Exit West, by Mohsin Hamid

I have read and enjoyed a few of Mohsin Hamid's novels on audiobook, and Exit West was no exception.  The spare, sparse writing style that somehow builds to create beautiful, moving stories is present once more.  Exit West is a novel about refugees and the impact of global migration on both the individuals and the world at large, and it's absolutely excellent.

Saeed and Nadia meet in an unnamed city, in an unnamed country.  They become friends and fall in love, slowly and then hurriedly, as war overtakes their lives.  They escape to Mykonos, and then to London, and then to San Francisco, through magical doorways that open up to people who can pay the price of entry.

Some people may be upset that Hamid reduces the entire exhausting, painful journey from a country in crisis to a country of refuge to the simple act of stepping through a doorway.  After all, the decision to leave home is difficult, and then the trip from one place to another is often dangerous and horrible.  But Hamid is not as interested in the process of becoming a refugee as on the impacts of being a refugee, or the impact of living in a world in which huge numbers of people migrate based on crises.  Thus, Saeed and Nadia step over an edge and escape the physicality of their city, but they don't escape much else.

Exit West is an obviously timely novel in that it is about refugees.  But timeliness in a story doesn't really matter if it doesn't stick; and in a story about refugees, it doesn't stick if it doesn't haunt you.  I don't know if haunt is even the right word, but it is very difficult to read this novel without being just as consumed by the "what ifs?" as the characters are.  What if I had never left?  What if I brought my father with me?  What if I had never met the person I escaped with?  What if we escaped somewhere else?  What would my life be like if war had never happened?  What would I be like if war had never happened?  It's impossible to know and equally impossible not to speculate.

Nadia is a confident, independent woman who adopts Saeed's family as her own and then has trouble removing herself from it.  Saeed is an introspective, kind man who turns more and more to religion as he loses control of the trajectory of his life.  They begin the story with so much promise and love and kindness for each other, but the stress of their lives causes both of them to draw back and recede from the other, to seek out friendship and understanding from others.

But there are other ways that people are impacted by the refugee crisis, and Hamid gives us brief snapshots of these lives before pulling away again.  We see two old men fall in love over a piece of art.  We see a man remake his life after contemplating suicide.  We see, terrifyingly, a man follow two young women down the street as he strokes the knife in his pocket.

Exit West shows us how global migration can result in changes both profound and minimal to individuals, societies, and geographies.  I loved how personal this story felt, from both Saeed's and Nadia's perspectives, and yet how easy it was to see just how much crises in completely foreign places can change people's behaviors here and everywhere.  Definitely a book to read when you want to remind yourself of how important it is to remember that people are individuals, not statistics.

Nicola Yoon's The Sun is Also a Star

I did not expect to love Nicola Yoon's The Sun is Also a Star.  But I did.  I feel like tons of people are giving this book glowing reviews right now, so I'm not sure that I have a lot to add to the conversation.  But I enjoyed so many things about this book!

I don't read a lot of young adult romance, mostly because I find it overly dramatic (see my review of The Wrath and the Dawn for more on this).  But this book was good after good!

It centers on Natasha, a Jamaican immigrant who is being deported (TODAY) and Daniel, a Korean-American who really doesn't want to go to Yale to be a doctor.  They meet at a music store while they are both avoiding what appears to be the inevitability of their lives, and then they spend a mostly perfect day together.

I say that this book centers on Natasha and Daniel, but what drew me into the story right from the beginning were the vignettes from other people's points of view.  We get brief moments into other people's lives and minds and these insights brought so much depth to the story.  We learn about Natasha's parents and how the move to New York strained their marriage.  We learn about Daniel's parents and how all they want is to ensure their children never have to live in the extreme poverty they saw.  But we meet people who have only a periphery connection to the story, too.  A drunk driver whose daughter was killed in a car accident.  A security guard who wants desperately to connect with people but cannot find a way to do it.  A paralegal who falls in love with her employer.  A lawyer who realizes he's in love with his paralegal.  These vignettes are short and bittersweet but show just how much we can impact other people's lives, from those closest to us to those that we hardly notice.  I loved them.

I also loved Natasha and Daniel's story.  I wasn't sure if I would at the beginning, mostly because Natasha said something about how she didn't think she was "wired for love," which did cause me to roll my eyes a bit, coming from a 17-year-old.  But the more I learned about Natasha, the more I realized this was in line with her personality.  And Daniel the dreamer, who wants to become a poet, not a doctor - he was pretty great, too.

One thing I really loved about this book was the way Yoon portrayed immigrant families.  This is where the insights into other characters and the omniscient narrator really shone.  Yoon showed that there is often a generational divide between immigrant parents and their children, but that under that is a deep level of love and trust that often can be overlooked by people who have not directly experienced it.  Both Natasha and Daniel disagree with their parents on important things but they still respect and love them.  And their parents really do try to do what is best for their children, but their definition of what is best is different than their children's.  One moment that made this clear was when Daniel said, honestly and clearly, that his parents would never attend his wedding with Natasha.  They probably would stop speaking to him if he married someone who was not Korean.  I know many parents like that (and some parents who used to be like that and then changed), and it was a very realistic scene.

I really enjoyed this book, and I think that even if you don't enjoy YA romance, you might enjoy it, too!  Give it a try!  And if you enjoy audiobooks, I definitely recommend listening to this one on audio!


Related Links:

The "Parents" episode from See Something Say Something.  Beautifully done interview and poetry about growing up as the child of immigrants.

"We Earth Men have a talent for ruining big, beautiful things."

Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles was nothing like what I expected.  I have not read much by Bradbury at all, but as this book is one of the most famous science fiction collections ever written, I expected it to be very old-school science fiction-esque.  But after doing some digging, I realized that the book (like all good science fiction and fantasy novels) is more social commentary and critique than anything else.

I really loved this collection of stories.  I have read many sad non-fiction books recently (as you all no doubt know), and one or two really sad fiction books, too.  And while The Martian Chronicles certainly has sadness, it is the melancholy type of sadness that I just really, really enjoy in books about colonialism and its effects.

And, quite frankly, that's what kind of surprised me about this book.  I know Ray Bradbury wrote Fahrenheit 451 (a book I have not read yet), but I guess I assumed that a 1950s era white guy from a small town in the Midwest would generally be okay with an expanding American empire.  It warmed my heart that Ray Bradbury saw America in its post-World War II, Cold War prime and said - must we continue this endless cycle?

In this collection, Earthlings (specifically Americans) colonize Mars, mostly annihilate Martian society, and then watch Earth blow up in nuclear war from afar after greater and greater restrictions and censorship by the government.  This is the bigger story.  But the individual stories all ladder up to that story in small ways.  Bradbury's key theme seems to be that small acts can have large unforeseen consequences.  He points out the way that small miscommunications, petty jealousies, tiny insecurities can grow and take on really terrifying forms.  Many parts of this collection reminded me of Mary Doria Russell's The Sparrow, and that ominous line that is something like, "They meant no harm."  Even the best intentions can go horribly wrong.

There were some truly beautiful stories in this collection.  The Martians are telepathic, so they can read people's minds.  In the story that had me in tears, a Martian keeps changing shape to become whatever the earthling closest to him most desperately wants.  So he becomes a lost daughter or son, a thief, a friend.  As more and more people come to him, clamoring for the attention of their lost loved one, the Martian becomes terrified, shifting shape more and more rapidly, crying out for help.  And no one helps him because they just want their own needs met.

In another story, a man from New York is thrilled to open his hot dog stand just in time for the next rocket from Earth to arrive.  Some Martians come to talk to him about his land.  He panics, thinking they are going to take his hard-won hot dog stand from him.  So he shoots one.  And then he shoots another.  Finally, the Martians inform him that they are giving him more land, not taking his land away.  He is jubilant until he looks into the sky and sees a massive explosion on Earth as a horrible war takes its toll.

“It was all a mistake,” he pleaded, standing out of his ship, his wife slumped behind him in the deeps of the hold, like a dead woman. “I came to Mars like any honest enterprising businessman. I took some surplus material from a rocket that crashed and I built me the finest little stand you ever saw right there on that land by the crossroads—you know where it is. You’ve got to admit it’s a good job of building.” Sam laughed, staring around. “And that Martian—I know he was a friend of yours—came. His death was an accident, I assure you. All I wanted to do was have a hot-dog stand, the only one on Mars, the first and most important one. You understand how it is? I was going to serve the best darned hot dogs there, with chili and onions and orange juice.”

One story that touched me deeply was about an encounter between a Martian and an Earthling.  The Earthling looks around him and sees a dead planet, with dusty cities that were abandoned centuries ago by a species long extinct.  He sees only what he wants to see, the planet becoming more and more like Earth.  To him, the Martian is a ghost.  The Martian looks around him and sees a vibrant and beautiful city, full of music and laughter.  He does not see what the Earthling sees.  To the Martian, the Earthling is a ghost.  The two argue and try to convince the other of their argument, but each fails.

“Who wants to see the Future, who ever does? A man can face the Past, but to think—the pillars crumbled, you say? And the sea empty, and the canals dry, and the maidens dead, and the flowers withered?” The Martian was silent, but then he looked on ahead. “But there they are. I see them. Isn’t that enough for me? They wait for me now, no matter what you say.”

These stories are obviously about the impact of colonialism on a people and culture, the use of force against someone who cannot fight you, the huge difficulties that arise when people talk past each other and do not try to understand the other's point of view.  I found these stories so moving, given the current political climate.  But there are other stories, too, that really spoke to me.  About loneliness in so many forms and how it can affect a person.  A Martian housewife who dreamed of a happier life with an Earthman.  A man so desperate for company after the population is wiped out around him, and then finds that he can't stand the only other person left on the planet.  A priest who wants to bring Christ to the Martians, even though they are not human.

I loved so many of the stories in this collection.  I do not read many audiobooks any more as I don't sit in my car for a long commute each day, but I found the audiobook version of this collection absolutely spectacular.  I listened to it while cooking and cleaning in my kitchen, on walks around the neighborhood, and over my lunch break at work.  I loved the narration.  I already mentioned that some of the stories brought me to tears.  I hope that if you try the collection, you feel as deeply moved as I did.

All the Single Ladies

I first heard Rebecca Traister when she was interviewed on NPR.  She spoke about her book, All the Single Ladies:  Unmarried Women and the Rise of an Independent Nation.  I have read (or tried to read) a few non-fiction books on women that just did not work for me - Bachelor Girl and Spinster being two of them.  Traister sounded much more up my alley, and so I put her book on my radar.

I mostly read this book after the election this month.  I thought it would be difficult and painful to do, but it was more like a balm.  Throughout history, people have had to fight, tooth and nail, for their rights.  And then they have to keep fighting to keep those rights.  It's exhausting.  It takes SO LONG to move forward even an inch, and then BAM! someone else comes into office and everything moves backwards again so quickly.

It's strange, admittedly, to describe knowing this as a "balm," but it kind of is.  Every time a group fights for recognition and respect and rights, there is another group that feels threatened and fights tooth and nail against it.  Often, the group that is threatened wins.  Sadly, fear is a huge motivator.

Thus, when you look at civil rights movements throughout history, there is always this back and forth motion.  This seems to be particularly true for women's rights, though it might just seem that way to me because I have read more about the women's movements than other ones.  I suppose I have  accepted that we are now in what appears to be a global backward motion on many civil rights.  When I say that I have "accepted" this, I don't mean that I won't fight for those rights.  What I mean is that I realize there are highs and lows, and I feel like this is our low.  It's our time to fight so that we move even further when we get to the next high.  Perhaps knowing that we are at the low and looking at history makes me realize that there are still highs to come.

Back to the book.

I listened to All the Single Ladies on audiobook, so I don't have a lot of quotes to share.  That said, there were many quotes in this book, not only from history but from very modern times, about how dangerous and selfish and horrible single women are.  This risk of women not reproducing to continue the species (or a very specific portion of the species) seems to threaten people at all levels and at all times and for all reasons.

What I really enjoyed about Traister's approach is that she looked at single women from many perspectives.  She talks about how life for women in cities is different than life in suburban and rural areas, about female friendship, about women living on their own.  She talks about why women choose to stay single (for work, money, independence, choice), not only rich women but also poor women.  She talks about how people assume single women live hugely promiscuous lives when the reality is usually quite different, single moms, and the families that women create for themselves when they are not married.

Right at the start, Traister admits that she has an urban, educated, white slant to her book.  That said, she does make some effort to meet and talk to people who have had different experiences.  She also cites a lot of evidence about people from many walks of life.

I have been single my whole life, and I have many single female friends, and this book really resonated with me.  Contrary to what many people think, I do not spend my nights desperately wishing there was a man in my life (though admittedly, there are some times, usually during engagement parties and weddings and showers, when I do).  I also don't go out with dozens of guys a year.  I'm not a shrew who is unkind to people (though I admit that I can be quite unkind to people I dislike strongly), and I'm not an anti-social, awkward person who stays at home every night with her books and wine (though I do enjoy evenings by myself just as much as I enjoy spending time with other people).  I would be happy to find a guy that I really love and get married, but if I do not meet one, I am pretty sure I will be happy and fulfilled in my life.  Except, of course, for everyone always wondering why I am single and what's wrong with me and when I'll finally stop being so picky.

Rebecca Traister understands all of this, and I felt so validated by this book.  I think many people would.  I love how Traister sets up historical "norms" as completely outside the norm.  For example, so many people look back on women getting married young and then having children as being the basis of so much economic growth and prosperity.  But even through history, many women have had to work outside the home to make ends meet.  And people make it seem as though women are being selfish and thinking only of themselves and putting the world at great risk.  But really, they're just making reasonable decisions for themselves, and people who complain about what they're doing should just get over themselves.

This book is not exhaustive by any means, but I don't think Traister is trying to be exhaustive.  She shares anecdotes about herself and from her friends, she tells us about the choices women have made through history and now, and what some of the numbers behind the trends mean.  I think this book would be a fantastic companion to Gail Collins' books about women in America and the long, winding path that the women's movement has taken.  Those books (referenced below) give a bit more breadth to the history whereas Traister's book has a personal and more "everyday woman" feel.

I've been reading a ton of non-fiction lately!  Sorry for all the heavy subject reviews.  Though really, this book is not heavy by any means - it's a very informative read, and I am glad to add it to my list of books that are refreshing and kind to women who make choices in life that not everyone understands.

Want to dig deeper on this subject?  Here are a few links:

Shorter reads -
"On Spinsters," by Briallen Hopper, which is a review of a different book but makes fantastic points
 "We Just Can't Handle Diversity," by Lisa Burrell, about how we all have biases and should acknowledge them instead of pretending we are totally objective about stuff

Long reads -
America's Women and When Everything Changed, by Gail Collins; I love these books about the history of women's rights and empowerment in America
Delusions of Gender, by Cordelia Fine; also absolutely amazing

Have a listen - 
The Lady Vanishes episode of the Revisionist History podcast

Watch -
"We Should All be Feminists" TEDx video by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Slumlord Millionaires

It cannot be said that Matthew Desmond's Evicted:  Poverty and Profit in the American City is an uplifting book.  Amazon has given it the dubious distinction of being "#1 Best Seller in Poverty."  The book follows eight families in some of Milwaukee's poorest neighborhoods from mid-2008 to late 2009 and shows how their struggles to pay the rent each month can create insurmountable challenges in every other aspect of their lives.  A snowball becomes an avalanche.  And then they are evicted, and it becomes even worse.

I did not realize just how often people are evicted from their homes.  I have always had a vague idea that laws favor the renter over the landlord, perhaps based on the whole "possession is 90% of the law" idea.  But I think that whole notion is predicated on the idea that both sides are equally educated and have the same access to resources.  When the two sides are not balanced, things can go south very quickly.

Desmond states that "If incarceration had come to define the lives of men from impoverished black neighborhoods, eviction was shaping the lives of women.  Poor black men were locked up.  Poor black women were locked out."  In Milwaukee, black women make up less than 10% of the population but more than 30% of the evictions.  Eviction wreaks havoc in so many ways - parents have to scramble to secure housing, they often lose their material possessions in addition to their homes, their kids are taken out of school, no one feels connected to or committed to a neighborhood, and they now have an eviction on their record, making it even harder to find another home.

It is hard to read Desmond's book without feeling a little sick or hoping that maybe he is exaggerating the situation.  Can landlords really be so cruel?  Is it true that they make the most profit off their poorest tenants?  This must be a pretty one-sided presentation of the information, right?

And maybe it is.  After all, there are eight families profiled, but only two landlords, and the two landlords are disturbingly unkind and mercurial.  Even with that caveat, though, this is a very bleak picture of America.

The tenants here have all made mistakes in their lives, some of them have made really big ones.  It is tempting to think - well, they messed up.  They deserve this.  If they just worked more/tried harder/stayed clean, then they wouldn't be in this situation.  I think we all want to think that because we need to believe that we live in a fair world, and that those of us who are being dealt a better life got that life because we work more, try harder, and are smarter.  Not just because we were lucky.  Because if any of this is based on luck, and luck can change, then any one of us could be struggling.

But even people who make mistakes have children who deserve stability.  They have families that need financial and emotional support.  They need help but are afraid to ask for it.  They don't know their rights.  They pay a very high price for their mistakes, and with the snowball effect that just one crisis can have on someone in poverty, they keep paying that price, over and over.

Desmond uses the word "exploitation" to describe the relationship between landlords and their tenants in poor neighborhoods.  I was aghast at the conditions he described.  Landlords often charge tenants very high prices (really, not that much lower than rent in much better neighborhoods) for apartments that are in really bad shape.  And, since they can threaten these tenants with eviction at almost any time, they don't feel any obligation to do maintenance work or upkeep on their units.  They nickel and dime tenants, make them do work for free, kick them out, and then begin again with someone new.

It took me a very long time to read this book, mainly because it was so sad.  It was hard to pick it up after a long day of work.  But I live in a very large and very segregated city, and I think it's important for me (and everyone else) to understand how housing policies can impact Chicago.  For that reason, I'm really glad I read this book and better understand the economics and politics at play here.  It was a tough one, but it's important.  You may not think that housing policy has any effect on you, but it does - it is your taxes, your neighborhood, your school, and your city.  So pay attention.

If you would prefer to read about Desmond's book and the issues he brings up rather than reading the full book, I highly recommend the New York Times review.

Delicious eats and food for thought

I really love the food documentaries on Netflix.  I enjoyed The Chef's Table, I really liked For Grace, and I am sure I will eat up (haha, pun intended) whatever else Netflix recommends in my queue.

I don't actually do a lot of food-related reading, though.  I am not sure why.  Maybe I miss the visuals of the beautiful dishes or the sounds of pots clanging, meat sizzling, knives chopping.

I have never been to any of Marcus Samuelsson's restaurants before, though I have used his recipe for a garam masala pumpkin tart for Thanksgiving over the past few years.  I really like Samuelsson's cooking in theory, though I have not experienced it in practice.  Samuelsson was born in Ethiopia, grew up in Sweden, worked in restaurants around Europe and on the sea, and then moved to New York.  His cooking style draws from all of his global experiences and tastes; hence, he has a recipe for garam masala pumpkin pie, melding the tastes of traditional American home-cooking with Indian spices.  I love taking tastes that don't often go together and making them work, making something new and different.  In a dorky and idealistic way, I feel like if people can see how their tastes are not so different and can complement each other to make stronger whole, then maybe it will help people see past their bigger and more philosophical differences, too.

Yes, Chef is Marcus Samuelsson's book about his life.  In many ways, it's pretty typical of what you would expect from a chef.  He didn't like school, he preferred being in the kitchen with his grandmother.  He went to culinary school and worked harder and longer and better than anyone else.  He was lucky enough to get a big break at a well-known restaurant, and from there he was off, with a few bumps and bruises along the way.

But in addition to that, Samuelsson shares some personal insights as well.  For example, he grew up very dark-skinned in a very light-skinned environment.  He faced overt and more subtle racism in the kitchen almost everywhere he went.  A couple of times, he would be offered a job on paper but then show up for work and be told that there was no place for him.  He talks a lot about how few minorities are in the kitchens of high-end restaurants, how few women, too.  And how he is doing his part, working very hard to give people the opportunities that he often did not receive while he was training.  Samuelsson never makes race or racism the dominant part of his narrative, but it clearly had a huge impact on his training and the way he learned to cook, and I think he addresses it really well.  It's also clear just how much it has influenced every aspect of his cooking; he draws from so many different food cultures to create his recipes.

What's also obvious in this book is that being a chef is really hard and a ton of work.  It takes a huge personal toll on people.  Samuelsson missed both his grandmother's and his father's funerals because of work.  He does not spend a lot of time being introspective about this, but it is hard to imagine.  He also has a daughter, and for about the first 15 years of her life, he never made any attempt to contact her or get to know her.  Obviously, Samuelsson had to deal with a lot of personal things and decisions as he grew and matured; while readers don't get a huge amount of insight into these very personal motivations and decisions, it's clear that he still struggles with them.

Samuelsson makes no secret that he enjoyed going out, having fun, meeting people and spending time with women.  He also clearly has a ton of confidence in his skill and his decisions.  He can sometimes sound arrogant, but I think it is just honesty.  And it's hard not to love anyone who serves a meal at the White House and then comes home to Harlem and makes the exact same meal for his teenaged next-door neighbor and all her best friends.  That was just lovely.

I enjoyed this book a lot, and now I really want to visit Samuelsson's restaurant in Harlem the next time I am in New York City!  Here's a link to Red Rooster's website in case you want to see the fusion menu he has on there, too.

The Wrath and the Yawn

I was very excited to read Renee Ahdieh's The Wrath and the Dawn, pretty much entirely because I love anything based on the Arabian Nights.  Ahdieh's book got rave reviews on GoodReads, which was another good sign.  But really, it was all about the 1,001 Nights and those interlaced stories.

Which is why I was pretty disappointed when I realized that this book did not in any way center on the stories that Shahrzad tells her husband each night in an effort to extend her life.  From what I recall, we hear two stories that Shahrzad tells the caliph, which is significantly less than 1,001, I think you'll agree.  It is probably unfair of me to hold this against the book, but I definitely do.  I just really wanted all those layered stories, and I got zero layered stories.

Mostly, this book is about the dramatic love story between Shahrzad and her husband, Khalid, the caliph.  And all the heartache the two must endure.  In mostly agonizing silence.

It was difficult for me to be fair to the book after finding out that there are hardly any tales shared, especially when I also discovered that this book is, to quote Care, "more YA than the YA I usually read."  I nearly laughed aloud when, early in the novel, there was Jill's telltale sign of a YA novel, the hero tucking the heroine's hair behind her ear.  (I knew it was coming because her hair whipping around her face had been mentioned at least twice by that time.)

But there wasn't a lot of laughing in this book.  It's a lot of drama and tension around Shahrzad's Stockholm Syndrome of falling for her husband (after approximately 36 hours of marriage, from what I could tell).  She is filled with angst for loving someone who has killed so many women already, including her best friend.  At least, that's what we're told.  But as Shahrzad spends hardly any time in the book thinking about her friends or family that she left behind when she got married, it's hard for readers to feel much empathy for her situation. Once Shahrzad got married and moved to the palace, it was as though she lost interest completely in the people she left behind.   I wanted to know the people she left behind so that I could understand her guilt (which didn't last long).

It's not that Shahrzad is a weak character.  She's not.  She's fierce and stubborn and beautiful, and I can see why so many teenagers would fall completely in love with her.  But she didn't really develop as a character, we were just supposed to like her because she was independent and good at everything and didn't feel bound by the rules that usually governed women.  All of that just got tiring for me.  Shahrzad just blew either fully hot or fully cold.  Promptly after falling in love with her husband, Shahrzad switches from guilt about betraying her friends to anger with her husband for not divulging all his secrets to her.

There are other characters in this book.  Khalid, Shahrzad's husband, is also tortured and dramatic and beautiful.  His cousin and Shahrzad's handmaiden.  Shahrzad's first love, Tarak, with his piercing eyes.  (Shahrzad, in contrast, has "tiger eyes.")  Bedouins and magicians and armed guards.  I think they all could be pretty interesting people except that there is so much angst around Shahrzad and Khalid that they are not given the opportunity to develop very much.  And everyone and every moment is described in such flowery language.  It's hard to imagine 16-year-olds and 18-year-olds speaking in such a manner.  It was just a lot, and in many ways, a bit too much for me.

The Wrath and the Dawn is the first book in a duology.  I am not entirely sure if I will read the next book.  Though the story had some solid points and there is a fairly intriguing curse/mystery/magic situation brewing, I don't know if these characters are for me.  Too much hot and cold, too much too quickly, and not really enough focus on developing deeper characters and deeper emotions.

The Saint of Cabora

The Hummingbird's Daughter has been on my watch list for probably a decade or so.  I think I first heard about it on one of the historical fiction forums in which I used to participate.  Words like lush and vivid and lyrical were used to describe it.

But, as often happens, I just never got around to reading the book.  Other books took precedence.  Finally, I saw that it was available for audiobook download at the library, so I put it on my wish list.  Even a decade after its publication, there was a wait list for the book!  I took that as a good sign.  And after hearing only the first few instances, I was an instant fan.  It's true - the words lush, vivid and lyrical are very fitting for this novel.

The Hummingbird's Daughter is about Luis Alberto Urrea's great-aunt Teresita, a woman who was said to have great healing powers and was often called a saint in Mexico.  Teresita was born to an unmarried Indian woman and raised in great poverty by an aunt who was not a kind woman.  But she always had a great healing ability, so was accepted as an apprentice by the local healer, Huila.  Eventually, her father acknowledged her as his daughter, and from there, Teresita's life went on a very different course than she ever could have expected.

One of the reasons it took me so long to read this book was because of the strong religious undertones.  There was a lot of religion (and politics) in the second half of this book, and it became a bit tiresome and repetitive.  But there was also a lot that was amazing in this book, and I would say those aspects more than made up for the religion and repetition.  One of my favorite things about Spanish literature is the magical realism.  One of my favorite things about Luis Alberto Urrea's writing is the humor.  Combining magical realism with humor is a glorious idea, and more people should do it.  But until they do, I am happy with Urrea's approach.

I listened to The Hummingbird's Daughter on audiobook.  While I really enjoyed it - the narrator was fantastic and lively - I don't know if this book is ideal for audiobook.  Particularly in the second half of the novel, there's a lot of politics and religion and jail time and other things that just don't translate quite as well on audio as they might on paper.  I was absolutely enthralled by this story for the first 75%, but I lost a bit of steam at the end.  This is possibly because the audiobook is about 19 hours long; I admit it felt like a never-ending story, especially because the magic and humor that was present at the beginning was harder to find later on.  Kind of like The Sound of Music!  Who watches the last 25% of that movie?

The Hummingbird's Daughter is wonderful for a lot of reasons.  I loved Teresita's relationships with Huila, her teacher, and Don Tomas, her father.  Having just finished Stolen Continents, I was glad to read about an era of history that was mentioned in that book.  I loved learning more about Indian customs and the way the Spanish interacted with Indian nations, the way Teresita worked with both the Spanish and Indian sides.  The humor, the friendship, everything.  It was just a little long for audio.

Carnivorous horses #ftw!

I am not sure how she does it, but Maggie Stiefvater can take plots that in zero ways appeal to me and create amazing stories from them.  She did it with the whole star-crossed lovers thing in the Raven Boys Cycle, and now she's done it (or, she did it a while ago, and I've only just got around to discovering she's done it) with swimming carnivorous horses in The Scorpio Races.

Seriously, this book description had me a little nervous when I was considering which audiobook to download next.  It's about a boy who always wins races with carnivorous horses and a girl  who has never raced carnivorous horses but really needs the money, so enters the race.  And then they get to know each other and fall in love by... guess what?  Riding horses together.

It may come as a surprise to you, but I am not an animal lover.  I enjoy animals in the wild, in that I generally like to imagine animals roaming free in the wild and doing their thing.  Sometimes I see a photo of a puppy and think, "Aww!"  But I've never had a pet, I do not want a pet, and I am often flummoxed by the very real, very deep friendships that people have with their pets because I just can't really imagine what that's like.

Also, as a city dweller, it really pisses me off that so many people have dogs but don't take on the task of cleaning up after them.

So, anyway, stories about people's relationships with animals generally don't move me the way they do other people.  It's not like I'm dead inside (but maybe I am?), but I have never experienced that connection myself, so I don't feel the need to read about it.  All that to say - I was not particularly drawn to reading a book about two horse lovers falling for each other.

But I really enjoyed the audiobook versions of the Raven Boys series, and I figured I might as well get back into Stiefvater before the final book in that series comes out at the end of April.

And wow.  I should just trust Stiefvater implicitly (Ok, I say this, but I admit that I can't bring myself to read her werewolf series, either).  This post so far is just a lot of build-up to me not being able to explain to you why I enjoyed this book so much.  Yes, there are some great characters, including the two horse lovers, their horses and the stony, isolated island that is the book's setting.  This is Maggie Stiefvater, so the magical elements are brought to life in a very distinct manner.  The best way I have of describing Stiefvater's brand of fantasy is by saying it's like those massive urban graffiti murals.  There is structure, but there's also coloring outside of the lines.  There's beauty in the grit and smog.  There's a lot of symbolism you probably miss.  But, standing in front of it and looking at it, you don't really care that you don't fully understand it because it's obviously making a statement, and you are glad that you are a witness to it.

I've told you not so much about this book or its key characters, and that's because I feel like me telling you about the plot and the characters will not convince you to read the story.  So maybe just trust me, or trust Maggie Stiefvater, and read it.  Let me know what you think.

Growing up Black in America, continued

Back in September, I posted a review of Ta-Nehisi Coates' Between the World and Me.  The book is often compared to James Baldwin's The Fire Next Time, so I took the opportunity recently to read Baldwin's work.  While I can certainly understand the parallels between the two books, I think they are absolutely complementary and having read one only makes your experience of the other even better.

James Baldwin's book was written in 1963, a response to the centennial of the Emancipation Proclamation.  It is deeply personal, a call to action to all Americans to accept that this has always been a multi-cultural, multi-racial society.  Baldwin has so many strengths in the way he writes, but the one that most draws me in is the passion that he puts into every word.  You can almost imagine him sobbing as he writes about his difficult relationship with religion, clenching his fist as he tells us about the many times he's been treated badly.  And yet, through it all, he stresses kindness and compassion over anger and revenge.  This is a deeply intimate book, and I can only imagine how much it took out of Baldwin to write it, to share his own story and his own misgivings and so much of himself.

Some quotes that stood out to me while reading this book:

“There is no reason for you to try to become like white people and there is no basis whatever for their impertinent assumption that *they* must accept *you*. The really terrible thing, old buddy, is that you must accept them. And I mean that very seriously. You must accept them and accept them with love.” 
- To his nephew

“If the concept of God has any validity or any use, it can only be to make us larger, freer, and more loving. If God cannot do this, then it is time we got rid of Him.”

“It happened, as many things do, imperceptibly, in many ways at once. I date it - the slow crumbling of my faith, the pulverization of my fortress - from the time, about a year after I had begun to preach, when I began to read again. I justified this desire by the fact that I was still in school, and I began, fatally, with Dostoyevsky.” 
- On his struggles with religion and the way people use religion

It truly is a thoughtful, articulate, and beautifully written book, and I hope you will read it.

Immediately after finishing The Fire Next Time, I read a recently-released young adult novel called All-American Boys.  The novel is written by two authors, Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely, and has two narrators, Rashad and Quinn.  Rashad is the victim of police violence when a cop assumes that he was trying to steal a bag of chips.  Quinn witnesses his best friend's older brother beating up a kid outside a convenience store.  In case you didn't already assume - Rashad is black, and Quinn is white.

 I first heard about this book in the New York Times Book Review, and honestly, the review is pretty much spot on.  I highly recommend you to just go read that one.  It convinced me to immediately request this book from the library, and I hope it convinces you to read it, too.

What I appreciate most about this book is that it takes both Rashad's and Quinn's journeys seriously.  While Rashad lays in a hospital bed recovering from a broken nose, broken ribs, internal bleeding and more (which, even when you give a cop the benefit of the doubt, is a terrifyingly extreme reaction to someone getting a bag of chips), he feels vulnerable and scared.  One scene that especially stood out to me was when Rashad's father was grilling him about the incident, demanding to know why he would steal, why he would resist arrest, why he would fight.  It's clear that he wants so badly to believe that if you just follow the rules, if you are a good person, then you will be safe.   But Rashad did all of that and still ended up in the hospital.  And it could happen to him again.  And it made his father feel so powerless and frightened to know that he could not protect his son from that.

Quinn, on the other hand, has to come to terms with his own privilege.  He saw a beating and walked away from it.  He could continue walking away from issues like this his whole life and his life would be fine.  He worries that someone saw him at the store, that maybe he was caught on video, that the incident will mess with the dynamics of the school's basketball team and his chance at a scholarship.  Finally, his friend points out that he's not the victim here, that it's not about him, and something clicks.

I love that this book is out there for people to read and consider and use as a way to broach what can be a difficult discussion topic.  There are so many vignettes and conversations that can be used as jumping off points for discussion, so many useful questions and comments that people can use as they consider their own lives and decisions.  I especially think if you have middle school or high school kids who are aware of everything happening in the US right now but don't really know how to process it or how to respond, this is a great book to give them.  And then talk to them about it, too.

A girl's journey through a failed revolution

Julia Alvarez's Before We Were Free is about Anita, a pre-teen growing up in the Dominican Republic under the Trujillo dictatorship.  Julia Alvarez herself escaped the Dominican Republic and came to the US in the 1960s; this book is her imagining of what life must have been like for the cousins she left behind.

I listened to Before We Were Free on audiobook.  At first, I thought it was going to veer a little too young for me.  But as I got deeper into the story, I became much more invested in Anita's life, her family, and how they all tried to live normal lives in the midst of chaos.

The world is in the midst of a refugee crisis.  (In addition to all our other crises.)  It's easy to get caught up in all the numbers and the logistics and the impact such an influx of people from a different culture will have on a host country.  It's easy to forget that every refugee is a person with her own history, hopes and fears.  Alvarez's book does an excellent job of showing the steps that lead to a decision to leave your home and seek out a different life for yourself.

Anita lives in a huge family compound with her extended family.  At the start of the book, she's surrounded by friends and family.  By the end, it's just her and her mother, hiding in a friend's bedroom, desperate for news of their loved ones and hoping for some chance of escaping the country. Through the story, Anita grows thoughtful, more introspective, and more aware of the situation around her, and how her own family is involved.

I wish we had gotten to know Anita's father and uncle better in this story as they were the most involved with the rebellion against Trujillo.  Even her mother seemed fairly involved, but there isn't much light shed on that for readers.  In a way, that makes sense.  Anita is 12 at the start of the book, and she is not central to the planning and execution of plans to topple a government.  We see more hints at Trujillo's reign of terror than overt descriptions.  Anita's beautiful older sister receives flowers from the president, who has an eye for pretty, very young girls, and immediately, her family finds a way for her to leave the country so that she won't disappear.  All girls are told to avoid him, and many of the men in his regime, and you can feel the undercurrent of fear in all conversations about him.

But that's not to say that this book is all about fear.  It's not.  There are many funny moments and a lot of truly heartwarming ones.  Alvarez isn't afraid to talk about big, difficult questions and issues, and the book is better for it.  

George Orwell's War

I am not sure what exactly piqued my interest in the Spanish Civil War.  I feel like there are so many books set during World War II, but hardly any (at least in English) set during the Spanish Civil War that immediately preceded it.  Considering the impact the war had on so many influential people, it seemed like something I should try to learn more about.

I chose George Orwell's Homage to Catalonia as my introduction to the conflict, mostly because it was available at the library on audiobook.  While that isn't the most flattering reason to choose a book, I didn't really know what else would work.  I didn't want a super-detailed, exhaustive history, and I wanted to read a first-hand account.

Orwell was a pretty great guide.  I loved his dry sense of humor.  It is hard to imagine Orwell having strong feelings about anything, based on his narrative style, but clearly he felt strongly enough about a cause to go to a foreign country and fight for it.  (And, obviously, he felt strongly about many things, based on the subjects he chose to write about.)

I do think many of the intricacies of the politics and maneuverings were over my head, possibly because I was reading this via audiobook and possibly because Orwell assumed that his readers would have at least a passing knowledge of current events at the time of publication.  Unfortunately, I have hardly any working knowledge of what was going on during the Civil War, so I was a bit at sea during some chapters.  But I didn't mind because the other chapters were very engaging.  Orwell definitely falls victim to stereotyping, describing Spaniards as slow and lazy, Italians as fashionable, etc., but he does it with so much humor that it's hard to take it very seriously.  He also gives himself the same treatment - at the beginning of the book, he talks about his obsession with learning how to use a machine gun, and using his very limited Spanish skills to ask if he can learn every day.  But instead of mastering the weapon, all the soldiers are taught is how to look good in a parade.

But even more than the humor, what stood out in this book was Orwell's own experience in the war.  He started as an idealist socialist, but as the war continued and he saw first-hand the effect on both soldiers and civilians, the propaganda machine, the lies and the politics, his perspective changed.  He no longer trusted the Communists to be honest and straight-forward; he saw that they, too, lied and cheated and committed all sorts of atrocities.  And then, I assume, he went and wrote Animal Farm, which proceeds in much the same manner.

Homage to Catalonia is an excellent read to fully appreciate Orwell's writing style and humor.  It's also a very honest look at how ideals can be lost in the midst of a horrible and bloody war.  While I don't know if it's the best book to read to get an understanding of the background and lead-up to the Spanish Civil War, it's definitely an excellent book to get you interested in the conflict.  And to understand a man's internal conflict, too.  Highly recommended.

Martin Luther King, Jr., in his own words

I don't need to say this, but we've had a tumultuous several years in this world, haven't we?  So many steps forward and so many steps backward, and it's hard to appreciate all the good in the midst of so much that is bad.

Police brutality has been in the news all over the United States and recently, my beloved Chicago has (deservedly) gained national attention due to the practices of its police department.  There is not a federal investigation into the police department and there have been many protests in the streets, people demanding the mayor to step down.

Perhaps I have become very cynical lately, but I don't really see the point of protesting without very concrete demands; if you want the mayor to step down, then you should have someone ready to step up to the plate, take on the role.  Otherwise, it feels incomplete and less compelling.  This is happening all over America and probably the world.  A lot of people are protesting and are 100% justified in protesting.  But it's hard to understand what the next step will be.

All of this really made me want to learn more about leaders for positive change.  And, given the environment and the country I live in, Martin Luther King, Jr. seemed the obvious choice.  The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr. is not technically an autobiography in that MLK did not sit down to write his life story.  But the book is comprised of his notes and letters and speeches and truly succeeds in bringing him to life.  I highly recommend the audiobook version, which includes audio clips of MLK himself, so that you can truly understand what a charismatic and passionate speaker he was.

It is impossible to read this book and not think about the current climate in America.  So many things that MLK brought up and fought for are still issues today.  Clearly, police brutality still exists.  Schools are still highly segregated, even if they are not meant to be.  There are still slums, still low-paying jobs, still a disproportionate economic impact of recession.  In the book, Martin Luther King is quoted as saying that he never faced such racism and hatred anywhere in America as he faced in Chicago, and while I hope that's changed, I don't know that Chicago has done much to earn accolades.  The city is still segregated, many people refuse to even drive through certain neighborhoods, and there are more victims of gun and gang violence here than probably anywhere else in the country.  Most of those victims are black.

Living through the most recent political and social movements in the world, from Occupy Wall Street to Arab Spring to all the other protest movements that ebb and flow, the success of Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement are even more striking.  It is very difficult to make the status quo into an issue that people will care about, that they will fight for, that leaders will take notice of.  I am truly amazed at what they were able to do.  It is inspiring to read about and listen to and think about where we are now vs where we were then, and where we want to be in another fifty years to continue to progress and become the people, the society, the world that we want to be.

This is an excellent read for anyone who wants to learn more about Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement.  And for anyone who needs to believe that a small group of people can make great big changes in the world.  Highly recommended.

#GOAT

I grew up in Chicago in the 90s, and my entire family (and really, the entire city) was completely obsessed with the Chicago Bulls basketball team.  Scottie Pippen is my all-time favorite player, and I'm still a huge fan of the team (though they have the tendency to break my heart more these days than they ever did in the 90s).

The most dominant player of the 90s era (and possibly of all time) was Michael Jordan.  Pretty much as soon as I saw that there was a new-ish biography out about Jordan, I planned to read it.  Looking back at Jordan's time with the Bulls, it is amazing that the team did so well so consistently for so long.  I really wanted to look back on that amazing period.

Michael Jordan:  The Life, by Roland Lazenby, is an account of Jordan's life, including his family, close friends, and his very volatile relationships with the teams he played on.  Quite honestly, I don't know if this book would appeal to anyone who is not a big sports fan in general or a huge Bulls fan in particular.  I debated whether I should even write a review because it's hard to be objective about a book when it's about a childhood hero.  I'm certainly not an objective reader here.

Lazenby's book is very detailed.  There's a lot of time spent on Jordan's family history and his childhood, which I really appreciated.  There's also beautiful writing about the games Jordan played, the way he moved on the court, the way he could dominate everyone.  I wish that the book had been a more multimedia experience; so many times, I wanted to go to YouTube and find the play that Lazenby was describing.

What comes across on almost every page is just how competitive Michael Jordan is.  He was able to pump himself up for every game, wanted to win every single game.  When you consider that the regular season of the NBA stretches from November to April and includes 82 games, that is absolutely mind-blowing.  He competed not only with other teams, but also with his teammates, forcing them to get better, and with himself, always drilling, always pushing to see how much further he could go and how much better he could become.  He rubbed a lot of people the wrong way.  But the fans hardly ever saw that; they saw an amazing player, a team leader, a media darling.  And, of course, they saw all of his commercials.  Nike, Gatorade, McDonald's... but mostly Nike.  I was fascinated by the Nike deal and all the implications that contract had for Jordan and for Nike.

But fame and fortune have their drawbacks.  And someone so obsessed with competition and winning can easily become addicted to something like gambling.  Michael Jordan gambled a lot.  And for huge sums of money.  He also had a large family and group of friends that depended on him for all sorts of things, and the massive sums of money he made created a lot of tension with them, too.

As a fan, you really only see your team on the court.  To you, they don't really have anything else going on.  No personal lives, no triumphs or failures, no issues with teammates or family or friends.  All you care about is how they play.  In that way, I really appreciated Lazenby's book.  I enjoyed getting a peek behind the Bulls organization of my childhood and understanding just how special that team was.

Gaiman's superbly atmospheric short fiction

Do you ever read a book and think to yourself, this is why I love reading so much, for the exact experience of having this book in my hands and seeing these perfectly-chosen words in this exact order and understanding just how beautiful language can be?

For me, that's pretty much par for the course on any book I've read by Neil Gaiman, but I am particularly struck by how great his short stories are.  Trigger Warning is a collection of stories that Gaiman himself feels are not very tightly connected with each other, but that come together brilliantly.

I received a free copy of Trigger Warning when it came out, but I admit that I waited a while to read it because Neil Gaiman himself narrates the audiobook version, and I really wanted to listen to him narrate the stories.  So, apologies to William Morrow for the delay on this review, but I have zero regrets about waiting for the audiobook because it was very, very good and 100% worth the wait.

There are several short stories in this collection ranging from short and funny to longer and creepier to pretty much everything in between.  Most of them are in the mysterious/creepy/spooky camp, so this would be a great read for Halloween.  I read it in July, though, and got some delicious shivers up and down my back, so I suspect it would work at any time of year.

One of my favorite things about this collection is the introduction.  In it, Gaiman gives readers short descriptions and backgrounds for each of the stories he included.  So many of his stories are in appreciation of other authors or cultural figures - Gene Wolfe, Ray Bradbury, Arthur Conan Doyle, David Bowie, Doctor Who... the list goes on and is so varied.  Apparently, Gaiman is pretty much invited to write a story for everyone famous who ever interacts with him, and he often obliges.  And sometimes, he writes stories for non-famous people, too.  Or just because.

One of my favorite stories in this collection is "The Sleeper and the Spindle."  It turns the story of Snow White on its head a bit, gives Snow White the agency and gumption that is so often lacking in fairy tale heroines, and is, to my delight, being published as a storybook all on its own, with illustrations.  It's the sort of storybook that I would give to all my friends' children as a gift to make sure that the next generation knows that girls can be powerful HERoes, too.

There are also stories about loss and heartache, the importance of family and friends to combat loneliness, and the search for love and redemption.  I love Neil Gaiman's stories because he so often writes about people who think of themselves as uncomplicated, unexciting folk, but then he gives them the courage and the power to do extraordinary things.  And they do.  And sometimes it's for the good and sometimes it's for the bad, but it's always a beautiful story and a huge treat to read.

Note:  I received a free copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Rags to Riches in Pakistan

I really enjoyed Mohsin Hamid's The Reluctant Fundamentalist on audiobook, so I was excited to find How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia in the same format.  It is written in a similar format, the rare second person that always reminds me of Choose Your Own Adventures stories from my childhood.  Hamid is much better at actually creating a plot and developing characters than the authors of Choose Your Own Adventures, which is much more difficult than you would think considering that no one in this story has a name.

How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia is, I think, set in Karachi or Lahore, Pakistan.  I have never been to Pakistan, but I imagine it's fairly similar to India in that if you pay a lot of bribes and do a couple of shady things and know the right people, then you can probably be very successful.  Hamid starts the story with you in a small village, moves you to the city for education, has you leave school to start working, and then make your way up the economic ladder, with all the privileges and problems that come with it.

I found this book to be a very empathetic and moving account of trying to make it big in South Asia.  It reminded me a lot of Aravind Adiga's The White Tiger, except that it's much kinder and not quite as cynical as that book is.  The book is ostensibly a self-help guide (hence the use of the second person), and every chapter is laid out as a step on the path to success.  Parallel to the story of the young man's rise to prominence is a love story; he knew a "pretty girl" when he was growing up, and she too was determined to make something of herself.  Her path leads her away from and back to our hero, and as a reader, I was so thrilled any time their stories came together.

I also really enjoyed reading about the main character's relationship with his wife and son.  There was so much nuance there, so much miscommunication and missed opportunities, and so much yearning for more than is on offer.  I loved how well Hamid brought that to life.

Mohsin Hamid is an author I plan to keep my eye on going forward.  I've enjoyed everything (ok, two books) I've read by him so far, and I appreciate his unique narrative voice in the midst of a lot of books written in first or third person :-)  And if you're the kind of reader who enjoys a good audiobook, I definitely recommend this one on audio!

Review-itas: Books I didn't love

Finnikin of the Rock, by Melina Marchetta, is one of those books that so many people recommended to me.  Or, I should say, Melina Marchetta is an author that many people love, and I have never read her.  But I've had Finnikin of the Rock on my Kindle forever, and I finally read it!

Or, tried to.

The book reminded me of Guy Gavriel Kay's Tigana.  It's a fantasy novel about displaced people trying to find their way home.  I really liked that part of the story - all these people, separated for years, finding each other and joining in The Quest, and trying to get home.

Unfortunately, there was also a massively inconsistent romance in the book that really annoyed me.  Sometimes Finnikin and this at-first-mute but then really talkative religious-novice (supposedly) Evanjalin are BFF, and sometimes they hate each other, and sometimes they love each other, and sometimes they want other people, and it was all just TOO MUCH for me.  Also, I thought Evanjalin was all over the place, character-wise.  So I didn't finish this one.

I did finish Karen Thompson Walker's The Age of Miracles, but that's really only because I was reading it on audiobook and I figured, since the book is about the apocalypse, that I should get to the end and see what happened to the world.

In this dystopian young adult novel, the earth's rotation is slowing.  The days are growing longer, the crops aren't growing at all, and Julia is growing up.  She's 11 years old, her best friend is moving away, and she has a big crush on a sk8r boi.

It's hard to be an adolescent at the best of times, and it's probably even harder to be one when the world is ending.  Julia goes through quite a bit of heavy stuff, but she also goes through life as a pre-teen.  She loses her best friend, she faces her parents' crumbling marriage, she tries to just be normal.  I liked the way Walker mixed the extraordinary with the ordinary to show what life could really be like in such a situation - people just keep trucking on.

That said, the book didn't really succeed for me.  Julia sometimes was far too deep for an 11-year-old.  And this was a very quiet book in many ways, which isn't exactly what I was expecting from a novel about the end of the world.  I appreciate that Walker didn't fill it with massive wars or thieving hordes, but I also wish she had done just a little bit more.

Review-itas: Technology is amazing edition

Steven Johnson's How We Got to Now:  Six Innovations that Made the Modern World is exactly the sort of macro-focused science idea book that I love.  Johnson looks at world history not from the human perspective but from the innovation perspective and how innovation and technology have propelled the world forward through history.  He focuses on six big ideas:  cold, sound, light, time, glass, and clean.

I loved everything about this book, from the history lessons we learn about things like shipping ice halfway across the world to the lovely anecdotes about brilliant (and sometimes forgotten) people who have changed our world to the unexpected impacts that innovations have had on our world today.  For example, after Gutenberg invented the printing press and books were made widely available, people realized that they were far-sighted or near-sighted and corrective lenses were born.  Another innovation in glass, the mirror, allowed people to see themselves for the first time, and so artists started painting self-portraits (the original selfie) and authors started writing fiction, often about internal struggles and journeys, as a result of so much self-examination.

My favorite of the big ideas was the one on glass, but all of them are fascinating.  Such a fun and inspiring book that makes you think much more about the world around you and the everyday marvels and miracles we experience without even thinking about them.

I really enjoyed Michio Kaku's Physics of the Impossible when I read it last year, so I was excited to get my hands on his new book, The Future of the Mind:  The Scientific Quest to Understand, Enhance, and Empower the Mind.  It seems impossible, but actually, this new book felt way more out there and abstract to me than Physics of the Impossible.  I am not sure why wormholes and invisibility suits feel more tangible to me than formless minds and specific-memory-erasing medication, but it's true!  There was a lot in this book that was way over my head, and a lot that stretched the limits of belief.  If nothing else, The Future of the Mind makes you understand and value just how complex and amazing the brain is, and just how much is subconscious and therefore very difficult to program into a computer.  It's absolutely fascinating.

This book also tackles many more of the ethical dilemmas and minefields that are inherent to mind manipulation.  For example, if you could erase a painful memory to decrease your pain, would you?  Many people say no, but no one considers it unethical to give a person morphine against physical pain.  We treat physical and mental pain differently, and perhaps that is unfair to people who suffer greatly from painful memories.  Similar ethical issues arise as robot technology becomes more complex.  Should robots have feelings?  Should they be able to feel pain?  At what point does the line between human and robot begin to blur?

For lack of a better word, this book is just really COOL.  There are so many scenarios and hypotheses raised here that have never even occurred to me.  For example, what if space travel were possible not with our bodies but only with our minds?  What if humans and robots merged into one type of being at some point in the future?  What if we find ways to combat and then eradicate brain disease?  Or to pump up the features of the brain to become super-humans?  Are these things even possible?  And if so, what is the time line for them?  So much to think about!  Even though some of the information presented was difficult for me to follow (especially in audiobook), I found this book to be so inspiring.  So much work is being done to understand how our minds work, and we will know so much more over the next several years and decades.

It's the end of the world as we know it. And I feel fine.

Station Eleven, by Emily St. John Mandel, made so many Top Books of 2014 lists that I knew I had to read it.  Much like my trepidation around The Martian, I was mostly nervous because I didn't want to read a really depressing book.  And the premise of Station Eleven is that over 99% of the world's population is wiped out, seemingly within weeks, by a horrible strain of the flu.  20 years later, a small traveling symphony makes its way around the Great Lakes region, performing musical revues and Shakespeare plays.

So, obviously there is a lot that is depressing about this book.  Certainly for anyone (as all readers are) that remembers the world prior to the pandemic and can compare that life to what remains now.  But humankind marches on despite major setbacks, and there is something immensely comforting in the thought that people might still perform Shakespeare and classical music even when less than 1,000,000 people live on the entire planet.  There's a truism here about how you can kill people, but you can't kill art.

But obviously, when an entire global society breaks down so completely, so quickly, there are quite a few negative effects.  One of those is the rise of cults and religious zealots.  Another is the horrible loss of knowledge.  Perhaps the two are related.  It is so sad to think that everything we know, everything we've learned over thousands of years, could just be lost because no one remembers and there is no infrastructure to keep the books or photos or memory alive any more.

I actually wanted this book to be much longer than it was.  I feel like there was so much Mandel could have explored but chose not to.  I understand her decision; she wanted to make this a story about people, not about how to rebuild a society.  But gosh, I was truly thirsting for more of everything.  More on the disease.  More on its spread.  More on how people lived those first few years, completely shattered.  More about every single character.

That's the trouble with life, though, as Mandel makes clear.  You make grand plans as though your life will come to an end at the exact right moment when you have finished everything and have no regrets.  But instead, something happens and all you have are frayed edges, empty promises, and thoughts on what might have been.  And you make a life for yourself from all those mismatched pieces.

I enjoyed this book a lot, but I enjoyed it in a completely different way than I expected to, if that makes any sense.  I was expecting dramatic scenes and stand-offs and science and symbols of lost civilization.  Instead, I got deep personal introspection and vignettes of lives ended too soon.  It was a wonderful story all the same, populated by characters that I wish I could know better and spend more time with.

Review-itas: Books for which I'm late to the party

Based on everyone 2014 Best Of lists, I am on the second half of the bell curve on reading these books.  Therefore, I'll just give you a quick recap of my thoughts, and maybe these will serve as reminder to you about them, in case you were thinking of checking one or the other or both of them out!

The Martian, by Andy Weir.  Thanks so much to Trisha at eclectic/eccentric for lending me her copy of this audiobook!  As she promised, the audiobook is really good!

The book is about Mark, an astronaut who accidentally gets left behind on Mars after a wind storm (Home Alone x bazillion, right?).  He is really quite upbeat about the whole situation, and when NASA understands what happened, the whole world works together to try and bring Mark home.

My favorite part of this book was the gallows humor that Mark displays through its entirety.  We get to know him through his log entries, and you can just tell that he has many frustrating, painful, weeping moments, but he does not share any of that on the log.  He's upbeat and positive and really, really funny, and it's just so heart-warming to hear.  And then all the people working to save him, too - also very heart-warming.

Sometimes, I felt like the language was a little too technical for my tastes, but at the same time, I thought that the technical aspects were really fascinating.  I don't think I fully comprehended just how inhospitable a place Mars is.  Mark went around wearing his space suit pretty much everywhere.  And I can't imagine that was very comfortable.

One thing really annoyed me about this audiobook (and I admit that it annoyed me a lot).  Pretty much everyone with a non-Anglo name got a foreign accent.  There was one German astronaut, so I understood giving him a German accent.  But there was a main character who was ethnically Indian and a side character who was ethnically Asian, and both of them had very stereotypical accents.  Even though there was nothing in the story that implied that they hadn't been born in America.  And, in fact, their phrasing and language made it pretty clear (to me, at least) that they were American and therefore would have had American accents.

To be fair, there were also stereotypical Texan accents for people from Houston.  But that's just as annoying!  Just because someone lives in Texas now doesn't mean they have a Texas accent!  And the Indian guy lives in Houston, too - why didn't he have a Texan accent?

So, yes, that frustrated me.  But truly, the narrator did a great job of capturing Mark's voice.  And the story is really fun and enjoyable to read.  So don't let that turn you off!

Bad Feminist, by Roxane Gay.  This collection of essays was very entertaining to read via audiobook.  My only problem with books like this one, in which strong feminist women speak their mind about the world-at-large and women's rights specifically is that I often think they are preaching to the choir.  Actually, calling that a problem with the books is wrong.  There's nothing wrong with the books.  It's more that I get so riled up and very, "Amen, sistah!"

But then I realize that probably the people whose minds I want to change and whose minds the author wants to change are not reading this book, and I feel quite sad.

Maybe I'm wrong, though!  In which case, I think Gay's collection is a good addition to any bookshelf.  I liked some essays more than others, which is only to be expected.  My favorite was about how people today expect to find characters in the books they read "likable," especially female characters, and how flawed that approach to reading is.  I took this essay to heart because I'll often finish a book and think - great writing, but GOSH, those characters were horrible!  And my enjoyment will be less than if I liked the characters.  But as Gay points out, the point of a story isn't only to write about you and your friends, it's to take you outside of your realm of experience.  And so we should not look only for likable characters, we should look for great characters and stories that move us.  I really took this advice to heart, and I plan to be much more aware of my reaction to stories and characters in future.

There were many other wonderful essays in this collection, and I'm sure if you read it, you might go home with very different takeaways than me.  But that's much more a positive than a negative!  If you've read this collection, what do you remember most vividly about it?