What I'm reading this week (6/24/19)

Last week I finished:

I am an unapologetic word nerd and grammar geek. I read grammar guides like most folks read novels. I spent a lot of time in technical writing classes in college, and it's in my blood. So when I bought a copy of Dreyer's English for the library, I decided to be the one to give it a test run. Reading this book has been one of my favorite reading experiences of the year. It's a wonderfully comprehensive, thoughtful, engaging, and humorous guide to English, and it certainly can be read cover to cover. Dreyer, copy chief at Random House, delivers a concise yet thorough collection of dos and don'ts, facts and fictions, and rules and preferences pertaining to grammar, punctuation, usage, redundancy, capitalization, and more. He also presents lengthy sections on commonly misspelled words and commonly confused words (which, frankly, made me concerned to ever write again). I loved every minute of this book, and I learned so much. Much of it was refresher, but I did learn: a blonde is a female only (a male who is blond is a blond--it's a French thing), to love something "to no end" really means to love something without avail (to love without ceasing is to "love no end"), and I probably will never properly learn when to use lay, laid, lain, etc. I learned that there is a lot of leeway in usage, and I learned just how the language evolves through common usage. There were some things in the book that, if I started using properly, would make people wonder who the oddball is; in that way, common usage can often trump rules to save face. I've read so many of these grammar/usage/punctuation books over the years, but this one is my favorite, hands down. If you're a word nerd or a grammar geek, give it a try. It will be on my best books list at the end of the year. It's simply wonderful. My rating: 5 stars.

I love engaging war stories. I have such tremendous respect and awe for the people who wear our military uniform, how they've faced things civilians cannot imagine, how they find the best in themselves in ways most folks never do in a lifetime, how they can be terribly wounded and still want to return to finish their mission. I can't get enough of their stories. Admiral William McRaven, retired, author of Make Your Bed (my review here), returns with a book of stories from his life in the military. His tales begin with a young McRaven in France where his father is stationed, move on the an elementary-aged scamp who, with his buddies, tries to break into an ammunition storage facility on base, and on through his years training as a Navy Seal and commanding Navy Seal teams. McRaven was on the front line of history, commanding missions to capture Saddam Hussein, rescue Captain Phillips (yes, the guy played by Tom Hanks in the movie), and the raid that led to the killing of Osama bin Laden. The stories are told with frankness, humor, and warmth. It struck me so strongly that while these missions were serious military maneuvers, they were done by humans. A warrior never ceases to be human. And neither does a "target." He told the stories with great respect for the larger issues at play, and I was impressed by his humility. This is a wonderful book. I really enjoyed listening to it, especially (it's narrated by the author), and while I did have trouble sometimes with all the military speak and acronyms--they ABC everything, I could always find the narrative thread again. When I finished this one, I told my husband I was so disappointed that I couldn't give it to my father for Father's Day. As a Navy man, he would have loved these stories. My rating: 4 stars.

I finally, finally got around to listening to President Obama's Dreams from My Father. This was published in 1995, but it didn't really become popular until he was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2004, at which point, it was reissued. And basically, everyone who has any desire to read the book already has, so I don't have much to add by way of review. In the book, Obama talks about growing up in Hawaii and Indonesia, and visiting his father's family in Kenya. And as the subtitle suggests, it's a book about inheritance and race. I found it beautifully written, and I enjoyed hearing it read by the president. I love books about identity, especially honest books about straddling racial lines. Lest we forget, Obama is half black and half white, and this must have been a difficult and confusing identity as a child and young man. At times, race necessarily became a choice to him in that in order to belong to one group, the other often needed to be denied. While I seldom agreed with the president's political stance, I have great respect for all the man accomplished and what it must have taken to become the first half-black president in America. It's a fascinating journey. My rating: 4 stars.

I'm almost done with:

Wow is this good!

Next up:

I had a hard time getting into another book this weekend. After three false attempts, I picked up this re-read and settled in.

This week I'll also be finishing:

 

Progress on each of these has picked up. Thank goodness.

My next audiobook:

I didn't care much for the movie, but I'm still interested in reading this classic mystery.

 

 

What I'm reading this week (6/17/19)

Last week I finished:

Anything I say about Barbara Kingsolver's Unsheltered might veer into the "inflammatory" realm, so I will try to be very succinct. I love Kingsolver's writing, and The Poisonwood Bible (my review here) is one of my favorite books. It's obvious through her books that I've read that she is politically liberal. Fine. But there was no indication on the jacket copy or Amazon synopsis that this book is a liberal screed against capitalism, the free market, and President Trump, whom she refers to in the book as "the bullhorn" and does a tidy covering of her derrière in the acknowledgements with the statement: "Among the novel's twenty-first-century characters, any resemblance to persons living or dead is coincidental." I found this unforgivably cheap. Communist Cuba is touted in the book as an ideal society in which to live. One character in the book is given what the author apparently believes is a reasonable representation of someone from the right. (He's hateful and reprehensible in every way--you know, just like everyone who voted for President Trump.) Those with religious convictions are made out to look like buffoons. I spent some time reading reviews on Amazon to see how others reacted to the political nature of the book, and many people said that although they agree with Kingsolver's political views, they hated being preached to, and they didn't care for the book. One reviewer said it best when he wrote that the book was full of "sharp sticks." Indeed. This is one of the few books I've ever been tempted to return to the author with the request that she, personally, take my copy back. All of this said, the writing is SO good and the characters are real. The audio, narrated by the author, is very good. I just could not take the hateful tone and comments. If the President Trump bashing were removed from the book, I would have rated this at least four stars. One I thing I know about politics: if a person cannot say one good thing about their political opponent whom they tout as being racist, stupid, and hateful, they show their own prejudices in more than equal measure. My rating: 2 stars.

Earlier this year, I read Balli Kaur Jaswal's Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows, and while I didn't love it, I found it enjoyable (my review here). So I was more than willing to listen to her new book The Unlikely Adventures of the Shergill Sisters that came out in April. I'd have to say, I liked this book better, due mainly to the plot. In this book, three Indian sisters residing in England set out on a pilgrimage to India to fulfil their mother's dying wish. The sisters, of course, are very different, and none of them particularly wants to be a part of the trip. They all have cataclysmic things happening in their own lives, and their prickly relationships with each other made the trip difficult. Will they get over their issues and come together as their mother hoped? You can probably guess the answer to that question. I enjoyed the book and the characters. This is on the edge of my comfort zone with modern fiction. I tend to like a little more depth in my plots, a little less drama, and less feminists-must-save-women-in-other-cultures subplots, but it was especially good on audio. A good summer read. My rating: 3 stars.

Last summer, I read the first novel in the Perveen Mistry series, The Widows of Malabar Hill (my review here) and I loved it. I loved it so much, in fact, I put it on my Best Books of 2018 list. The second book in the series, The Satapur Moonstone, came out in May, and I put it on my June reading list for another hit of 1920s India. In this book, Perveen Mistry, India's first female solicitor, is asked to serve as a liaison between the British and the royalty of Satapur palace, secluded in woods and accessed only via palanquin. It would seem the widowed mother and the dowager grandmother of the young maharaja are concerned for his safety after the recent deaths of both his father and older brother, but they disagree as to what is best for the young prince. Perveen is asked to intervene and offer the decision needed. But tense situations grow worse when members of the palace are poisoned and the maharaja is abducted. Will Perveen be able to save the prince or will she give her life trying? These books are very well done. The writing is top notch, the characters are interesting, and the reader learns a lot about the various cultures that comprise India in the 1920s. I found this one a little slow to start, but when the plot picked up, it was as good as the first book. I highly recommend this series for anyone looking for enjoyable literary fiction with a bit of thrill and mystery in the mix. My rating: 4.5 stars.

This week I'll be reading:

This is even better than I expected.

My Kindle re-read:

 

I'm making S-L-O-W progress on this one. I'm having a hard time picking it up.

My evening reads:

 

I made slow progress with these this week, too. I'm enjoying them so much, but nighttime reading has been difficult lately for a number of reasons.

My next audiobook:

 

This hold finally came in, so I think I'll listen to it next.

What I'm reading this week (6/10/19)

Last week I finished:

Last fall, I read James Patterson's thriller, The President Is Missing (my review here). It was the first book I'd read by Patterson, and while I didn't find it flawless, I did find it enjoyable. Plus, I'll give most anything a try if it's about presidents. So when Patterson recently came out with The First Lady, I thought I'd give it a try and put myself in the audio queue at the public library. I'd been interested to try another Patterson thriller to see how they differ, and I have to tell you, The First Lady was almost the exact same book as The President Is Missing. And since it was my second book with basically the same plot and writing, I didn't have much fun with it. The plot is this: The president is caught by the media having an affair, and within hours, the first lady has disappeared. There are good guys and bad guys, and the reader, of course, doesn't know which is which. There are short chapters that end in cliffhangers, lots of red herrings, and more tough women than any story should have to be believable. I just didn't like this one. I didn't like the characters, and I was bored by the plot and the writing, which I'd encountered before. A good book to read on a plane flight or at the beach, maybe, but I was disappointed. My rating: 3 stars.

For months I've been wanting to read Nancy Reagan's My Turn. It came out in 1989, the year after she and President Reagan left the White House following his two terms as president. I'd read that Barbara Bush thought it was a terrible book, and I wanted to know if that was an assessment tinged by her personal feelings for Nancy Reagan or one based on the writing and presentation. After finishing the book, I have to say that I agree with Barbara Bush on this one. This book was pretty awful. It was petty and vindictive and made her look like a sniveling brat. She obviously wrote it to clear the record on a few points, but she would have come off as a much classier women if she'd have just let those things go. Having the added benefit of hindsight by reading it thirty years after it was written, I can really say much of what she wrote about just does not matter in the big picture. Several chapters (and most are at the very beginning of the book) are her rebuttal to the press coverage of her use of astrology to determine the president's schedule; her role in the firing of her husband's Chief of Staff, Don Regan; her spendy wardrobe; and her pricey redesign of the White House. I think she was just still too close to the slights to let them go, and in 1989, those things were foremost in her mind of what she wanted to address when it was "her turn." She also addresses the enormously difficult relationships she had with her four children and stepchildren, all but one of whom she was estranged from for years. Toward the end of the book is a chapter detailing her difficult relationship with Raisa Gorbachev, wife of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. The two reportedly mixed like oil and water, and her book does not contest that. There were rather enjoyable chapters, however. Regardless of what you say about the first lady, she loved her husband. She was willing to look bad to everyone in order to be good to him. I respect that. Especially poignant were the chapters about their White House years and the assassination attempt made on the president in 1981. I also enjoyed the chapter where she took the reader through a day in the life at the White House. Overall, though, I questioned the non-chronological arrangement of the book. It seemed to have very little structure. And the tone of the book, again, made Mrs. Reagan out to be a very high-strung, difficult to get along with woman. And if that comes across in a memoir written, presumably, while putting one's best foot forward, perhaps she really was that way in person--an assertion I've seen countless times in print. My rating: 3 stars.

Earlier this year I loved reading Myquillyn Smith's The Nesting Place (my review here). I found it so charming and helpful. So I was eager to read her second book, released last fall, Cozy Minimalist Home. In it, she addresses the seeming oxymoron and explains how your home can be both cozy and minimalist. I was hoping for more of the same with this book, but the tone was completely different. While the first book was sort of easy-breezy and laid back, calmly guiding you to creating the home that is right for you, this one was almost hysterical in its insistence that there was only one way to arrive at cozy minimalist: her way. It was pushy and it was too overexcited about its mission. I grew to resent the tone and the bossiness almost immediately. After explaining what cozy minimalism is, she shows you step by step how to get it. First, empty the room of e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g. Then, things must be loaded into the room in this order: furniture, rugs, drapes, lighting, wall art, accessories. Oh, and you can only paint your walls between lighting and accessories. So yes, if you decide on green instead of blue, everything has to come back out in order to paint. Then you re-load the room. It was madness. It's undoubtedly the method that works for her, but that does not mean it's the method that will work for everyone. I really don't like decorating books that tell me there are definitive rules that you must follow in order. We have instinct for a reason, and her first book seemed to be encouraging her readers to develop it and use it. This book undoes so much of what her first book did, and I'm so disappointed about that. My rating: 3 stars.

This week I'll be reading:

It took awhile for this one to get going, but I'm loving it now.

I've put off:

I was really excited to read Elizabeth Gilbert's newest book this week, but after reading an interview with her about it, I'm not sure it's something I'd enjoy. A book about nothing but women having promiscuous sex in an effort to legitimize it just isn't in line with my beliefs on the matter.

My Kindle read:

I'm making zero progress on this one. I think I have too many books going.

My evening reads:

 

Loving all of these, though I'm making very little progress on the children's book right now.

 

 

My current audiobook:

I'm enjoying this one more than I thought I would. It's a fun listen.

June 2019 reading list

June will be a month of new, new, new books. I have a longer list of audio book than I'll get to. It will all depend on which holds come in this month. I'm looking forward to the new Elizabeth Gilbert book and anxiously looking forward to the second in the Perveen Mystery series.

Fiction

Children's Fiction

Memoir

Nonfiction

 

Poetry

 

 

 

 

 

 

What I'm reading this week (6/3/19)

Last week I finished:

Well, it's been a couple months since I've read a book about the Kennedys, and one can only go so long, so I decided to listen to the audio version of Douglas Brinkley's American Moonshot: John F. Kennedy and the Great Space Race. I chose audio because I had concerns that the book might be a bit dry, and I was right. Audio was the right choice for me. I suppose I may not have been the intended audience for this one. I have a romantic view of the moon landing (which happened 50 years ago this summer), but I have little interest in knowing the exhaustive steps taken, both scientifically and politically, to make it happen. I did learn a lot, but I also found myself tuning out every now and then. It's a long book. What struck me most about the moonshot (the name given to our race to the moon), was how unilateral the effort was (well, at least compared to how these things work nowadays; some Republicans, Ike included, harrumphed at the $40 million price tag). This was a generation who had just come home from World War II. They'd endured the unimaginable, were victorious, and were looking for a new adventure--a new "frontier" as Kennedy referred to space. Also, being that the United States was locked in a cold war with the Soviets, the space race, and Kennedy's promise to put a man on the moon before the decade (the 1960s) was out, was a quest not only to do the unimaginable, but to do it first, for the prestige in the eyes of the world and to send the message that the U.S. is powerful, visionary, and dynamic. It was vitally important politically, scientifically, and personally, that the space race and all its trickledown effects such as launching weapons and defense, be won by the United States, to give ourselves the homecourt advantage in the future. I was also struck by just how much energy both President Kennedy and Vice President Lyndon Johnson put into this project. I hadn't realized how invested both men were. Also, I didn't realize how many times the president suggested to the Soviets that the two countries join forces to go to the moon. These offers were rebuffed, obviously. Lastly, the book really brought home how important it is to have visionary people amongst us. I am not a visionary. I am not an idealist. I probably would have been one of those folks griping over the money being spent on space, not realizing how vitally important it was for the future. While visionary leadership can be taken too far, America is who she is because of that quality. My biggest complaint about the book is that it pretty much ends when Kennedy is assassinated. The actual moon landing is sort of blandly glossed over in the epilogue. I felt that the book was slowly building to the moon landing, but it was really just building to the president's death. But if you're interested in space, the moon landing, or JFK, this is worth the read. My rating: 3 stars.

This week I'll finish:

I'll be kind of glad to move on from this one.

Next up:

I cannot wait!

My Kindle re-read:

As charming as I remember.

My evening reads:

 

 

I am loving my nightly reads this month (well, I started early!). Each of them is a lot fun.

My next audiobook:

A nice summer read (listen), I hope.