Bookish Thoughts

On January 4th, I realized that there were over two months of winter left. With the holidays behind me and heaps of cold, dreary weather to look forward to, I found myself breathing a sigh of relief. "Always winter, never Christmas" doesn't sound so bad, I thought to myself. And I immediately became curious if it were possible to ascribe a grief narrative to the White Witch. She is, after all, the last surviving person of her entire world. Before I knew it, I had re-read the entirety of The Magician's Nephew . Which, no, isn't the first book in the series according to most. But it has Jadis' backstory, which is what I was interested in. It turns out that there isn't a lot of nuance to Jadis, which isn't the most surprising thing in the world. Narnia is both a children's book and a religious allegory. Sympathetic, nuanced villains don't really fit. Jadis destroyed her world because she was evil. She killed her own sister with the magical equival...

I love things that play with structure. And I wanted to love this. A book that can be read in two different orders! One that purportedly changes depending on how you choose to read it! This was like catnip to me. It sat on the shelf for months while I kept telling myself I needed to read something else. And I finally picked it up only to be massively disappointed. The preface explains the two orders to read the book in and, feeling contrary, I jumped to the more complicated one that had me flipping back and forth. Maybe that was a mistake, but I knew I probably wasn't going to find time to read this twice in a row. Unfortunately, calling attention to the unique structure kind of killed this book for me. It ended up feeling a bit patronizing or maybe just egotistical. The author had to draw attention to how clever he was in case the reader couldn't figure it out for themself. It didn't help that I recently read two other books ( The Ten Thousand Doors of January and The Sta...

I know Bridgerton is a modern classic of the genre, but I'm finding this series to be way more uneven than I expected. The Duke and I was fun, The Viscount Who Loved Me was perfect and cathartic. I was really excited for An Offer From a Gentleman , especially since the cover implied similarities to Cinderella. But I was underwhelmed. It didn't help that I really didn't like Benedict. He's pushy and patronizing, and it drives the plot, but I really needed him to back off. Sophie was lovely, but I have a hard time with the whole "I won't be a mistress, just a wife" plot line. Maybe I'm just too modern. So this book was disappointing. But I bought the whole series, and they're fun and light enough for me to keep going. Especially since the next book is Colin and Penelope, which I cannot wait for. I also just found out that Francesca's book takes place after her first husband died, and I'm really interested to see a romance starring a widow.

I don't think I ever would have picked up this book on my own. But the point of a book club is to get outside your comfort zone a little bit. To give a fair chance to books you might not otherwise look twice at. So I picked it up and read it. Honestly, I found most of this book to be incredibly frustrating. Gladwell opens with the confrontation between Sandra Bland, the black woman who was arrested on a traffic violation and subsequently found dead by apparent suicide in her jail cell, and Brian Encinia, the cop who arrested her. There is video of the incident, so we can all see exactly what happened. But the video lacks most of the context. So Gladwell went in search of that context, which he presents in this book as an extended inquiry into what exactly happened between Bland and Encinia. Most of the book is focused on a person's ability to sift lies from the truth. Gladwell argues that we default to believing that people are telling us the truth. That it takes a great deal o...

The third book in The Raven Cycle continues the adventures of Blue, Gansey, Ronan, Adam, and Noah as they circle ever closer to finding Glendower. But things are growing ever more complicated with Blue's mother missing, Mr. Grey's old employer coming to town, and school starting back up. This is really an excellent coming of age story, as these kids learn about their powers, develop them further, and also think hard about what they want from life. I think this is why I've gotten so attached to them. Their growth is so hard and realistic. And Stiefvater's excellent prose certainly helps. There's only one book left, and I'm honestly so scared. Predictions made in the first book are about to come to fruition, and I'm not sure I'm ready. But I still hope it all ends happily.

In December I suddenly found myself craving epic fantasy. I re-watched all three Lord of the Rings movies on Hulu, and I was seriously considering re-reading The Wheel of Time . But then I remembered that I had this other, much shorter and new-to-me series on my shelf, where it had been sitting for nearly two years. So I finally picked it up. Green Rider was everything I wanted it to be and more. It mostly follows Karigan, who has just been suspended from school and is heading home when she gets caught up in a magical adventure. She finds herself in possession of magical powers she doesn't understand, relentlessly pursued by enemies she wasn't expecting, and suddenly wishing she'd paid more attention to history and current events. The story is exciting, and things happened much more quickly than I was expecting. But that propulsive plot didn't detract from the incredible world or rich characters. I loved Karigan's discovery of this world, and Britain did an excelle...

This book was a gift, and a perfect one. The author is a professor at MIT whose research is focused on the search for exoplanets. She's also a widow who lost her husband to cancer and found herself suddenly juggling her career with her two young sons all be herself. I related to this book much more than Joan Didion's memoir. Getting through the day to day when every little thing is overwhelming, learning new skills because you suddenly have to do it alone, finding your grief all mixed up with gratitude for the things you do have, these are all deeply familiar experiences for me now. Interleaved with that was a fascinating look at Dr Seager's career and research, her pursuit of planets outside the solar system that might support life. I loved reading about her work. Not just because it was so interesting, but also because it was this subtle reminder that life just keeps going on. I'm so glad I read this book. It was a big reminder that I'm not alone, that other peopl...

The hero in this book, Anthony, lives with an intense fear that he will die young. His father and uncle both died before reaching 40, and he has convinced himself that he will do the same. It shapes his entire life, most notably when it comes to marrying and having kids. Quinn notes that this tends to be a male fear and that she worries the women reading her book won't be able to relate to it. But it struck home in a weirdly unexpected way. You see, my husband's father died young. As did his father. We used to joke, blackly, that it had been a few generations since a man in his family had made it much past 60. And as irrational as it was, I entered my marriage fully expecting to outlive my husband. He would occasionally point out that there was no reason to believe he would die young. Nevertheless, in my heart of hearts, I did believe it. Of course, by young, I was thinking 60. Not 34. And now I have this fear, just as strong, just as irrational, that I will also outlive my son...

I waited too long between books and forgot some key stuff from the end of the last one, but this one sucked me right in again. The quest to find the lost king is on the back burner in this book as the boys deal with more immediate problems. They're also navigating their growing pains and shifting relationships, some with more success than others. This book mostly focuses on Ronan, so it's no real surprise that I ended up loving him so much more by the end of it. He makes a lot more sense now, and he also seems to be pulling out of his tailspin which is good. But then there's Adam, who is basically in free fall at this point. Some of the ending of the series is telegraphed from the first few pages. But even knowing where all this is heading, I can't help but hope for a happy ending. These kids deserve it. In the meantime, this series is putting my heart through the ringer. In a good way.

This book is 100 pages long and it took me two weeks to read it because November was so non-stop. I liked it a lot. It's fun and comforting with a twist that I saw coming just in time. And one or two lines that reminded me why I love Lois McMaster Bujold so much. I just wish I'd been able to read it a bit quicker.

I'm glad I read this trilogy. There were a lot of neat ideas, a cool exploration of both cutting-edge science and sociopolitical ideas. The writing was occasionally incredible. But this book was so bloated, and it went on way too long. By the end, I was only reading out of spite. A perverse need to finish the damn book. I actually fell asleep with 5 pages left and never went back to finish it, but I'm calling it good enough. And I'm glad that Sax and Ann managed to work out their differences.  But mostly I just want to play Terraforming Mars again, to see how it compares to the books.

I picked this up in anticipation of the Netflix series, and I actually managed to read it before the series hit Netflix. This story was lovely and hilarious.I love that the series focuses on a family, and I love the Bridgerton's as a family. They're so warm and happy, and I can't wait to read about each and every one of them finding love of their own. I also love the framing of Lady Whistledown. I'm excited to find out who she is. I'm also really, really excited for the Netflix series to drop. It's going to be just the thing I need in the week between Christmas and New Year's

When I really love a book, you can tell not just by how many times I've read it, but by how many copies I've bought. Space Opera was just elevated to a book I've bought more than once, simply because I needed both a physical and a digital copy of it. The thing that makes this one of my favorite books it the simple, recurring line: Life is beautiful and life is stupid. It resonates with me, especially since my husband was diagnosed with cancer while I was pregnant with twins. 2019 was a fantastic, terrible year, and 2020 even more so. My husband's death is the worst thing that's ever happened to me, but my kids are the best thing that's ever happened to me, and to have them both happening at the same time has resulted in an extreme roller coaster. This book reminds me that it's okay to be happy, to feel joy. Not just in that main theme, but because it's a hilarious book with a whole lot of heart. I keep coming back to it, as I do with most of Cat Valente...

It was a long wait for Allie Brosh's second book, but it was worth it. A lot happened to her in the years between books - a divorce, the sudden death of her sister - and the really informs her new stories. While her earlier work was hilarious and relatable, it also tended to stay on the surface. She started digging deeper at the end of her last book, and that same depth is present in nearly every story here. I'll be honest: I wanted a bit more of the surface hilarity. These stories hit hard, and I wasn't always ready for the raw grief that showed up. I also got unreasonably upset at the fact that her new husband was named Kevin, like she'd stolen him from me somehow. But I'm sure I'll keep revisiting these stories in the future, and I'll keep getting more out of them in the coming years.

This is a haunted house story about a couple who moves to a new town looking for a fresh start. But I kind of felt like the woman should have been looking for a fresh start without her husband. Where she's an organized, ambitious, kind person who really deserves the best in life, he's a gambling addict who coasts by at a job he's barely competent at. (He's a lazy software engineer, which I have a personal vendetta against). He's dragging her down with him, and she needs to break free. But she doesn't. The book just reaffirms their connection, as I knew it would. Oh well.  Aside from not liking one of the main characters, I felt like the pacing of the book was a bit off. The house escalated things way too quickly. I can see how people get trapped when things build slowly, but this went from zero to sixty, and I couldn't believe that the couple would stay as long as they did. Then they managed to escape way too easily, without ever worrying about the next vict...

I wish I read more poetry. Sometimes I come across one that cuts right to my core or perfectly sums up what I'm feeling and it's wonderful. When you relate to a poem like that there's this wonderful feeling of connection and the loneliness lifts a little bit. But poems can also be dense or obscure. When you get it, you get it. When you don't, it can take a lot of work. The solution, of course, is to read more poetry. Practice and familiarity will make it easier to understand them. And they're short. So I bought a book of Mary Oliver's poems, which are at least modern and fairly accessible. I read a few every night before going to sleep, which was a good way to work through it. I can't read more than a few at a time. But this let me digest them, and I ended up really liking most of them. And a few were exactly what I needed to read, which is what I'd been hoping for. I should really keep this up. Poetry before bed seems like a good habit to get in to.

I was absolutely shocked when my book club chose this for our November meeting. It's a huge departure from the mainstream books we usually read. So I guess it wasn't all that surprising when no one in the club actually managed to finish it. But I enjoyed getting a chance to read it again. I followed it a lot better my second time through, and I understood way more of the jokes. The sequel is still sitting on my shelf, and I can't wait to read it, and the rest of the series.