Bookish Thoughts

The whole point of a book club is to read books that you wouldn't otherwise pick up. And I can say with certainty that I never would have read That Kind of Mother  if my book club hadn't picked it. It's got an interesting premise - a white woman adopts a black son and comes face to face with racism in America at the end of the twentieth century. But it's written by a man, and I'm a little wary of a man trying to write about motherhood. Ultimately this book seemed to be lacking...something. It was unfocused, and I think that had to do with the main character's lack of focus. Rebecca has a hard time understanding that the people around her are actually people. Her marriage is barely a marriage at all (I would have divorced him long before Rebecca did). Her most meaningful relationship seems to be with Princess Diana - a celebrity that she's never even met. Towards the end of the book Cheryl accuses Rebecca as seeing her as nothing more than a side characte...

I have to admit that I was a little wary coming into this book. Sure, everyone loved it. It's been recommended to me countless times. But I'm used to family sagas being a lot longer than this. I'm used to authors spending at least 500 pages with three, maybe four generations of a single family. To follow a family for eight generations? And to do it in 300 pages? I worried that the book would jump too much, that I'd be bitter about not spending more time with some of the characters. I shouldn't have worried, really. It took a couple of chapters to adjust my expectations. This isn't a typical family saga so much as it is a series of short stories, or even vignettes, connected because they're all about people who share blood. By the end of the book, the individual chapters have built up something much greater than the sum of it's parts: a sweeping family epic that illuminates how British colonialism and the slave trade continue to have ripple effects toda...

The final volume of Y: The Last Man delivers a mostly satisfying, somewhat tragic ending that wraps up Yorick's epic quest to find his lost love. Everyone converges on Paris for final confrontations, epic reunions, and a few surprising revelations. And then life goes on, as it must. I'm going to have to re-read this whole series again at some point. It took me far too long to pick up on the slow burn romance between Yorick and 355, maybe because it was such an incredibly well done slow burn. But, like Yorick, I was blinded by the quest for Beth. I couldn't see what was right in front of me.  His resolution with Beth (and even Beth 2 and Beth Jr) was fantastic. It hit all the right beats of joy and awkwardness and betrayal and despair. Things were broken between them, and she was ultimately more of a fantasy than a real girl. I'm glad he was able to let her go in the end. I'm mad, though, about 355's death. It was shocking and jaw-dropping and ultimately fr...

The Penelopiad  is Margaret Atwood's exploration of Penelope, wife of Odysseus in The Odyssey . What was she up to while he was gone for twenty years? How did she raise her son and manage her household and fend off all those suitors? And what of the twelve maids who seemed to alternate between loyalty and betrayal and were ultimately hanged? Atwood alternates between prose sections from Penelope's point of view and a Greek Chorus of the hanged maids told in a variety of styles, most of them verse. They offer a counterpoint, sometimes directly contradicting what Penelope claims and allowing Atwood to maintain ambiguity about a story that cannot, ultimately, be known. This book was fine. Or at least it was short. I've been hankering to re-read The Odyssey , particularly the new translation by Emily Wilson, and I thought this might help get me in the mood. But perhaps I should have waited to read it afterwards, with the original material fresher in my mind. Ultimately I di...

Sometimes Octavia Butler's books feel more like outlines than novels. She's all about big ideas, and she gets them across in a really succinct way. Her books are brief, but they haunt me for years afterward, as I continue to turn over the ideas in my head. But sometimes it feels like this comes at the expense of the characters and their relationships with one another. Butler tends to focus in on the major turning points in her characters' lives, filling in the intervening years with a few brief sentences, letting a single scene capture a decade of character growth. She does it well, but I came out of this book wanting more. There are so many characters that we meet so briefly. I wanted more from Jan and Ada, I wanted to know more about what happened to Clay (holy crap, is he the Clay in Clay's Ark?). But this book is about Doro and his protege, Mary. And it's really only about them. Even Emma, née Anwanyu, has been relegated to Doro's sounding board and cons...

The second Incryptid book delivers another exciting adventure. Verity is still torn between her desire to be a professional dancer and her duty to protect the Cryptid population from over-eager monster hunters. But when Dominic tells her that the Covenant's threatened purge of Manhattan is imminent, it's not much of a choice at all. Like Verity's parents, I thought it was obvious from early on that dance was never going to be her future. So while I liked the push and pull of her two lives in the first book, I appreciated that she quickly came to the same conclusion here. When the chips are down, she's going to help her friends, because that's the kind of person she is. Which doesn't mean that she can't or won't grieve that dance career, or that she didn't need her year in NYC to come to that decision. But it was nice to see her life come into focus for her. It was also fun to see a bunch of the cast from the previous book. Though now those friend...

I love this book. It's one of my favorites. I've read it several times, and it's just as good each time. There are so many layers here, so many hints and mysteries, that each re-read rewards me with a little more understanding, a few more answers to my questions. When Pat Rothfuss announced the 10th Anniversary Edition, I had to get it. And while it sat on my shelf for a while before I got around to reading it, the anticipation just makes it that much sweeter. I've talked about this book, at length, on this blog. So I'm just going to talk about the fancy new edition now. There's a new (equally opaque) map. There are discussions of the calendar and the money. Most of this information can be gleaned from the text, but it's nice to have it all laid out in an easy-to-reference place. There's even a pronunciation guide. But best of all, there are illustrations. A bunch of them, showing key scenes in the book. The illustrations were the whole reason I wa...

I loved this volume of Y: The Last Man. We're heading into the endgame, so obviously it's time to back up and see how everyone got here. There are a handful of arcs that move the plot forward. But there are also a lot of one-off issues that give us flashbacks of all the main characters. I loved learning more about them and what their lives were like before the "gendercide". As for the main story - the main group is forced to split up. Everything moves forward. Doctor Mann tracks down her mom, walking right into the trap Toyota set for her. Yorick is finally reunited with Ampersand and learns that Beth is headed to Paris. Beth 2 has a baby (!) and she and Hero head back to the Hot Suite in Ohio. There are kids again, which is fantastic. Except that hope gets yanked away with the return f Tse'elon right at the end. But it's all the flashbacks that really sold this one for me. We get a look at 355's early childhood and her recruitment into the Culper Ring...

I've been hearing good things about Jacqueline Woodson's memoir in verse since before it came out. It won so many awards that you practically can't see the original cover anymore. I'm so glad I finally got around to reading it. While this book is technically marketed towards children (it's recommended for ages 10 and up), it works incredibly well no matter what age you are. Woodson focuses on her time as a child. She was born in Ohio, but she left when she was barely a year old. She and her siblings lived with their grandparents in South Carolina for several years before her mother moved them all to Brooklyn. But this isn't just about Woodson either. There's an incredible sense of family and history in these pages, and it's clear that this has had a profound effect on Woodson and her sense of place in the world. A lot of the book takes place before she's even born or could possibly have memories, which is a bit unusual for a memoir. She talks abo...

I've read enough of Butler's work at this point that I can't help but compare this book to her others. Certain things keeps popping up - long timelines, characters who gradually compromise their morals, and, of course, supernatural powers. From the beginning, Anyanwu reminded me strongly of the Ooloi of the Oankali in Butler's Xenogenesis series. She has the same long life, the same ability to alter her own body which leads to incredible healing abilities. But Anyanwu differs from the Ooloi in that she can only heal herself, and in that she's comparatively reclusive. All she wants is a family. Enter Doro, who inhabits the other qualities of the Ooloi: a fascination with genetics and a tendency to disregard humans as nothing more than breeding stock - pawns in his millenia-long experiments. But what Doro really wants is someone like him, not for companionship so much as the knowledge that he isn't alone in the universe. The book follows the push and pull be...

I absolutely adored this book. It stars Naledi Smith, a graduate student with a lot on her plate. She's studying for finals, working as a research assistant, trying to nail down her summer plans, and waiting tables to support herself. So when she finds out that she's the long lost fiance of an African prince, well she just assumes it's a scam and ignores the whole thing. Said prince, Thabiso, of the small (fictional) nation Thesolo, has plans to track down his fiance and find out why her parents fled the country, betraying everyone close to them in the process. But when he meets her, and discovers that her parents died shortly after they arrived in America, leaving her with no knowledge of where she came from or why she left, he finds himself intrigued. And when a case of mistaken identity gives him a chance to get to know her without all the royal baggage, he jumps at the opportunity. Hijinks ensue, as they are wont to do. Thankfully, the prince's true identity is ...

This was easily my least favorite of the series. I wonder how much of that is because this one was written first, when the author didn't have quite as clear an idea about the world. But a good chunk of it was the first person, which really bothered me in the beginning. I eventually got used to it, but it felt like such a weird departure, and I don't know that it helped with the story. It was also weird to know so much more than the main character, who is deliberately and infuriatingly being kept in the dark. There are magical mumbo-jumbo reasons for this. But it was weird to watch him stumble through this adventure knowing everything that would happen and why. But the characters remained endearing (except for Suz who quickly got on my nerves). The fire witch was fantastic, and I loved how much she and Daystar grew to rely on and trust each other. Overall, this series was short and sweet. The first and third books will remain my favorite (not coincidentally, Cimorene and M...

The third installment of Y: The Last Man  sees our trio on more adventures. They finally reach Dr. Mann's lab, only for Ampersand to be kidnapped, kicking off another journey. Yorick and Hero are finally reunited in a non-murdery way. And we meet some pirates! This was basically a series of exciting adventures. I enjoyed them, though not quite as much as the previous arcs. It was fun to meet another Beth, and to get confirmation that the original Beth is still alive. Ultimately I don't feel like I have a lot to say about this book, though. It was fun and entertaining. The main mysteries are still chugging along, though it doesn't feel like we're any closer to solving them. This is a middle book. No intriguing beginnings or astonishing endings. Just lots of treading water. Though there are those pirates I mentioned. Sigh, I should have written this review earlier. When this volume wasn't all mixed up with the next one in my head. That'll teach me to fall so...

Rebecca Solnit is probably my favorite essayist at this point. I don't agree with everything she says. In fact, my experience of reading her is similar to my experience with LeGuin. It's like having a conversation with a mentor. Someone who has decades more experience than I do, but with whom I can disagree. Someone who gets me thinking. I'm actually coming around to Solnit's definition of hope and it's reliance on not making any assumptions about the future. I still need to believe that things will get better, but Solnit's definition demands action. I've said before that Octavia Butler taught me, in Earthseed , how to hold despair and hope together in my heart and choose hope. Solnit teaches me again and again what that decision means and how to keep making it on a daily basis. This collection of essays was actually written when W was president, shortly after we declared war on Iraq. In some ways that feels like a simpler time, though that could just be...

Like most of Jo Walton's books, this was a slow burn that grew on me as I read it. It gained depth as it went, until it finished as an entirely different sort of story than when it started. Farthing  (and it's two sequels which I may or may not read at some point) takes place in an alternate version of 1949, just outside London. In this world, England has reached a truce with Hitler and let him have the continent. America never entered the war, becoming increasingly isolationist. And fascism is on the rise in all sorts of insidious little ways. Lucy and her husband are spending the weekend with her parents at the estate, something that has been increasingly rare since Lucy went against their wishes and married a Jewish man. When a man is murdered, it quickly becomes apparent that the real murderer is trying to frame Lucy's husband, David. And politics being what they are, there's not much anyone can do about it. This starts a cozy murder mystery, with the point of...

I'd been hoping that this book, the third in the series, would be narrated by Morwen, and I was so excited when that turned out to be the case. That alone might be enough to solidify this one as my favorite of The Enchanted Forest Chronicles . Morwen is as practical as Cimorene, but with more hands on experience. And tons of cats. These books are the tiniest bit forumlaic in that each plot basically hinges on the wizards finding a new way to steal magic and the heroes finding new ways to thwart them. But both the books and the series are so short that I wasn't really bothered by that. It was fun to see more of the Enchanted Forest, to meet some new characters and learn about new magic. I really liked that one of the main villains in this book was obsessed with tradition. It's not the the main characters are against all tradition. But they're practical, forward thinking people. Tradition for the sake of it isn't so great. And I was even more pleased when the book...

I've dabbled in a lot of Seanan McGuire's work over the years. She's incredibly prolific, and I read and enjoy her blog. I mostly like the books of hers that I've read, though I tend to get a bit nitpicky about them. But I think I've finally found something of hers that I'm going to fall in love with. Discount Armageddon  is the first book in her Incryptid series, which follows a family of cryptozoologists straddling the thin line between protecting humans from cryptids and cryptids from humans. They exist in a grey area in a world that insists these matters are black and white. The first book follows middle daughter, Verity Price, who is spending a year in Manhattan to study the locals and figure out what she actually wants to do with her life. Verity filled a Buffy -shaped hole in my heart that I hadn't even known was there. I didn't realize how much I missed that wit and snark, that endless training that leads to exhilarating fight scenes, that re...