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...