’ve learned something about the character, the complexities of social structures, the realities of the way the world works for someone who is not me or not like me or not in the same circumstances, the challenges others face, and I’ve learned about me, too. Empathy happens outside of our comfort zone. And I think empathy is a pretty fundamental purpose of life. That’s the value I’ve always seen in reading hard books: The value to readers by growing in empathy. But now it’s deepened by approaching from the other side: The value to characters when readers witness.
So, ultimately I really do recommend this book. And not just as an exercise in empathy or a grit-your-teeth-and-suffer-through-it challenge. I recommend it because getting to know these characters and their story is valuable. I’m happy to know the family at the heart of this novel. I certainly won’t forget them. And when I remember them, I will think of how hard it was for them, but I’ll think of their good things too, the ends of their stories, their families, their legacies, the years they lived, where the ended up. Because there is happiness here, too.
Oathbringer, Brandon Sanderson: F, WJ, RR, AB/IMH
The third book in the Stormlight Archives series. I did a combo of reading and listening to the book, depending on if James was ahead of me or if we were caught up and listening together. I remembered a lot of the first two books, but this one was almost like I hadn’t read it before: I remembered next to nothing. So it was fun to re-read. And now we’re reading book four so we’re coming into all new material. Fun!
Satisdiction 