Last week I finished:
Once again, I'm tasked with writing a helpful review of a book I love, and I'm at a loss. This is becoming a theme with Fredrik Backman books.
Us Against You, released earlier this month, is the follow-up book to last year's
Beartown. Set in a Swedish forest town (though you'd never know it was a "foreign" book), this is the story of a small community that loves hockey and relies on it for economy, entertainment, and raising its young men. It's just a game, and it's also much more than a game. All of the characters from the first book are back (except Kevin's family), and I would advise reading
Beartown before this one as no amount of plot review in the new book really steeps you in the story. These are serious books, quite unlike the tone of Backman's previous work, and although I'm a big fan of Ove and even Britt-Marie, these books have a depth to them that his previous books couldn't have. They are masterfully written, and Backman is phenomenally gifted at producing well-fleshed sympathetic characters and presenting us with both sides of every issue without necessarily telling us what to think. At its heart, I believe this is a story about loyalty, about honor and trust, about how communities can be built and dismantled by small acts and words. The plot, essentially is this: after the star hockey player leaves the town after a scandal (
Beartown), the hockey club loses its funding to the Hed club and a politician secures funding but also manufactures controversy and orchestrates trouble pitting Beartown and Hed against each other. Maya is attempting to heal from sexual assault; Benji's secret comes to light, people are lost, young boys fight savage fights, and hooligans take care of business their own way. Although it's a heavy book, and your heart will break a little, the humanity of it will put you back together. I cannot recommend this one highly enough, but do read
Beartown first.
My rating: 5 stars.
I have a shelf of chunky presidential biographies waiting to be read. I
want to read them all, but they seem to take so much effort. So often biographies are slow, detailed slogs, and it's hard to look forward to subjecting yourself to one. Occasionally, though, there is a stand-out gem that gets the tone right, that keeps the pace, and that shows a whole, balanced picture of an important person. Jon Meacham created one of these with
Destiny and Power: The American Odyssey of George Herbert Walker Bush. I decided to listen to this on audio, but at times I felt bad that I hadn't read this one in paper. I like nothing more than sitting on the couch with a good, thick biography or memoir open on my lap. You just never know which doorstops will be fun. The difference, I think, in addition to skillful writing, is the amount of text that can be presented in the subject's own words. In this case, Meacham had access to President Bush's and first lady Barbara Bush's diaries, so you could trust that what you were reading (or hearing) was factual, and you could also get a feel for the president's thoughts and feelings, humor and heartbreak, and personal traits like humility or stubbornness. I feel that I got a more complete picture of President Bush than ever before. Because he never really wrote a presidential memoir like most modern presidents, that picture was missing. Although I loved President George W. Bush's biography of his dad,
41, it was a rather unapologetically fawning portrait of his dad. That didn't bother me, after all, wouldn't most folks present the father they revere in the best possible light? But it's nice to have a little more balanced view, and Meacham presented that. Meacham takes us through Bush's life from his privileged upbringing to his Navy combat missions in World War II, from his oil adventures in Texas to his years in politics: chairman of the RNC, congressman, UN ambassador, envoy to China, director of the CIA, two-term vice president, and one-term president. It tells of the heartbreaks of his life: losing his four-year-old daughter to leukemia and losing his reelection bid in 1992. And it tells of the joys: meeting Barbara Piece, seeing his sons elected as governors of Texas and Florida, and seeing his namesake become president in 2000. It's a full portrait that moves quickly and covers a lot of ground. The audio version is well done, too. I'll not hesitate in the future to read another Jon Meacham book; this one earned my respect.
My rating: 4.5 stars.
The other day my husband reminded me that I have a couple knee-high stacks of books in my study (which we call Grandma's Room) that have no home. "It's not a storage room," he gently reminded me. Yet, I often feel that I'm at the place in my book culling that I cannot get rid of one more book or I might as well get rid of them all. Perhaps that makes sense to some of you bibliophiles out there. I sometimes wish I was the kind of person who could get everything from the library and not need to own the books I read and love, but I am not that girl. As we were talking about the problem, the conviction arose in me that what I really needed to do was undertake a huge decluttering project throughout the whole house. Creating space elsewhere, I was sure, would make the book problem seem more manageable. We've been in our house for seven years now, and you know how houses get in seven years of things coming in and not as much going out, how you get used to seeing certain piles or areas of clutter (how I hate calling my things "clutter"), how you get used to frustratingly packed closets because "you need all that stuff." I knew I had way too much packed away in our basement storage area, stuff I packed up shortly after we moved in that hasn't seen the light of day since. And if it isn't being enjoyed, what good is it to anyone? So I began going through everything (saving books for last), and I'm at about the halfway point. Maybe. As I began the process, I also began Dana White's
Decluttering at the Speed of Life (I read it on Kindle), and it was tremendously helpful. White uses what she calls the "container method" which forces you to see your house and the shelves and drawers and closets and boxes in it as containers. Once a container is full, no more can go into it, and if you want to add to your container, something from it must go. Not an earthshattering view, but helpful nonetheless. The problem is when most folks fill up a bookshelf or china hutch or Christmas tote, they
add another bookshelf or china hutch or tote. She stresses that this is not a book about organizing. She also has two questions to ask while decluttering:
Where would I look for this object if I needed it?, and
Would I know I had this item if I needed it? I didn't find these questions helpful at all. I knew what I had (at least 97% of it), and I knew where it was. My problem was the
amount of stuff I had. At any rate, once I started going through things, I hit my stride. This isn't my first rodeo. I've done similar whole-dwelling decluttering projects before, but this one should have been harder as much of what I was forced to go through were family items: dishes from my grandmothers, sentimental collections, a box of baby clothes I was saving for a baby I never had. But I was going through things, I realized several things: 1.) you really do reach a point (I remember this from past purges) where keeping things doesn't feel nearly as good as letting them go and gaining the space they occupied, 2.) that the woman who packed these things away isn't the same women who unpacked them this month, 3.) this isn't my mother's life, my mother's house, or my mother's life--if I never use my AirBake cake pan, I can get rid of it without shame, even though my mother uses
her cake pan at least once a week, and 4.) you don't have to keep everything from your grandmother's house just because it was your grandmother's; after all, she might not have liked that blue glass fruit compote any more than you do! So, the project continues though the book is read. I've read
lots of decluttering books over the years, and this one was quite helpful, though I might prefer the way Peter Walsh's books force you to deal with the emotions you have toward your stuff, and I kind of liked how
Marie Kondo addresses the joy you should feel toward your possessions. Case in point: the other day I realized that even though all of my blouses fit on the "container" (i.e. closet rod) allotted them, and even though I
wore them all, there were many I didn't love, and a lot I didn't even
like. Maybe White thought I was smart enough to know those blouses should be donated, but until this week, I was not. Kondo would have told me that. My one complaint is that while White took us through each room of the house, she never talked about those spaces that are meant for storage like the attic, basement, garage, etc. These spaces by definition have lots of room for lots of containers, but how do you decide what's reasonable? I would have liked some guidance on this. All in all, I found this book helpful, and I recommend it to others trying to get rid of things for a happier life. I'll end with two of my favorite quotes from the book: "I made a conscious choice to live in the phase of life I was in." and "Treasure, don't store."
My rating: 4 stars.
P.S. I've packed 22 boxes worth of stuff to get rid of. Anything anyone needs? I probably have it! :)
I believe
And Short the Season is the second book of poetry I've read by Maxine Kumin. While I generally enjoy her poems and find them approachable and varied and sometimes charming, I don't enjoy how many of her poems become bully pulpits of liberal agendas. I skipped those poems in this collection (there were a handful of them), and while I enjoyed the rest, and marked a couple to return to, I wasn't blown away with the collection. I wonder if poetry books of 100 pages or less are just too short to enjoy. It's like entering a tunnel and exiting it a few seconds later--you can't remember anything about the tunnel other than you went through it. So while I complain about the length of some poetry collections (
huh-hem), there is a happy middle ground of say 200 pages that seems perfect. At any rate, I'd call this one about average.
My rating: 3 stars.
This week I'll be reading:
I've read so much great advance press for this book, and I'm so excited to begin it. I could go for a nice family saga right now.
Last week I began:
Joe Biden's Promise Me, Dad went on Kindle sale on Father's Day, and I 1-clicked it and started it as soon as I finished my decluttering Kindle read. It's not really what I expected.
I also began Billy Collins' Picnic, Lightning, and it is fabulous. So far I've read a lot of poems I'm familiar with.
This week I'll finish:
This book, only 200 pages, is taking me so long to read. I'll need to pick up my speed on it to finish it this week.
My audiobook:
With Fiona Davis's third novel coming out soon, I decided to read the first two first. This week I'm starting The Dollhouse on audio.
I'd been dancing around the edges of Fiona Davis's The Dollhouse since it came out a couple of years ago, but I was never really taken in by the plot. But I was interested in Davis's follow-up books, The Address and her forthcoming The Masterpiece (out in August), so I decided to read (well, listen to) the first one first. And I was right in the first place--this one just wasn't for me. I think I can see why others would like it, but I found it absolutely lacking in subtlety, and I consider a mastery of subtlety to be one of the signs of great writing. So, this might be good "chick lit," but that's just not my thing. The plot is made of two stories. In one, set in the early 1950s, Darby McLaughlin is transplanted from Ohio to New York City, enrolled in secretarial school, and living in an all-women's hotel, the Barbizon. In the other, modern-day floundering journalist Rose is finding herself caught up in the story of the Barbizon and its hanger-on residents from the 1950s. The book goes back and forth in time until the stories eventually catch up with each other. (By the way, is anyone else sick to death of this way of pattering a book?) There's romance, there's exciting immigrant and drug subplots, there's a cranky old woman and her cranky old dog, there's a young woman who thinks she's independent but has no idea how to take care of herself. It's so similar to so many other books, I didn't end up not caring very much about what happened. It's an entertaining book, I guess, something light to read in the summertime, but I wouldn't call it particularly well-done. But again, it's probably just me. My rating: 2.5 stars.
When Joe Biden's Promise Me, Dad came out last fall, I put it on my TBR, and I finally got around to it when the Kindle version went on sale on Father's Day. I didn't have particularly high expectations for the book, but I love a good personal story, and bonus points for one that centers around Washington, D. C. It pretty much delivered what I expected. This is Vice President Biden's account of his son Beau's last year or two. He died of brain cancer in 2016. It's also the story of what Biden and the Obama presidency was doing during this period. The writing isn't great ("Uncle Joe" has never been known for his communication skills), the political history is a big revisionist in my opinion, and Biden came off a little wooden and conceited which, frankly, surprised me. I felt that the book lacked a true focus, like Biden wanted it to be a book about his son but that he felt he had to restrain himself for whatever reason. Throughout that year, he's also trying to decide if he wants to run for the presidency in 2016. He's certain he can wrest the nomination away from Secretary Clinton, and he even has much of his campaign nearly in place when he decides it's not right for him or his family who are still grieving the loss of Beau. In all, it was an emotional, yet uneven, memoir. If you like Biden and want to know more about his son and his decision not to run in 2016, it's worth a read. My rating: 3 stars. 
Earlier this year I read Melanie Shankle's newest book Church of the Small Things, and afterward I bought most of her earlier work. The Antelope in the Living Room is her second book, I believe, and it's a chronological collection of essays about her marriage. I find Shankle's writing charming and witty, a cross between Jen Hatmaker and Jen Lancaster. She can be irreverent or serious, depending, and she writes naturally about the hard stuff of life, including her Christian faith. In this book she brings us through her nearly 20-year marriage to Perry, a deer-hunting outdoorsy Texan who works (or worked?) in the ministry field. She shares things both funny and mundane about the difficulties and joys of sharing your life with someone who equally delights you and makes you scratch your head in wonderment. If you're married, you know that I mean. There's nothing particularly fascinating here, which is probably its charm. I left the book thinking I wish I had a friend like Melanie to share my marriage stories with, which I think is high praise. My rating: 3 stars.
You all know my adoration of Billy Collins and his wonderful poetry. I'm not sure there's a poet I like more. He makes writing good poetry look effortless, which I know from experience, it is not. Picnic, Lightning (the title is taken from a passage in Lolita) is one of his older books (published in 1998), and one of his best. I knew so many of the poems in this book; in fact, most of my favorites come from this book. Like Fishing in the Susquehanna in July and I Go back to the House for a Book. I highly recommend this collection if you're looking for a starting place for reading contemporary poetry. It's accessible, witty, and has emotional depth, all while entertaining the reader. My rating: 4.5 stars.
