Camino Island by John Grisham
My rating: 1 of 5 stars
Sorry, Mr. Grisham, life is too short for me to keep reading this one. I got two chapters in and nothing grabbed me, and the bookish theft plus independently wealthy indie book store owner who is kinda an asshole already deterred me from continuing. Maybe it picks up? But I’m not willing to stick it out.
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A Hat Full of Sky by Terry Pratchett
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This book is a warm, cheery hug. Tiffany Aching is ready to start to learn to use magic and become a Real Witch, but it means leaving home for the first time and staying with a rather odd witch named Miss Level, who is frustratingly not very witchy at all! Tiffany is a bit homesick and irritated that magic seems to be mostly helping ungrateful villagers and not a lot of swishing magic wands about. But danger has followed Tiffany, and, with the help of the Feegles (see: Wee Free Men) and a few other witches, she learns how to tap the true power of a witch.
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The Wee Free Men by Terry Pratchett
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Superbly charming, Pratchett at his best. Tiffany is a young girl living on the Chalk, which sensible witches know is far too unstable to create a witch. And yet… and yet, Tiffany shows all the characteristics of one. She’s very clever, thinks things through, and, above all, cares. Plus there’s the fact that she knocked a fairytale demon right back out of a stream and has been talking to feisty little fairy men.
It was so good that I blazed through it and immediately grabbed the next one, which I also finished off in a blitz. A perfect vacation read. The Tiffany Aching books are officially YA, and certainly would be a riot for a kid reader, but I didn’t find it too different from the general Discworld populations, and of course adults should enjoy it, too. Give it a read, ya scuggin!
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Like a Mother: A Feminist Journey Through the Science and Culture of Pregnancy by Angela Garbes
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
I picked this book up on a whim because the pregnancy book I had wanted to read was on backorder at the library. I’m glad I did! Like a Mother is one part memoir (focused on the author’s pregnancy) and one part Weird Science Facts. I now know far more about what a placenta looks, feels, smells, and yes, tastes like than I ever expected. I also know what it does.
Honestly, it was such a fascinating and frank look at pregnancy that it shouldn’t be slated as “just” a pregnancy book. Anyone interested in the human body and biology could benefit from reading it.
That said, it feels like every pregnancy book features vignettes about the author’s birth experience, which… I don’t know, I see a value in it, but that wasn’t why I was showing up to the book, and I found those sections a little too personal and intense for me compared to the Weird Science Facts.
I also thought the book had some good discussions of the feminism of pregnancy in general, and it was reassuring in a Hell Yes I’m Not Alone kind of way to know that there are other people out there pushing against the standard pregnancy mantras.
Tiamat’s Wrath by James S.A. Corey
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
It’s taken me a few days to digest this book. It should be no surprise to fans by now that each book has Big Ramifications. But the writing is also so embracing that it feels like home.
I’m not sure if I loved this book or not. On the one hand, I was thrilled to get it and continue the story. On the other—as has been true throughout—the storytellers and story type shifts with the needs to the narrative. As such, I didn’t “hear from” some of the characters I missed. I did feel Teresa, one of the newer characters, had a distinctive, age-appropriate voice—I just didn’t like her much. But I think that’s intentional. But it does make it hard to get attached when you dislike one of the leads. I was glad to see Elvi back, though I do not envy her her plot.
Mixed bag, and it will definitely make you feel all kinds of things.
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A Closed and Common Orbit by Becky Chambers
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
I picked this up because I wanted to renter the calm, warm, happy world of Chambers’ first book. And while this one has a few overlapping characters and the same general universe backdrop—it just didn’t take me there.
Part of my problem was I only liked half of the story. The main thrust of the story, an AI trying to adapt to being foisted into a humanesque body, wasn’t something I cared about. The counterpoint, describing the plucky tech Pepper’s hard upbringing as a child slave on a terrible, wasteful planet, I loved! I found myself dully reading Sidra’s (the AI) bits, then getting excited on Pepper’s.
But the end of that one felt rushed, so I didn’t get the ending I was hoping for. Plus the social issues aspect on this one was just so thick, at times it felt like a lecture—even if I agreed with it, I wanted to spend my time on more plot and less musing. I should have known that going in, I guess. I’ll keep chasing my warm fuzzies, though.
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Outlander by Diana Gabaldon
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
I’m gobsmacked that this book has so many positive reviews. It has such a preponderance of rape and beating scenes that it was starting to feel like a quota. Is this the SAW movie of romance?
I picked up Outlander because I visited Scotland, and the locals kept asking me if the book was the reason for my visit. I hadn’t heard of it, so I picked it up, thinking I’d relish the memories of my trip through the reading. And it does have lovely descriptions of the Scottish Highlands! It has an interesting concept (time travel! Scotland! Wars! Romance!).
But. Come on. Come onnnnn. This book can’t go 20 pages without a rape or a serious beating, often with no comment on how this affects the female character. She is described as being beaten “within an inch of my life” by her husband, and a few pages later is laughing with him about it!
The villain is Snidely Whiplash-levels of evil. To the point it is just obscene. Like, we get it, he was a bad guy when he was just attempting to rape people and beating them severely. But then he has to attempt to rape literally all the main characters (successfully raping one! In detail!), and that’s not enough so we throw in random incest vibes, because reasons? (So much of the violence here is just unnecessary! It adds nothing! This book could have wrapped up just fine five chapters ago!)
I got within 10% of the ending of this book, just trying to push through the brutality to finish it, but I can’t. I wouldn’t read a horror novel with this level of brutality; I don’t know why I should be expected to like it in a romance novel.
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I can’t stop thinking about this article in The Atlantic about a group of women who met online and became friends in an Internet forum, eventually meeting in real-life and staying friends.
I miss that kind of internet. I missed the MySpace phase, but had both a blogger and a LiveJournal–under pseudonyms, of course. I loved that they were journals, and it felt sort of secretive and powerful that they were also available for real people to read. But eventually real people I knew were reading those, and an element of self-censorship. At least one college friend forgot he had told people about his online journal and made some awkward confessions with bad ramifications.
But then I found my way to semi-private Internet forums. There, I could be myself (or not), and talk about the things weighing on my heart. I could be honest. And the forum was moderated, which, although it led to a good amount of complaining, meant that overall the conversation was positive. People were friendly. Relationships were forged. It was a place to connect–while staying safe and protected. You only had to reveal as much as you wished.
The downside was that others looked down on you for having internet friends. You couldn’t go around telling people you spent all your time talking to strangers. You’d just tell the real-world people in your life, “a friend of mine…”, leaving out the pertinent detail that you don’t know this friend’s real name, location, or face. You know them by an affectionate but goofy-sounding username.
I even got so far as making a friend in another country. He invited me over–and I visited him in England.
(I told my friends he was a pen pal, which is about 80% true.)
But that kind of community doesn’t seem to exist now. Or, at least, if it does, I’m not part of it. Facebook and Google, and to a lesser degree, Twitter, are the big behemoths in the Internet, and they decided to make the push for transparency. Real names became the mandate (once, when I forgot my password, Facebook required that I upload a copy of my drivers’ license in order to unlock my damned account.)
But with that kind of transparency comes a loss. There are things you don’t want to broadcast to your whole network. So you self-censor, show less than everything. In a world where everything you say it shown to everyone you really know, you say less and less of the whole truth.
Sure, transparency in social media seemed like it would be good, but in lieu of the ability to wear our masks, we have made our lives look like the masks. I’ve made and kept far fewer friends with those kind of deep connections since the transparent social media era–even as my friends list and Twitter followers burgeoned.
I miss those small, safe pockets of unfamiliarity.
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Year One by Nora Roberts
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
“Well, that’s unexpected.”
That was the running theme for this whole book, for me. I’m not a typical romance reader, but this was romance/thriller/apocalypse and came highly recommended, and I’m glad I gave it a shot! The plot twists were like riding an old-school rollercoaster; you’d think you knew where things were going, then whipla, you’re onto something else. That’s what is both good and bad about this book.
I love the concepts here. A curse/plague spreads globally, very fast, mutating so scientists can’t get a grapple on a cure. At the same time, magic starts to spread through the land, creating beauty and power in new and mysterious ways.
Great premise! So much potential. I loved the big ideas here, but then–maybe because I came to this as a fan of apocalypses rather than romances–I had a lot of pragmatic questions that were brushed aside. It also felt like the pacing was weird; things were slow at the beginning, but toward the end of the story I felt like things were being “said” not “shown,” in a much more creator-speaking-to-reader-just-go-with-it kinda way. I get that some of it is supposed to be jarring–it’s an apocalypse! But it sometimes felt like Roberts didn’t feel like really committing to the ick of the storyline, so she’d sort of zoom in and out to focus on the bits she cared about.
I also felt like the pregnancy plots would be really annoying to any pregnant woman or mother of infants. There’s a woman with three infants who never so much as blinks at having to keep them all fed in the middle of a disease-filled wasteland. There’s personal strength and then there’s that insanity.
A lot of the magic also tended toward the deus-ex-machina level; boom, magic fixed that problem, move on, let’s not stop to think about the fact that this woman just sprouted wings. And, as a fantasy reader who is used to “elf” and “fairy” being a literal race/species, it was a little weird for humans to start describing themselves as these without any explanation whatsoever (at the very least, I’d have liked a clarification: are we talking Christmas elf or Lord of the Rings elf here? It matters!).
Also, she spells magic “magick” the whole time and that drove me nuts.
But I liked the story, broadly speaking, and I hope it’s an entrypoint into fantasy and dystopian fiction for the romance-lovers out there. Unfortunately, the dissonance on some of the ideas was a little too much for me, so this is the last I plan on reading of this series.
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Unf*ck Your Habitat: You’re Better Than Your Mess by Rachel Hoffman
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I don’t feel confident in my cleaning abilities. I always feel like I’m behind or doing something wrong or don’t know when to do the cleaning. It felt like an insurmountable mountain.
But then I discovered Unf*ck Your Habitat. Author Rachel Hoffman offers simple, straightforward, pleasantly vulgar cleaning advice to help anyone, no matter how bad their mess, get started. And it’s shockingly compassionate. I envision this book like a big sister chiding me to do my chores… but then getting off the couch to help dry the dishes once I start.
Some people have complained about the swearing, but honestly, it’s barely present and any reader should expect it from the title alone. So those reviewers are full of shit.
The advice is solid, and yes, it’s easy. You don’t have to read or buy this book to get the message: she offers an active Tumblr and an app, if you prefer. But I feel like content creators deserve to be paid, so I bought the book. And besides, the book has some really helpful lists that I’m definitely going to use—I may laminate them. I’ve already thought of loaning this book to a friend who may benefit, but I may keep it to reread. It’s useful.
But—I would have liked a little more info on the down-and-dirty how-to part. For instance, her bathroom cleaning list says: “fill the sink with hot water and a bit of cleaner.” What kind of cleaner? What do I do with the hot water once it’s there? It’s left to the reader and… well, I could have used the guidance.
But overall, it is motivating, uplifting, and a great place to start.
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M.E. Kinkade 