What I'm reading this week (3/4/19)

Last week I finished:

I have loved all three of Jane Harper's books. She's one of my new favorite auto-buy authors. Her books are thriller/mysteries set in Australia, and The Lost Man, released in early February, is my favorite so far. Taking place in the Australian Outback, it focuses on the Bright family. The book opens with the legend of the stockman's grave, a grave and stone in the middle of nowhere, and soon the family finds the middle son, Cam, dead in the same spot. His vehicle is abandoned a ways away, in perfect working order, full of water, food, and other essential supplies. Why would he have left his car only to die of thirst and exposure in the dry Outback? The story builds and builds and builds as all of Harper's do, and that's the genius of her writing, I think. She never hurries anything, and she unveils only what she needs to when she needs to. There are never loose ends or things that bother me at the end. The characters here are superbly drawn, and their motivations and thoughts are very true-to-life. What I almost loved best about this one was the barren landscape where brothers live on adjoining land but are still hours away from each other. It's a three-hour drive into town. And the heat and dust are so oppressive they pose very real danger. If your vehicle breaks down, no one might come along for quite some time--and perhaps not in time. I love books where the landscape is a character in the plot, and this book is top notch because of it. I highly recommend this book to anyone who likes a good mystery/thriller. I don't think you'll be disappointed. My rating: 5 stars.

I have a thing for women's self-help books, so I picked up Girl, Wash Your Face (subtitle: Stop Believing the Lies About Who You Are so You Can Become Who You Were Meant to Be). This is tagged as Christian self-help, but you don't get as much Christian talk here as in many others from the same category, such as Glennon Melton, Jen Hatmaker, or Shauna Niequist. In the book, Rachel Hollis presents the 20 lies she and other women must destroy in order to live a better life. This includes things like: I'm Not Good Enough, I'm Bad at Sex, and I Am Defined by My Weight. Her writing is personal and frank, but this book didn't end up being one of my favorites of the genre. I found Hollis a little too preachy (not preachy about God, but preachy about How To Be), and I found her overconfidence in having all the answers because she's lived through it all (she's in her mid-30s) disingenuous. Also, her constant bragging about her media empire, or whatever (I still haven't figured out what it is she does or what the company she's built does, or even what she's known for), off-putting. She came across to me as trying too hard and lacking the humility required for me to take heed of another woman's advice. I guess I just didn't trust her. You might (probably will) disagree. This book is enormously popular, but perhaps in a younger demographic than I generally read in. In short, try it, there's some good stuff here, but my favorites remain my favorites for an authenticity I don't find here. My rating: 4 stars.

I picked up a pristine copy of The Woman in Cabin 10 at a used bookstore recently, and I finally decided to listen to it or I wouldn't get to it for quite some time. This is a murder/thriller about a group of people on a cruise (a small group on a small cruise ship). When our main character, Laura, called Lo, who battles drunkenness and mental health issues, thinks the woman in cabin 10 has been thrown overboard, she has a hard time getting anyone to believe her. There was no one booked for cabin 10. Lo soon finds herself wrapped up in something much bigger than a simple mystery, and she fears for her survival. I was excited about this one because all the action takes place in one small space (like Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express), but I found it a little to the left of the kind of thriller/mystery I enjoy. It felt a bit formulaic, and I just never cared for the main character. It was good on audio because the English and Scandinavian accents added to the mystique, but I didn't find the depth of characters and writing finesse I like in a murder mystery. I like my mysteries to still be literature--which is tough to pull off. Plus, there was always the fear that the narrator wasn't reliable, and that kept me from committing to the plot. In short, it was fine, and I think many will find it a good read, but it wasn't exactly my cup of tea. My rating: 3 stars.

I went through audiobooks this month like they were water. I kept realizing I could listen to one more, then one more, then another, and I kept putting more on hold. One of the books I snuck in was Ellen DeGeneres's Seriously...I'm Kidding, which was only three discs long, so I listened to it in one sitting. I enjoyed this one. Ellen is a load of fun, and beneath the screw-ball comedy is real depth. There are times when she's going on humorously about something like how hard women are on how they look, when what she says hits home better than any women's self-help book ever does. (She is a cover girl, you know....) Other times, she's a little too silly for me, but no chapter lasts long enough to annoy the heck out of you. Though, to be honest, by the end of three discs, I was ready for something else. But overall, I liked this one a lot. It was honest, astute, and funny without being meanspirited. And the fact that it was narrated by Ellen herself was icing on the cake. My rating: 4 stars.

There's no doubt one of my favorite books of poetry for 2019 will be Dorianne Laux's Only As the Day Is Long. I have been long familiar with Laux's poetry, though I found it on my own, not in a poetry class or workshop. Her poems are visceral, often domestic, and they often involve love--or the lack of it. She writes about being abused as a child, and though the poems are hard to read, they are beautiful too. She's had some things to work though in life, and I'm glad she's done it with poetry, because they've given her some beautiful verse. I marked many poems in the book. I was reading a library copy, but I'll be buying my own because this is a collection I'll be going back to. My rating: 4 stars.

 

Last week I abandoned:

Inheritance is getting a lot of attention lately, and while I think the story is great (the author discovers that the father who raised her is not her biological father), Shapiro's overall tone is kind of depressed. I like more emotion in my writing, especially in memoirs. I was finding myself reluctant to pick this one up to read it, so I'm putting it aside. Maybe I'll try the audio someday, because I am interested in finding out what happens, I just don't want to plod through a whole month to find out.

This week I'm reading:

I am loving this one.

My Kindle read:

 

Making my way slowly through this re-read.

I'm also reading:

 

Enjoying both of these. I'm not very far in the first, and I'm reading the second for the second (or third?) time.

My audiobook:

 

That cover alone would make me pick this one up!

What I'm reading this week (2/25/19)

Last week I finished:

I'll read most anything about the Kennedy family, and that includes books about Jackie. The Fabulous Bouvier Sisters is a biography of Jackie Bouvier Kennedy Onassis and her sister Lee Bouvier Canfield Radziwill Ross (the girls did a lot of marrying). The book takes you through their privileged childhood with their father, Black Jack Bouvier, and mother, Janet, who divorced bitterly when the girls were quite young. The girls idolized their father, though most folks thought he wasn't much, a philanderer, and when he lost his fortune, and the girls grew, he didn't have much of a relationship with Jackie and Lee. Janet remarried well, a man who had several children, and they had two more together. Within the family, Jackie and Lee were always considered the poor stepchildren. We go through their boarding school years, college, and then their various romances and marriages. Lee marries Prince Stas Radziwill, and though he had to give up his royal title when he fled Poland for England, Lee used the title "Princess" throughout her life--even while married to other men. We see Jackie marry and lose Jack Kennedy, have her children, marry Greek billionaire Aristotle Onassis, who died just prior to divorcing Jackie. Lee flounders around dabbling in different arts and hanging on to artistic friends like Truman Capote. The sisters draw together and pull apart throughout Jackie's life, and while they seemed to have reconciled at the end of it, Jackie made a point of leaving Lee nothing in her will. Lee died earlier this month at 85. Last year I read Jackie, Janet and Lee, and whether because I read it first or because of the added dimension of Janet's life, I found it the superior of the two books--though they are very similar in tone and information. A good read, but rather a rehash after JJ&L. My rating: 3 stars.

I finally tackled Fahrenheit 451 (on audio), and while I'm glad I did, I dread having to write a review. I know folks love this book, consider it a classic, and hold it up as the bible of anti-book banning, but it left me cold--and not cold in the way it was meant to. Perhaps, what leaves me cold isn't the book itself but the way it's revered by the literati. I'm so over outrage, you guys. When something gives off the whiff of outrage these days, I tend to walk away. The story is this: at some point in the future, Guy is a firefighter, tasked not with putting fires out, but with burning a person's home if they own books. But Guy starts to wonder what's in those books that he's been destroying, and that's when his trouble starts. It's an allegory on thought suppression and shows the terrible consequences of what happens when literature is taken away from a society. I get it. But I wonder if the title has outlived its usefulness. Is there really anyone (other than, perhaps, middle schoolers and a few high schoolers) who haven't thought about these things? And why has the recent surge in popularity of this book not pointed out the atrocities of socialism? That's all I got out of the book--that socialism is bad and to be avoided at all costs. But I don't think that's what the literary class is taking away. At any rate, I'm glad to have it crossed off my list, but I don't see myself ever going back to it. A note on the audio. It's rather overly dramatic, and often sounds like a radio play, so maybe read this one (it's short) if you're interested. My rating: 2 stars.

To continue the theme of books I pushed myself to finish: The Minimalist Home. I've long lost count of the number of books about decluttering I've read, but it has to be at least 10 or 12. And I'm rather certain this one is the worst one. Becker (no relation) seems to think it's enough to give you a list of the rooms in your home, tell you that you own more things than you need, and tell you to get rid of stuff. It's the least helpful approach I've ever encountered. He does share his experience getting rid of things in his family's home, but there are absolutely no examples given, no pushes up the mountain. If you're someone who feels like they're drowning in stuff, someone telling you to just get rid of it isn't very helpful--and all that stuff will likely come back. Any book or decluttering guru that doesn't deal with the psychological issues associated with owning too many things just isn't doing anyone any favors. I took away nothing useful from this book, though I know a lot of people have. Perhaps if it's your only book on decluttering, it's enough. I don't know. To be fair, Becker's premise is that getting rid of stuff will open up your life to accomplishing greater things. If your house isn't messy, you'll be able to find your keys, and you'll save time not looking for said keys which you can devote to more important things. Okay, so that might give a person, what, 13 extra minutes a year? What I kept waiting for him to arrive at is the conclusion that realizing why we own too many things and how to cut the ties we have with our things, will bless us by opening up our hearts and psyches to better, deeper, more fulfilling relationships than those we had with our possessions. I felt like that's what he wanted to say, but he never got around to it. Or perhaps he's never thought about it. The one thing the book did spur me to think about, just because my head was in that space, was when our home is paid off later this year (we are paying off a 30-year mortgage in eight years), what is our next step? Will we sell? And if we do, what do I want from my next home? And how do my current belongings fit in this desire? Also, it made me think I should write a book called The Abundantist Home--because I'm sick and tired of feeling that being a collector and lover of things is wrong or immoral. So, my copy will be going to the used bookstore, but it might be exactly what you need. My rating: 2.5 stars.

When Dimple Met Rishi has been on my TBR for awhile now. I love the cover, and I enjoy stories about Indian-American girls and families. I chose to listen to this one as a palate cleanser after Fahrenheit 451. This is a YA novel about Dimple, an Indian-American girl who is on her way to Stanford University in the fall to study computer science, and Rishi, a traditional Indian-American boy who is headed to MIT. They meet up at San Francisco State University the summer before college to attend Insomnia Con, a computer design/coding workshop, their parents thinking that their meeting is the first step toward an arranged marriage. The two have to come to terms with what they want out of life--and each other--and what they're willing to give to make their dreams come true. Most of the action you can see coming a mile away, but I still found it rather adorable. Dimple and Rishi were well-conceived and drawn, and their romance felt quite real. I had a big issue with the pre-marital sex--I did not anticipate that, and it added nothing to the story whatsoever. But I enjoyed this enough to look forward to Sandhya Menon's newest, From Twinkle, with Love. So if you're looking for a YA romance (and can get past teenagers having sex), give it a try. My rating: 4 stars.

One of my all-time favorite reads has been A Girl Named Zippy. I read it first in 2006, a handful of years after it came out, and I've been wanting to reread it since. I was afraid that after that much time it wouldn't quite hold up to my fond memories, but it really, really did. This is the memoir of the author, Haven Kimmel's (called "Zippy" by her family) childhood in small Mooreland, Indiana. This is one of the few books that actually makes me laugh out loud; it did 13 years ago, and it still does. Many of the tales Kimmel tells are rather tall, but then, that's kind of how young Zippy thought--tall. I find this book endearing and wonderful. And yet. There's an undercurrent of dysfunction in the family. Clues indicate that Zippy's father is perhaps a mean drunk, that her mother is apathetic or depressed, and that the house is unkempt. Nothing is said overtly, though, so there's always this feeling of the other shoe about to drop, but it never does. I can't remember if it does in her follow-up memoir, She Got Up Off the Couch, or not. I do remember feeling (for years) that there should have been a third book to tie it all together, but there never was. Still, I've always wondered if the author never addressed the dysfunction head on because Zippy, as a child, didn't yet know her home was dysfunctional. I highly, highly recommend this one to folks who love memoirs, good writing, and rascal girl characters, because Zippy is one of the best. My rating: 5 stars. 

Last week I abandoned:

Lots of people love it, but One Day in December was just not for me. At all.

This week I'll be reading:

 

Oh, this one is good!

My Kindle re-read:

This week I'll finish:

 

Dorianne Laux is fast becoming one of my favorite poets.

 

My next audiobook:

What I'm reading this week (2/18/19)

 

Last week I finished:

I have never been a fan of mythology. Ever since encountering it in ninth grade honors English, I've had a hate-hate relationship with it. All those gods acting crazy and all those mortals trying to trick them. And it always bothered me greatly that the gods had all mortal characteristics except for one special power (well, and mortality). They were so limited, so obviously created by man. I've never understood the fascination. But, something spurred me to pick up Circe on audio just to see what it was like. It had been on so many best of 2018 lists that I wanted to see what enjoyment I could get out of Greek mythology all these years after my high school English class. And I have to say, I enjoyed this quite a bit. I can enjoy any story that is well-crafted and well-told, and this was. The audio, especially, was superb. The narrator's voice was perfect for for the character and plot. In short, this is the retelling of the life of nymph/witch Circe, as well as her interactions with Odysseus, Athena, Daedalus, and all the rest. I would suggest, unless you remember your Greek mythology better than I (and no doubt you do), that you listen to this while you're not doing other things. It was difficult for me to miss parts and then be able to pick up again. I had to replay several sections (esp. the ending). I did feel that while the book sailed along at quite a clip, it just seemed to end without resolution. Perhaps I missed something. But I will say I was glad I read (listened) to this one, it was very well done, even if I still don't understand mythology's draw. My rating: 4 stars.

While we were iscussing the PBS's The Great American Read Project, a colleague told me she was disappointed not to see some of her favorites on the list. One she mentioned was Christy, about a young woman in the early 1900s who goes to teach school in Appalachia. I knew of the television adaptation of this starring Kellie Martin (does anyone else remember "Life Goes On" fondly?), but I'd never watched it nor read the book. My local library had the audio version narrated by Martin, so I decided to give it a try. The book is actually the story of the author's mother, Christy, and the audio begins with an interview with the author's son who tells us the man Christy ended up with was different in the book than in real life, which I found interesting. Apparently real life didn't make good fiction in the end. I enjoyed this book. I liked the characters who have a very different way of life and set of priorities than Christy, and I didn't mind the mountain talk--instead of grating on my nerves, I actually found it colorful and endearing (but others may not agree). While living at the church mission, Christy meets the atheist doctor, the preacher, and the Quaker woman who felt a calling to stay and help the people of Cutter Gap. She makes friends with some of the locals and finds a way to truly understand others of them. There is a lot of talk of religion here, while all of the main characters try to get to the bottom of their beliefs, and to be frank, much of this was rather boring to me. These are people who are not very far along in their faith journey, and the preacher, especially, seems terribly naïve in his faith. Answers are posed and answered in a way that made me cringe, but it was a good reminder to myself to extend grace to those on their individual paths to at-one-ment. Overall, I enjoyed this story, the characters, the trials and humorous moments, even if I could have done without so much philosophizing of Christianity. My rating: 4 stars. 

I've always enjoyed Ellen DeGeneres. She seems so much more alive and plugged into the joy of life than a lot of folks on television (anyone remember her 1990s sitcom, Ellen?). I don't really watch her show other than in clips here and there, but I have always been a little fascinated by what makes her tick. Her home design book, Home, has been on my TBR for ages, and I finally checked it out from the library to combat a bit of cabin fever (do you even know how much snow we have up here?). I was so impressed by this book. Although Ellen's style is vastly different from mine, I can appreciate her eye for curating and arranging things in a dramatic yet homey way. Her rooms feel very personal, even though all the pieces are high end with pedigrees. Ellen moves a lot, and the book takes us though several (at least a half dozen) of her homes (she had the foresight to take book-quality pictures of her homes at the time?). You'll see some of the same pieces in new spaces, and it's very interesting. The homes aren't the same at all in style, size, or location, but she settles into each and loves it--before moving on. After showing her own homes, she shares the homes of several of her designer friends with similar style. If I had to categorized their designs, I'd say it's sort of rustic industrial minimalist. This book showed me the utter importance of negative space, something Ellen seems to understand intuitively. The text is sparse, so there's not a lot of verbiage to take away from the photos of the rooms. I recommend this one even if your style is vastly different, in fact, maybe especially if your style is vastly different, from Ellen's. My rating: 3.5 stars.

The first book I'm re-reading this year has been on my re-read list for at least two years. I first read Michael Perry's Truck in 2009, a couple of years after it was published. It's the memoir of Perry's year spent restoring his 1951 International Harvester pickup truck--and falling in love. The Lincoln Journal Star calls Perry "part Bill Bryson, part Anne Lamott, with a skim of Larry the Cable Guy and Walt Whitman creeping around the edges” and I could not have said it better. I've read almost everything Mike has written--and some of it twice--and he is one of my favorite authors. He absolutely nails the small-town-slash-country-life thing. He grew up not far from where I did, and we attended with same university and poetry readings. Much of what he writes about in this book I have personal experience with (I know some of his writer friends, the local bar The Joynt--where we both went to be with writer friends but not to drink, all the corners of Eau Claire where his truck stopped). So this one was like going home to me, his books always are. While this isn't necessarily my favorite of his books (those would be Coop and Visiting Tom), I really enjoyed the re-read. I haven't tried all of his books on audio, but I think I could recommend them all without listening if he reads them. My rating: 4 stars.

I recently discovered Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith's The Slowdown, a short (5-minute) daily podcast of Smith commenting on and reading a poem. It is wonderful. (Also, there goes my idea of doing the same! Always a day late....) And this made me realize I had yet to read any of her poetry, so I picked up Wade in the Water, which received some buzz when it came out last spring. I really like her writing style. Unfortunately, sometimes with short poetry collections (those that hover around 70 pages), it's over before you feel like you've gotten a good taste of the poet's style. So I'll definitely be reading her other work, plus her memoir, Ordinary Light, which I'm really looking forward to beginning. My rating: 3 stars.

 

This week I'm reading:

Because if it's about a Kennedy, I'll read it.

My Kindle (re-)read:

Still loving this one so much.

I'm also reading:

Still enjoying my Rachel Hollis book, but I've lost interest in Joshua Becker's new decluttering book. I'll explain that when I review it. And I just started a poetry collection of new and selected poems by Dorianne Laux, a talented poet I've enjoyed for quite some time.

 

 

My next audiobook:

I might love it, I might hate it, but I think it's time to read it.

What I'm reading this week (2/11/19)

Last week I finished:

Caroline Fraser's Pulitzer Prize-winning Prairie Fires had been on my TBR for a long, long time, but it just never seemed to rise to the top of the list, perhaps because of its length. So I made a goal to read it this year, and I moved it to the top of my list. I didn't read the Little House series as a kid, and I've only read the first two books as an adult. But, I loved the television show. I always knew the show wasn't particularly faithful to the books, but I never knew where the plots diverged. I wanted to read this book to answer that question. I know so many people who loved this book, and I was so sure I was going to love it, too. And I did love the first 200 pages or so, but after that, it became tedious for a number of reasons. First, the book focuses way too much on Rose Wilder Lane, Laura Ingalls Wilder's daughter. She was a little off-kilter, and that made for fun research, I guess, but I just didn't like the front-row seat to someone's mental unraveling. Too often, the focus was taken off of Wilder and placed on Lane, and I have no idea why, other than to make a longer book. Second, the book focused so much on research, but I never felt like I got to know the real Laura. I picked up some things, but I didn't feel like after 500+ pages I had a full picture of Laura Ingalls Wilder. Third, the part of the book about Laura's (and Rose's) writing career before the Little House series was so boring. I finally gave myself permission to skip whole sections--and I'm not a skipper. Lastly, and most importantly, the book was so full of the author's bias that I lost faith in her ability to tell the truth. I've never read a book that received such accolades that was as biased as this one. Every book may betray an author's political and social beliefs to some extent, but this was way beyond the pale. I couldn't get past it, and if I hadn't been so far into the book before I realized what was going on, I would have jumped ship. Additionally, I believe to evaluate history through the lens of modern-day values and norms is ignorant and unforgivable in a literary text, and apparently, Fraser didn't know or care she was doing it. For the record, more people than just Rose Lane (and Laura Ingalls Wilder) believed President Roosevelt's New Deal was the beginning of the end of self reliance (one of the values Laura Ingalls Wilder held most dear) and see it as the beginning of personal reliance on the government. I will say that I learned some interesting historical facts (at least I hope they are facts) about various things I knew little about, finding the part of the book about the Dust Bowl particularly interesting. Also, the sections of the book that talked about each of the Little House books inspired me to continue with the series. I found the first two books too simple, without enough tension to make them interesting. It would seem the rest of the series is much more interesting. But in short, I cannot recommend this book, it was just too flawed. My rating: 3 stars.

Months ago, I added The 5 Love Languages to my TBR, just because I've heard so many folks talk about it, but I had little idea what it was all about. I am always very skeptical about personality tests and books that seem like nothing but long Cosmo articles on how to improve your marriage, but I still decided to try this one, knowing I could put it aside if it didn't speak to me (or if I found it too hokey). I certainly never expected to see myself buying into the premise. But I kind of did. A short overview: Gary Chapman, a counselor of some sort, posits that there are five basic "love languages": Words of Affirmation, Quality Time, Receiving Gifts, Acts of Service, and Physical Touch. Each of us speaks one of these languages fluently, and likewise, that is the language we want our spouse to speak to us in. The problem is, your spouse likely speaks a different love language fluently. And that's where marital dissatisfaction begins. The book was written in a very simple, very declarative-sentence-after-declarative-sentence sort of way. Many of the situations were rather dated (there's a lot of talk about wives ironing their husbands' clothes) because the book came out in the early 1990s or so. Yet, its simplicity makes logical sense. That being said, I am interested to know whether these differences in love languages are due to nature or nurture. For instance, my dead last love language is Physical Touch. I was never hugged or kissed as a child, can't remember ever sitting on anyone's lap, and in fact, there is not a single photograph of either of my parents holding me. Is Physical Touch my fifth language because of my childhood or is that coincidental, I wonder. As for my primary love language, I'm not entirely sure which one it is. Dr. Chapman said some folks have trouble deciding their love language because their "love tank" is always full. While the term "love tank" makes me cringe in embarrassment, this might be the case with me. My husband shows love in all five of the ways Chapman talks about, and I'm not sure which I'd miss most if my husband would drop one. I did wonder throughout the book, though, if it makes sense that most of us give and receive in only one way, or if only those spouses who aren't paying attention do. Overall, this book surprised me, and I'm glad I read it. My rating: 4 stars.

I'm currently reading:

One of the re-reads I've been wanting to tackle for months and months. It's (still) pretty wonderful.

I'm also reading:

 

 

I was feeling down last week, so I started several books as a pick-me-up. I'm enjoying every single one of them. And my nights are full.

 

 

My audiobook:

I'm enjoying this classic.

February 2019 reading list

My February reading list came together easily--all except for the four main reads. I knew I wanted to read Prairie Fires this year, so I decided to get it done early, but I had so many good options for the other three slots, I pretty much just eeny-meeny-miney-moed my way to a list. I've already begun five of these, and we're off to a pretty good start. Here's what I settled on, and as always, it's subject to change.

 

 

Memoir & Biography

Memoir re-reads:

Classics

Fiction:

 

Nonfiction:

 

Poetry: