July-September books

 Wow, I really haven't posted in a while, haven't I? I didn't read any books in June.

I picked up triple threat & bicon Alan Cumming's memoir, Not My Father's Son, from the dollar store and read it in July. It's about his childhood under the thumb of his terrifying, abusive father, and about him learning about his estranged WWII veteran grandfather by going on a celebrity genealogy TV show, drawing parallels between both of these stories. This book was difficult to read due to the abuse, but it was so good, and it's clear Cumming is in a good place now and going to therapy and stuff. He's an excellent writer, and I'm glad I read this book. 4/5 stars, giving away. Trigger warnings for this book: child abuse, physical abuse, violence, suicide mention, emotional abuse, trauma, domestic abuse, alcoholism, PTSD mention, firearm misuse mention, infidelity, I can't remember any more

 

August's first book was Samantha Irby's We Are Never Meeting In Real Life. I've read her first book of memoir essays, Meaty, and this was just as good and gross and hilarious and sad as that. She writes about her relationships (including with her now-wife), IBS, her cat and her job which she hates, her father dying, and more. I follow Sam on social media and she is a delight. 4/5 stars, keeping (bought this one from Target). Trigger warnings for this book: death, alcoholism, gross body stuff, sexually explicit scenes, depression I think, racism I think

 

Next I read another dollar store book, The History of Food in 101 Objects. This book was very interesting, with a lot of food and food production facts and colorful photographs. I wish there had been a bibliography or reference list; as a librarian, I side-eye any nonfiction book that doesn't say where their information came from. You don't have to have in-text citations! Just throw a list of your sources in at the end! No one will read it anyway! There is also no listed author, which was weird to me. Another weird thing: I am not sure of the intended audience for this book. Is it for kids? Is it for adults? It works and doesn't work for both. Either way, it's a great bathroom book. 3.5/5 stars, giving away. No triggers that I can think of, unless you have food-based triggers

 

My September book (also from the dollar store) was Vinegar Girl by Anne Tyler, which is a modern-day retelling of The Taming of the Shrew. They updated the story by having the main character Kate's love interest be her father's research assistant Pyotr who needs to get married to an American to get a green card. I thought this was incredibly selfish of her father to just offer her up just because she was single, even for someone who lived entirely in the world of the mind. It made me sad how he cared way more about his research than his daughters. Kate really isn't a shrew, just extremely honest/blunt and lacking in social skills (possibly on the autism spectrum, as well as her dad), and her 15 year old sister Bunny is pulled straight out of a 1950s teen dream movie or something. Her name is Bunny, for starters, which is in no way an actual nickname for Berenice or whatever, she's always on the landline phone with boys, and she twirls her hair around her finger and says stuff like "isn't it nice of you to say so?" to them. Nobody born after 1970 talks like that. She has an older boyfriend who is 19, and no one besides Kate sees how creepy and wrong that is. The dad does not care and does nothing. Kate decides to go through with the wedding because she wants a different life for herself and Pyotr says he'll put her through grad school. The wedding is completely disastrous, with Pyotr showing that he cares more about the research then anything else, even though the book was trying to convince us that he liked her. Kate's big "men should dominate women, actually" speech in the Shakespeare play is changed to "it's really hard to be a man because they can't talk about their feelings and aren't given social tools to deal with them like women are". Which, whatever. Overall, I mostly liked Kate and the way her work at a preschool was written about, as well as the observations about how people Kate knew became way nicer to her once they learned she's engaged. Society really loves it when women conform to its roles for them. Overall, kind of disappointed in the book, although the writing is good. I'd read more from this author. It may interest you to learn that the book is part of a series, Hogarth Shakespeare series, that is all modern retellings of Shakespeare plays. 3.5/5 stars, giving away. Cover notes: I like this one better than my copy. Trigger warnings for this book: parental neglect and selfishness, adult dating a teenager, one character punches another (but he deserves it), mention of death from heart condition (I think)

Book review: A Life in Stitches: Knitting my way through love, loss, and laughter by Rachael Herron

Following a trend, A Life in Stitches was a dollar store find. I was kind of on the fence about it but decided to buy it since I like to knit. I am so glad I did, because I really enjoyed this book!

Rachael Herron was (is?) the author of a popular knitting blog, back when blogs were the thing, and she's been knitting since she was young. Here is the Amazon summary:

When life unravels, there’s always a way to knit it back together again, many times into something even better. Honest, funny, and full of warmth, Herron’s tales, each inspired by something she knit or something knit for her, will speak to anyone who has ever picked up a pair of needles. From her very first sweater (a hilarious disaster, to say the least) to the yellow afghan that caused a breakup (and, ultimately, a breakthrough), every piece has a moving story behind it. This beautifully crafted and candid collection is perfect for the knitter who loves to read and the reader who loves to knit.

I loved this book. Herron is a really great writer, and she's skilled at putting you right in the situation she's describing and making you feel what she felt. Despite not knowing she existed before I picked up this book, I warmed to her immediately and enjoyed the glimpses into her life. She doesn't shy away from sharing embarrassing or painful events that happened to her, and readily shares any insight she gleaned from the experiences. Herron shares stories about her family, her experiences dating and falling in love with both men and women, and how she met her wife. I loved the essay about Venice, one of her favorite cities in the world.  It really made me want to visit Venezia again.

Surprisingly, there is only one knitting pattern in this book: a pattern for a hot water bottle cozy. There are obviously tons of descriptions of different things Herron has knitted over the years. Some are seriously complex and difficult! She knitted everything in the cover picture, and has even taken up spinning (yes, like Sleeping Beauty with the wheel). This book made me want to start knitting again and look up the closest yarn shop. I would definitely recommend this book to to anyone who likes knitting or memoirs.

Score: 5 out of 5 stars
Read in: January 17
From: dollar store
Format: hardcover
Status: keeping

Book review: Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim by David Sedaris

The first book I read in January/this year was Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim by David Sedaris, which was his usual type of awkward and sometimes funny personal essays. The only really funny story in the collection was the one where he talks about the Swedish? version of Santa Claus and how weird it is (to Americans). There were other stories that had funny parts in them, but the secondhand embarrassment or shock I felt reading the stories outweighed any entertainment I got. For example, there was one story where as a child, David stuffed as much Halloween candy in his face as he could in order to not have to share it with the neighbor kids. That is kind of funny to picture, but it's sad because it was selfish. There was also a story where he talked about his experience working cleaning houses as a young man, and a client thought he was from a male maid escort service and sexually harassed him. Again, not funny to me.

Overall, I felt the same "...ok..." indifference that I felt with the last book of his that I read, Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls. I think the reason I'm no longer a big fan of his writing is mostly due to the vastly diminished amount of indulgence I feel towards white cisgender male authors, as well as the cavalier and unexplored racial views a Southern man of his generation has. David also seems to share a lot of embarrassing and personal stories about his family even though they specifically tell him not to, which I didn't like. It's one thing to exorcise your personal demons through highly personal essays, but it's another to air your family's dirty laundry. He even writes one essay where his sister shared a sad story with him, burst into tears, and then told him not to write about it! I would strangle him if he were my brother.

The cover is a close-up photo of a naked Barbie doll's torso. I don't know if it's a reference to an earlier book by David, Naked, but it doesn't have anything to do with any of the stories (that I remember). Because of this cover, I read this book at home and did not bring it to work.

Score: 3.4 out of 5 stars
Read in: early January
From: thrift store
Format: paperback
Status: giving away

January-March 2016 books

Orgullo y Prejuicio (graphic novel). Dec. 2015-Feb. 2016
My dad bought me a graphic novel version of Pride & Prejudice in Spanish, as a Christmas present. It's an ok envisioning; the speech bubbles' copying and pasting of text should have been edited a bit more closely, and I don't like how all the girls look 16 and all the guys look 40. The artwork was kinda cartoony, and more detail/accuracy could have been kept in the depictions of clothing, etc. 3.9/5

Bon Appetit by Sandra Boyd. early January
A Christian chick lit book about an American woman who moves to France to become a pastry chef in a culinary school. Great depictions of baking and food; this made me want to visit France so bad! I think this is part of a series, although it stands alone. 4/5

Epic by John Elderidge. early January
This is a reread I did one Saturday afternoon. I do love books that are like 'there's a spiritual reasoning behind loving fairytales/myths/etc.!' 4.9/5

Behind Lewis's Lions: Searching the Bible for C.S. Lewis's Lions by Mary Tilden. Jan.-Feb.
This was a free Nook ebook I was initially excited to read, but turned out to be kinda dull and repetitive. I did learn a bit about how the Bible portrays lions, but it's annoying to me when books are like "look up these 8 Bible verses!" without providing the text (I'm lazy, ok?). Plus she did that thing where she extrapolated too much from it, like, "see how the Bible portrayed lions like this? Lewis clearly was referencing/inspired by that when he wrote Aslan!!" Like, not necessarily. 3/5

Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell. mid February
I had heard good things about this book, but didn't get around to reading it until my book club chose to read it. This (library) book was really good but SO SAD. I'm talking major domestic abuse/violence situation as well as mean school bullying. Teens from different social backgrounds are thrust together in their high school, bond over music and comic books and overcome obstacles like cliques and fear of what others think to fall in love, set in the 1980s.  Like I'm glad? I read it, but it did a number on me emotionally. It ends on a happy note, I guess. 4/5

Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls by David Sedaris. Mid-late March
I read and own Me Talk Pretty One Day and loved it, so I was excited when the next book my book club chose was this one (and lbr, we needed a lighthearted palate cleanser after E&P). David Sedaris is a great writer and very funny/outlandish, but I didn't like this book as much as MTP1D. I don't know if it was lesser in quality or humor, or if I just now have way less patience for privileged white men's opinions about stuff (especially about other cultures and/or race). I think the funniest essay/story was about Costco. 3.9/5

Batter Up by Robyn Neeley. Late March
The least substantial of all chick lit about a baker chick whose cupcake batter spells out the name of the person a bachelor is going to marry. I was interested in the magic stuff, but the author chose to focus more on the stale "bicker then fall for each other" and "quirky/meddling small town" tropes, which made it pretty lame and forgettable. 3/5

Last of 2015: flash book reviews

Cry of the Peacock by V.R. Christensen. Mid November
This was a Kindle book I got for free. It's a historical fiction story set in Victorian England about a girl being pressured to marry for what she'll inherit upon her marriage. The dialogue felt too modern, as were some of the characters' opinions on things, and some of the characters were cartoonishly evil. For the two main characters to get together, something has to be done about the people they're actually with, so the spares are magically paired off to each other in the end even though it makes no sense for them to be attracted to each other (well, the girl, anyway. She's so nice and the guy is such a douchey jerk that it's hard to see why she'd be secretly in love with him the whole time). This was otherwise good. 3.9/5 ***BREAKING: as of today, 1/8/16, the ebook is free on Amazon!***

I have this app (Appsgonefree) that tells me about the apps that are free that day, and one a while back was an ebook app of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. It had interesting animations made from the illustrations, but the "page" background had that burnt/antiquated look that made it hard to read the black text sometimes. I would have been annoyed had I spent money on it, but for free it's fine. 3.9/5

Sorcery and Cecilia, or, The Enchanted Chocolate Pot by Patricia C. Wrede and Caroline Stevermer. Late November
I LOVED THIS. I had read an excerpt a long time ago but never got around to getting this book until the ebook version (I think Nook from Barnes & Noble) went free, and I pounced on it. It's historical fantasy set in Regency England, like if Jane Austen were more lighthearted and could do magic. Way more bubbly and fun than Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, but along those lines (nothing about fairies tho). The two authors are because it's an epistolary novel: two cousins write letters to each other about a magical plot, cute annoying gentlemen, the Season, London, parties, fashion, and getting around their strict aunts. I highly recommend this. 4/5

Why Not Me? by Mindy Kaling. Mid December
This is an excellent book to read if you want to be immersed in grief because you cannot be best friends with Mindy Kaling IRL. It's a book of essays like her last book, so if you liked that/other "essays by famous people/comedians" books, you'll like this too. 4/5

Science Fiction & Fantasy class essays: Ursula K. Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness & Charlotte Perkins Gilman's Herland

Gender and Science Fiction

Ursula K. Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness and Charlotte Perkins Gilman's Herland both deal with alternately gendered societies, but in different ways. Herland is a country that has been peopled only with women for hundreds of years; the women become pregnant independently, through asexual reproduction. The Left Hand of Darkness takes place in Winter, where everyone is genderless, except during their mating periods when one individual becomes male and one individual becomes female in order to reproduce. These lands are seen as very strange by the protagonists, who are men from our society/world.

The authors of both these books were women, which is unsurprising considering how in-depth and concerned with gender and its role in our and the alternate societies both stories are. In contrast, male SF writers such as Burroughs and Bradbury have written SF stories where the male themes of exploration and colonization/domination take place on Mars, a newer Wilder West. Many men who wrote SF have used the genre as a way to satirize their cultures or human nature, but they have not dealt with gender anywhere near as much as these two authors have. But then, men don't really have to deal with gender the way women do.

Broadly, female SF writers use SF as a way to imagine a differently cultured world, a different society, where gender does not shape the people, their destinies and their culture the way it does in our world or society. They want to explore worlds where gender is a non-issue: Gilman because there are no men and as such only one gender with nothing to contrast with, and Le Guin because no one has a gender and everyone is the same. To me, these books earn their science fiction status not because they take place on other planets (only Le Guin's does), but because they deal with the soft sciences: sociology and psychology.

Science Fiction & Fantasy class essays: Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles

Science fiction and fantasy stories are always placed together, and with good reason. Fantasy uses magic and myth to explain or drive its stories along, while science fiction uses science. To me, fantasy is dreaming about the past, back when things were shadowy, mysterious, holy, when there were any number of gods and spirits and fey folk. Science fiction is dreaming about the future, when technology makes all kinds of things possible and the limit has blasted past the sky. However, science fiction is sometimes only fantasy with a light dusting of science, mythology set in space. Stories like The Martian Chronicles blur the line between the two and act as a sort of transition.

Ray Bradbury posits in his introduction to The Martian Chronicles that his stories are "pure myth", which lends to them staying power: "If it had been practical technologically efficient science fiction, it would have long since fallen to rust by the road. But since it is a self-separating fable, even the most deeply rooted physicists at Cal-Tech accept breathing the fraudulent oxygen atmosphere I have loosed on Mars. [...] Myth, seen in mirrors, incapable of being touched, stays on."

In "And the Moon Be Still As Bright", Spender says of the Martians, "They blended religion and art and science because, at base, science is no more than an investigation of a miracle we can never explain, and art is an interpretation of that miracle." Stories are literature and literature is art. No matter the setting, we tell ourselves and each other stories, reaching toward the miracle, trying to explain it and capture it and understand it better. Within that miracle lies the key to who we are.

Science Fiction & Fantasy class essays: A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs

While reading A Princess of Mars I kept thinking, is John Carter a Gary Stu? A Gary Stu (or Marty Stu) is "an annoyingly 'perfect' male fanfiction character"[1] who is unbelievably great at everything and loved by everyone in the story. Wikipedia links this trope to that of the competent man, "a stock character who can do anything perfectly, or at least exhibits a very wide range of abilities and knowledge"[2].

John Carter already has fighting and wilderness survival skills as a Civil War veteran and prospector, but once he inexplicably finds himself on Mars, he becomes almost a superhero. Mars' lesser gravity means he can leap huge distances in a single bound, and his strength is also magnified to this extreme, enabling him to overpower and even kill at one blow huge Martians three times his height and weight. He rises up in the Thark ranks ridiculously fast. He's also a genius; it takes him less than a week to learn the Martian language, and while he can read everyone's thoughts telepathically, they cannot read his.  Obviously he and the titular princess fall in love and marry. Most interestingly, John claims not to remember anything before the age of thirty, and that he is ageless as well as immortal.

What keeps John from fully being a 'competent man' trope is that there are explanations given for most of his skills. One could argue that the term Gary Stu doesn't apply to John either since there is no evidence that Edgar Rice Burroughs wrote him as a self-insert character, but the Barsoom series are based on the writings of the astronomer Percival Lowell [3], so in a sense those (and all science fiction) are fanfiction about science. Such perfect characters seem to speak to a universal longing to be better than we are, to have the strength and skills to face an obstacle-filled life and come out on top.

1. nscangal. (June 27, 2005). "Marty-Stu." The Urban Dictionary. http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Marty-Stu

2. "Competent man." (last modified April 30, 2015). Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Competent_man

3. "A Princess of Mars." (last modified May 1, 2015). Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Princess_of_Mars

Science Fiction & Fantasy class essays: H.G. Wells

Science as the Enabler of Evil

It is interesting to read the stories from when science was new and unknown. These authors during the early modern era seem to have seen science as a marvel, a new magic, something fearful and fascinating. The level of new discoveries and scientific possibilities was the highest since the Enlightenment, and because it was so new it was feared due to uncertainty and unfamiliarity.

Since the dawn of time, stories have been filled with people who had some fatal flaw that brought about their destruction, but science and advanced knowledge drive the stakes higher. The bigger they are, the harder they fall. There is more to lose, and more evil to be wrought due to this increased knowledge.

In The Island of Doctor Moreau and The Invisible Man, as in Frankenstein and some of Hawthorne and Poe's stories, science is a medium by which men who wish to further their and the world's knowledge and make a difference end up becoming obsessed. This obsession corrupts them and leads to their downfall, and they end up unleashing some new horror into the world instead of improving it. Science is then seen as a medium by which man's hubris may more fantastically, horribly and more speedily lead to their ruination.

We saw this first from Shelley's Frankenstein, but Wells especially seems to suggest that science can do away with our empathy and compassion. Dr. Moreau cares only for the advancement of knowledge that his vivisection experiments bring him; he doesn't care one whit about the pain he inflicts upon the poor animals and the ethical questions raised by his experiments. Likewise, Gibson's invisibility from his experiments gives him an advantage over others, and thus he becomes more and more violent and selfish as his story goes on. Wells et al. seem to suggest that science accelerates our natural selfishness and willingness to hurt others.

I don't think I mentioned this before, but these class essays were written in one go the night before the due date (as I'm sure you can tell). They could have benefited from some editing and reflection, but self-editing has never been my strong point and I was always too tired from work. After uploading her or his essay to Coursera, each student then had to grade three or four other students' essays. I had the harshest criticism of probably my entire academic career from this essay. One of the students who graded my essay hated it, reviled my writing and actually accused me of not having done ANY of the readings for the class. It was like the written equivalent of Donald Duck's tantrums. It was so irate and over the top that I went straight past hurt and offended and landed squarely on amused. Coursera lamely won't let me see anything I've done in that class since it ended, otherwise I would share the original feedback with you. 

Science Fiction & Fantasy class essays: Dracula by Bram Stoker

That Dracula has heavy religious, especially Christian, influences throughout the story is obvious. The crucifixes, Holy Wafers, funeral prayers for the dead, etc., all act as weapons against the vampire and his powers of evil. The life-giving blood the men selflessly give Lucy in order to try to save her is the opposite of the awful “baptism of blood” Count Dracula forces upon Mina in order to damn her. Dracula and the vampire wives are four, an unlucky number associated with death in Chinese culture, while our group of heroes number seven, a holy and/or lucky number in Western culture. Even some of the characters’ names are significant: “YAHWEH has given” (Jonathan), “will/desire to protect” (Wilhelmina), “light” (Lucy), “YAHWEH is gracious” (John), while Arthur and Abraham are important literary and biblical heroes, respectively. The group fights Dracula not just because of the suffering of the women they love, but because they feel a moral obligation to stop him. To be a vampire or to succumb to one means that one will be damned and cut off from salvation. Dracula is a deeply religious book, which seems strange since it is also a horror and fantasy book, but such contradictions are common in Christianity: one must die to live, Jesus is both man and God, etc. Van Helsing’s discouraged words after their protections for Lucy keep being thwarted echo 2 Corinthians 4:8-9 (“We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed.”). Suffering and helplessness in the face of the enemy are common themes in Christianity, but since the protagonists trust in God and do all they can to do what’s right, they succeed.

Science Fiction & Fantasy class essays: Grimm's Fairy Tales

I took an online class on Coursera, Fantasy and Science Fiction: The Human Mind, Our Modern World. Each week we read a different book or some short stories and had to write a short essay. This is the one I wrote after reading Children's and Household Tales, a translation of Grimm's Fairy Tales into English by Lucy Crane with illustrations by Walter Crane. The above link isn't the online version I read but I can't find it because the class is over and I can't access any resources :(
I did okay with this one; I don't remember my classmates giving me too much criticism.

“The Three Spinsters” and “Rumpelstiltskin”

“The Three Spinsters” is a tale much like the better-known “Rumpelstiltskin”. Three women with unusually large body parts (those used most often in spinning) take the place of the eponymous gnome, and they simply spin flax quickly, rather than spinning it into gold. They save the girl twice: from having to spin three rooms’ worth of flax, and from ever having to spin again. The spinsters meet a happier end than Rumpelstiltskin; they are fêted at the new princess’ table as her cherished relations. It struck me how female-centric this version of the surrogate spinner(s) is: the girl’s mother lets her go with the queen who offers her son to the girl (rather than the other way around!) as a prize for spinning the flax which the spinsters save her from. This is a marked contrast to “Rumpelstiltskin”’s sole girl being at the mercy of men--father, king, messenger, and Rumpelstiltskin. The only male in “The Three Spinsters” is the prince-prize the girl marries, who is rude and impertinent, controlled by his mother and duped by his wife and the spinsters. This female-centeredness makes sense, as the story revolves around spinning flax, traditionally a woman’s job (especially unmarried women, hence the modern definition of spinster). The “Spinsters” women are portrayed as softer and more moral than the “Rumpelstiltskin” men: the mother lies from embarrassment rather than pride, and the queen is more merciful, as she doesn’t get angry when no thread is spun after three days and doesn’t threaten the girl with death if she fails her task. The spinsters ask only to be honored as family, rather than for jewelry or the firstborn child. In the end, the mother is freed from her lazy daughter, the queen gets spun thread, the spinsters get honored, and the girl gets her prince and out of spinning forever. Might the moral of the story be that everybody wins when women run the show?

Meaty: Essays by Samantha Irby

I was probably pointed to bitches gotta eat by The Toast or maybe Jezebel. It is a hilarious, TMI work of art, blog-wise. I was thinking of buying Samantha Irby's book because I wanted to help her pay for her dental care (detailed in excruciating, horrifying fashion on b.g.e.), but then I came across it at what I'm assuming was the publisher's booth at ALA Annual. I grabbed it and gasped all 'OMG I WAS TOTALLY THINKING OF BUYING THIS!!!' and the nice chatty girl staffing the booth let me have it for free if I would promise to review the book on social media. So here is my review, such as it is.

Meaty is basically bitches gotta eat in book form. If you enjoy her blog and her style of writing (sadly no different colored fonts in the book tho, but plenty of all caps and bolding), then you'll enjoy this book. If you are easily horrified by extremely candid descriptions of bathroom issues and ~personal relationships~, ifyouknowwhatImean, then this book is not for you. The chapters about her parents are heartbreaking. A lot of the stuff about being disgusted with dudes and dating and wanting to forgo all that and just eat snacks while watching TV in a Snuggie really resonated with me (being a social hermit, holla). Here is what I wrote on LibraryThing:

Hilarious and heartbreaking (but mostly hilarious). Profane, gross, TMI, an excellent way to spend the afternoon. If you've read and like her blog than you'll enjoy this book too. I loved the chance to get inside Samantha Irby's head and see how she thinks about things and some of the experiences that made her who she is.

Here is one of my favorite quotes:
"I'm tired of dicking around with stunted adolescents. There can only be one of those in my life and that is me, homie."

4/5 stars