Radioactive: Marie & Pierre Curie - A Tale of Love and Fallout

Lauren Redniss' Radioactive:  Marie & Pierre Curie - A Tale of Love and Fallout is a beautiful book.  It is beautiful because of the amazingly subtle artwork that implies more than it compels, because of the process used to create that artwork, because of the typeface the author created herself based on manuscripts she saw at the New York Public Library, because of the archives and research Redniss delved into and included in the book to make it both very informative and intensely personal.

Redniss' book is different than many other graphic novels.  It's not structured in panels, but in full page illustrations, sometimes accompanied by dense, descriptive text.  It includes many types of artwork, from cyanotype printing (used to achieve a look similar to a radioactive glow), photos, grave rubbings, sketches, and more.  There is a Chernobyl Situational Map and photos of mutant flowers.  It's absolutely stunning.

Radioactive is described as the story of Marie & Pierre Curie, but that's more of a starting point than the arc of the whole story.  Pierre & Marie Curie's partnership was hugely productive, but Marie lived a full life after her husband's untimely death (including earning herself a second Nobel Prize).  She raised seriously amazing scientist children and inspired other scientists and changed the world.

She slept with a bottle of lightly glowing radium next to her bed.  Her clothes and skin glowed.  She had an affair with her husband's former student.  She won two Nobel Prizes.  During World War I, she made France mobile X-labs.  She died a slow, painful death due to radiation exposure, working to the last as she described her "crisis and pus."

Redniss used Marie Curie's life as the centerpoint of her web, but she goes well beyond the lives of the Curies to describe just how much her work has inspired and influenced other people and how much it has impacted the world.  Her work helped develop chemotherapy, treatment still used by cancer treatments today.  Conversely, it led to significant work on the development of the atomic bomb.  Many people in the world became ill or died due to their work with radium; others were inspired by it to study science.

I admit that sometimes this book could be hard for me to follow, and sometimes I had difficulty finding the thread between the Curie storyline and others.  But I really, really enjoyed this book.  The artwork is stunning, almost hypnotic.  Curie's life is fascinating, her work ground-breaking.  And it was so inspiring to read about all these truly amazing women.

Rolling Blackouts, by Sarah Glidden

I heard about Sarah Glidden's Rolling Blackouts:  Displatches from Turkey, Syria, and Iraq on NPR's Book Concierge.  Glidden traveled to the Middle East with some friends who work as independent journalists.  They spent several weeks talking to displaced Iraqis and other individuals and trying to think of ways to pitch stories to news organizations back home.  They work on two main stories - one about Dan, an Iraqi veteran who is returning to the region for the first time and wants to talk to Iraqis who lived through the war, and one about Sam, an Iraqi refugee who found his way to Seattle with his family, somehow ended up in the 9/11 Commission report, and was deported back to Iraq.

Much of Glidden's story, though, focuses on her journalist friends, and the work they do.  It's no secret that news organizations have significantly reduced their foreign staff, and that reporting has suffered as a result.  There are very few reporters abroad with long-term contacts, and so they cannot report on longer-term, slower burn stories.  We understand the world less because of it.  Governments are more corrupt because of it.  Reporters are less safe because of it.  We are all less accountable to each other, from individuals to governments to multi-national corporations, because of it.

Glidden's book highlights some of this loss to us.  She shows us an Iraq that suffered through war but still has culture, friendship, delicious food, and beauty.  Some Iraqis are happy that Americans came, mostly because they suffered deeply under Saddam Hussein.  Others hate Americans for ruining their way of life.  I really enjoyed the way Glidden's friends shared stories of Iraqis in multiple countries to provide a broader perspective.  I also liked the way Glidden used light, bright colors in her art to humanize the experience of so many people whose lives have been upended so completely.  Not only the Iraqi refugees themselves, but the lives of the Turks and Syrians as well.

It was particularly chilling to read the Syrian section of this book, as I was reading it while the US bombed Syria after Assad used chemical weapons on his own people.  The book is set some years ago, I think before the full horrors of the Syrian war.  Now I realize just how much the world missed by not having reporters in Syria to cover Assad, so that it felt as though the whole war came out of nowhere.  (At least, it felt that way to me.  No doubt others were better informed.)

I was less enamored with the story around Dan, the Iraqi war veteran.  I feel like his return to Iraq and his opacity in sharing his feelings and whether his feelings about the war and his participation in it took up an outsize amount of the story.  In a way, it felt very "Yes, of course, focus on the white guy's story because that would be the most compelling to everyone."  I don't think that is fair to Glidden's reporter friends, but it seemed like Glidden wanted to focus the most on that story.  She even ends that story arc quite dramatically, with something like, "Sarah never interviewed Dan again" as the only words on a whole page.  Which makes it sound like either Sarah or Dan died, but neither of them did, and they continued to stay friends and talk to each other, she just didn't interview him again about the war.

That aside, though, I really appreciated Glidden's book and her focus on how journalists make decisions on stories, angles, ethics, and so many other things.  It was very illuminating, and I highly recommend seeking it out if you enjoy Joe Sacco's work or Brooke Gladstone's The Influencing Machine.  (Teresa, I'm looking at you!)

The One Hundred Nights of Hero, by Isabel Greenberg

I adored Isabel Greenberg's The Encyclopedia of Early Earth, so as soon as I heard about her new book The One Hundred Nights of Hero, I put it on hold at the library.  And this book was just what I needed.  It's all about women being amazing, about the power of stories, about the importance of resisting, even in the face of inevitable failure, and so much more.

 I debated whether I should review this book or not because it's one of those books that I just really loved because it was kind and beautiful.  However, The One Hundred Nights of Hero tackles some really big topics in a gloriously feminist way.  While The Encyclopedia of Early Earth was complex in its layering of stories within stories, the stories themselves were not super complicated (that I remember) and the story was centered on a man seeking love.  The One Hundred Nights of Hero is centered on two women in love.  Cherry is married to an imbecile who challenges his friend to seduce her in 100 nights.  His friend agrees, and is pretty clear that if seduction doesn't work, force will.  Cherry and her love, Hero, come up with a plan to distract the nefarious villain with stories each night.  But not just any stories, stories about women and the power of knowledge and the importance of choice. 

In none of these stories is there a happy ending of "Girl meets boy, girl marries boy, they live happily ever after."  There are stories of love and how beautiful a thing it can be, but Greenberg always stresses that the ability of a woman to choose her fate is equally, if not more, important.  Some of the stories end happily because women find ways to live independently.  Many of them end sadly because the women featured in them do not fit neatly into the strict definitions that patriarchal societies have set for them.

That makes it sound as though this is a melancholy and depressing book, but it is not that at all.  It's absolutely amazing.  There is so much humor, so much kindness and friendship and loyalty, and glorious sisterhood.  Also, the illustrations are beautiful.  And then, of course, there are the stories.

It's an excellent, gorgeous book, and I intend to splurge and buy some Isabel Greenberg for myself for my birthday this year - she's absolutely worth having on your keeper shelf.

"There's more hunger in the world than love." - Monstress, Volume 1

In case you thought I only reviewed books about gloom and doom in America, DON'T WORRY.  I also review books about gloom and doom in fantasy worlds!  And Monstress, by Marjorie Liu and Sana Takeda, is a SUUUUUUUUPER good fantasy comic about gloom and doom.

I had never heard of Monstress before.  I went to an indie bookstore for Small Business Saturday, and after we finished at the bookstore, my brother-in-law asked if we could go to a local comic bookstore, too.  I said yes.  I admit that I usually find comic bookstores quite intimidating, but the people at the one I went to were so nice!  And they had this wall of best-selling comics, and it thrilled me to see how many of those best-sellers were ones that featured women.  So of course, I felt the need to support both the indie store and female empowerment, and I purchased this book.

I don't know if I would have picked up Monstress if I had known how violent it is.  Or how many dark subjects it tackles.  But I'm so glad I didn't know those things and picked it up because it was SO GOOD!

(I hope that you are not the same as I am and that knowing the book is violent and dark will not drive you away from it, because that would be a mistake.)

Monstress is about many things, and I admit that I am vague on a lot of the details because it was also a bit confusing.  But it doesn't really matter because it is amazing.  The artwork is absolutely stunning, and brings to life a world that is complicated and can be difficult to grasp.  Takeda puts a huge amount of detail into each panel.  The dark color scheme she uses perfectly captures a world in the midst of an endless war.  The rich detail in the panels shows the level of sophistication that the civilizations have reached, and the trade-offs between culture and war (and how one can often drive the other).  The characters are all beautifully drawn, including a SERIOUSLY ADORABLE little fox named Kippa.  Honestly, I feel like a lot of people will judge me for this, but I generally don't find animals that fascinating.  Like, I know that puppies and kittens are sweet and cute, and I like looking at them sometimes, too, but I don't get squealy and excited or feel the need to pet them.  But Kippa just stole my heart, mostly because of how vulnerable and sweet she was, and how she would hold her tail for security like a blanket.  It's a little strange at first to see these doll-like faces (Kippa is not the only one with the perfect, adorable face) on such fierce characters, but hey, heroines come in all forms.

The artwork is great, but when you combine it with the story and the characters, the whole effect is quite pleasing.

I cannot believe I have gotten this far in my review without mentioning that this comic series is all about women.  There was probably one main male character in this story (and possibly a male cat, but I'm not sure of the cat's gender).  All the "good guys," all the "bad guys" - none of them are guys at all!  And it's not a story that's obviously about women the way Lumberjanes is.  (Though being obviously about women is totally fine, too!  I was just making a comparison in that Lumberjanes is more vocally about women and the role of women vs Monstress is about the story and features women and the fact that it features women is the statement.)

I used to read a lot of epic fantasy, the multi-volume, 500+-page per volume variety that focused a lot on building a world and a lot on sharing that world's history and a lot on character development.  I would say that Liu is a pretty amazing epic fantasy storyteller.  She populates her world with a complex group of characters, none of whom have clear motivations or loyalties or goals (except the adorable Kippa!  She's perfect in every way!).  The main character is Maika, who is clearly very, very powerful but who also has a monster living inside her.  Maika is trying to learn more about her past and who she is, but she has blackout moments when she must feed this monster inside of her.  (With, er, people.)  She tries to fight it, but, well, it's a monster (artistically rendered as a lot of tentacles and eyes), and that's hard work.

The monster at first seems like a straightforward villain, but as you get deeper into the story, you realize the monster also is confused and unsure of what to do.  Maika works hard to make the right decisions for herself, and the monster works hard to make the right decisions for itself, but the two have to work together to do what is best for both of them.  Hopefully, anyway, as no one really knows what is the best course of action.  Even at the end of this book, it's unclear whether Maika is being hunted so that people can harness her power or so that she can be killed.

I mentioned a long, on-going war.  There is one, and it's about one race exploiting another race for power.  This seems pretty standard for a lot of fantasy and science fiction novels, but it's still a very important storyline to drill into people's heads, and I liked Liu's take on it.  She has a lot here to develop and nurture over the course of the next several volumes, and I can see this becoming a very rich and rewarding series.

How to follow your dreams and disappoint your parents

I am not sure why comics are such great vehicles for memoirs, particularly memoirs of growing up and coming of age.  Whatever it is, I definitely have a weakness for memoirs in comic book form (whereas I hardly ever read memoirs in prose).  So when I heard about Ozge Samanci's Dare to Disappoint, her memoir of growing up in Turkey in the 1980s and 1990s, I put it straight on my library wish list.

As usual, I have no idea where I first heard about this book.  I think possibly on some comic book round-up from the end of 2015.  While the story itself is nothing earth-shattering or ground-breaking, it's related in a very endearing and visually appealing way, and I really enjoyed it.

Ozge grew up in a pretty tense environment.  Turkey was in a period of high militarization, religious fervor and conflict, and an opening of the economy and culture to outside influences.  In the midst of all that, Ozge's parents worked very hard at low-paying jobs; they were insistent that Ozge and her older sister would do better for themselves.  Only study engineering at the very top school!  Otherwise, they'd be failures.

As someone who grew up in an Indian household, I completely understood the pressure Ozge felt to do well in subjects that were not nearly as interesting to her as others were (though, to be fair, Indian parents require their kids to be good in all subjects, not just math and science).  Similarly, I can understand parents' deep desire to ensure that their children's lives are easier and more comfortable than their own.

As this is a pretty universal conflict, it's not really Ozge's struggles that draw you into the story, though they are shared in a humorous and entertaining manner.  Instead, it's the juxtaposition of her coming-of-age against Turkey's growing pains.  She learns about herself, understands her environment better, and navigates a complicated system.  All with the help of fun, colorful illustrations and collages.

I really enjoyed learning more about Turkey in the 1980s and 1990s, at the end of the Cold War.  It's always fun to learn about everyday life in a different place, particularly when systems are set up so differently from what you are used to.  For example, Turkey's school system was set up (maybe still is?) in such a way that you had to do really well on tests to advance to the good schools and the well-paying jobs.  Students practiced military drills at school.  Ozge encounters devout Muslims (she is not one herself), studies and works herself to exhaustion, discovers boys, chats with Jacques Cousteau, and tries to figure out what she wants to do with her life.

Dare to Disappoint is not likely to change your world or blow your bind, but it's funny, bright, and thoughtful.  If you're a fan of comics or of coming-of-age stories or memoirs (that's a pretty wide range), then I'd recommend checking it out.

The brutality of Hurricane Katrina

I took note of Drowned City on one of those "Best Books" wrap-up posts in December.  The list I read featured comics.  I was immediately drawn to this book because it's a journalistic account of what happened in New Orleans just before and following the disaster that was Hurricane Katrina.

I enjoyed Joe Sacco's journalistic comic, Palestine, though I had never read anything by Don Brown.  Hurricane Katrina is so vivid in my memory, though it happened over ten years (TEN YEARS!) ago.  I remember the photos and the videos and the outcry over the lack of response from the federal government.  I remember the horror so many of us felt when we realized that America could so quickly and easily resemble a third-world, war-torn country, with refugees, insufficient resources, looting, and violence.  It's a fast descent into desperation.

Brown's book pretty clearly marks out the mismanagement and almost willful blindness of government authorities to deal with the horrible situation that arose after Hurricane Katrina.  Communication was difficult, there was hardly any power, it was nearly impossible to get around, and it was obviously a very dangerous place to be.

But he also shows that there were pockets of courage and kindness, people going out of their way to help friends, neighbors, strangers.  Even though the government couldn't get its act together, individual acts of kindness made a huge difference.

The illustrations in this book are excellent.  They make great use of color, covering vibrant, bright New Orleans in a grey-green gloom of never-ending rain and wind and water.  When a bright spot of red comes across your vision in a frame, it really jolts you in surprise, much like seeing a rescuer after a week of waiting must have jolted some of Katrina's survivors.

This is not a book with a story, per se.  It's very much a factual account of what happened, what went wrong, what went right.  There isn't flowery prose, there's very little dialogue, and there's no main character.  It's more like a documentary.  I found it very compelling reading, nevertheless.  I just want to make sure you have the right expectations going in.

I also hope that Jenny reads this book because I think I read it at a very opportune time, just after our discussion on New Orleans, Beyonce, cultural appropriation, and the like :-)

Even witches go through an awkward stage

Jillian Tamaki is an author whose work I really enjoy, and her newest book, SuperMutant Magic Academy, is no exception.

I didn't know a lot about this book heading into it except that it was about mutant humans going through high school.  I was under the impression it would be one story with many characters involved in a big plot.  That's not at all how the book is set up, though.  SuperMutant Magic Academy started as a web comic, so it's written in vignettes that are usually only one page long, much like a comic strip.  Through these, Tamaki provides funny, sweet, and realistic snapshots of high school life.  The characters interact with each other in the classroom, at lunch, in their dorms, and elsewhere.  So many lovely moments in so little space.

What is great about this book is that you can enjoy it just as much by reading one or two pages at a time or by reading it in much bigger chunks.  I would love a copy for my bookshelf; I imagine myself strolling over, picking the book up, choosing a page at random, and then smiling at the humor, poignancy and all-around wonderfulness that comes through on that page.  And then I'd probably read the next page, and then the next, and continue standing there, smiling, until my legs began to complain.

This book is nothing like other fantasy books set in boarding schools.  In fact, it's nothing like fantasy books.  It's more like Calvin & Hobbes.  The characters happen to be magical, but the magic is in zero ways important to the stories that are told (except sometimes to add a dose of situational humor).  Instead, what's important is a group of teenagers nearing the end of their time at high school, making and keeping friendships, understanding truths about themselves and others, learning about what is important to them, and dealing with the normal trials and tribulations of being a high schooler.  The characters are usually very fun and kind to each other; I especially liked how very popular, beautiful, and good-at-everything Wendy always chastised her friends for being unkind to anyone else.  She is the sort of person we all want to be friends with.  And the casual acceptance the characters have for their gay classmates is quite heartening as well.  It's not a big deal.  It doesn't define them.

But even kind people make mistakes sometimes or can be cruel without meaning to, especially at an age when we are all so insecure and worried about our looks and what other people think of us.  That comes through a lot, too, particularly with the character of Frances, the artsy girl that no one quite "gets" (even though she is dating the biggest jock at school).

It's just a really lovely book.  I highly recommend it!

Who cares if you don't understand the story when the words are pretty?

I feel like all my reviews of Patricia McKillip books are basically the same.  "Wow, what beautiful, evocative language!  But... not sure I fully grasped what happened here."

Alas, the same can be said of my experience with The Bards of Bone Plain.  I feel like I was totally jiving with this story until close to the very end, and then I was not at all sure that I knew what happened.  Did I over-simplify it?  Over-complicate it?  Totally misunderstand the symbolism?  What happened to the cauldron and the other thing, why was there so much focus just on the tower?  And how did the physics of things work?  Where was the logic, or was it all just kind of atmospheric?  Agh, so confused!

Honestly, sometimes the way McKillip goes really deep into the intangibles can be very difficult for me to follow.  But there's usually enough of the rest of the story for me to enjoy everything.  Here, there's a light steampunk aspect to the novel (very light) and a wonderfully refreshing approach to the way women go about their business and live their lives.

And seriously, McKillip can write.  Especially her descriptions of music.

Then he heard Jonah's music melding with Zoe's like silver braided with gold, like sunlight with sky, small birds flying out of his harp, and butterflies out of hers, their voices winding together, sweet, sinewy, strong as bone and old as stone.  Together, they transfixed him, spellbound in their spell, his mouth still hanging open, and all the unplayed music in him easing out of his heart with every breath.

So yes.  Definitely worth the read, especially if you have a deep connection with music. 

Review-itas: Comics Roundup

I have read and enjoyed several comic books over the past couple of months, but I don't have a ton to say about any of them, so I thought I'd pull them all together for a post before the end of the year.

After reading Chicken with Plums, I think I am caught up with Marjane Satrapi's work.  While I haven't enjoyed any of her other books the way I enjoyed Persepolis, I found a lot of heart in Chicken with Plums.  The book is about Satrapi's uncle, a musician who died before she was born.  She shares his story through flashbacks as he lies dying.  The book showcases some of Satrapi's great talents - her ability to create empathy for characters that are not very likable, her skill in bringing mid-to-late 20th century Iran to life, and the way she can draw a panel that vividly comes to life.  It's very possible that I liked this story mostly for one unforgettable panel of the main character's son praying fervently in the night for his father's life, even though his father continuously berates him.

Noelle Stevenson's Lumberjanes is completely different in scope and feel.  It focuses on a group of camp girls who strive to be amazingly self-sufficient.  It's a really fun and a great way to showcase women as strong and witty and awesome.  None of the girls feels jealous of any of the others.  There is no drama.  There is just friendship and fighting and hilarity.  It's hard not to enjoy the adventures, even though now that it's been a little while since I've read the book, I remember very little about it, plot-wise.  But still!  Fun counts for a lot, and I will definitely continue with the series.

Volume 3 of the Ms Marvel series was not quite as enjoyable to me as the first two.  Most of my complaints around G. Willow Wilson's writing (in both comics and novels) center on her heavy-handedness in talking about religion and immigrant life in her books.  The racism and religion thing becomes even more prominent in this issue, and while I truly appreciate her effort to teach people about other cultures and to diversify the Marvel universe, it can get a bit trying after a while.  Lumberjanes is clearly a feminist work even though there is no overt, hit-you-over-the-head feminism in its pages.  I just wish that Wilson would employ a more subtle technique once in a while, too.

And then I FINALLY read one of the most famous graphic novels of all, Art Spiegelman's Maus.  Maus alternates between New York in the 1990s and eastern Europe during WWII.  Spiegelman's father is the star, in all his ornery, complicated glory, as a man who survives war and concentration camps through ingenuity and frugality, but whose experience ultimately makes it very difficult for him to live a normal life anywhere, even decades later.

I don't really enjoy fiction set during WWII, and I have a conflicting set of feelings in which I don't think we should ever forget what happened, but at the same time don't want us to keep memorializing the past while we blatantly ignore the human rights issues happening right now.  That's part of the reason it took me so long to read Maus.  But I think this collection is about so much more than the Holocaust (though, obviously, that is a huge topic to tackle).  It's more about how experiences can shape us and reverberate through our lives, and our children's lives, and so much else.  So much of Spiegelman's life was shaped by events that he didn't really know, by people he never met.  And I loved the respect he gave to those events and people, and the way he highlighted the way those events impacted his own relationship with his father.  It was so well done.

Stories within stories within stories

I first heard about The Encyclopedia of Early Earth from Ana.  It grabbed my attention because it's one of those layered stories, in which people tell each other stories upon stories, and they all eventually ladder back up to the main one in a gloriously onion-like manner.  (Or rose-like manner, depending on your choice of simile.)  It focuses on a boy from the far north who leaves his home in search of himself and comes across many different people.  There are gods and queens and warriors and dogs, and several wonderful stories.

The Encyclopedia of Early Earth is one of those books that truly showcases the power of story-telling.  It uses deceptively simple words to convey beauty and love and heartache.

Also, it's a comic book!  With beautiful illustrations.

I sometimes complain about books I read that just seem to tell the same story that has been told over and over again.  I particularly tire of this in the fantasy genre (seriously, how many prophecies about a Chosen One can there be?), though it's true across all genres.  But a couple of recent reads have made me realize that, actually, I have nothing against authors telling the same stories over and over again, if they tell them well.  Isabel Greenberg tells her story so well that I'm pretty convinced she could tell me her coffee was cold and I'd be utterly enthralled by the second word.

Possibly I'm still raw from reading The Shepherd's Crown and reflecting on all the horrible things that have happened in the world this year, but one of my favorite things about this book was that it was ultimately about using stories to connect, to understand that we all have much in common.  Greenberg does this with such a light touch of humor and such evocative illustrations.  I cannot recommend this book highly enough to anyone who needs a bit of comfort when life is rough.

Steampunk computer scientists!

Pretty much as soon as I heard about Sydney Padua's graphic novel The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage, I wanted to read it.  A graphic novel set in some sort of alternate universe in which Ada Lovelace grows old and uses computers to solve crimes with her genius-but-awkward partner, Charles Babbage?  Yes, please!

I was a little overwhelmed by this book at the beginning.  There are a LOT of footnotes, basically at the rate of one per sentence.  Most of them are related to mathematical theories, historical writing, obscure (to me) Victorians, etc.  I admit I didn't read all of the footnotes (mostly because, in addition to footnotes, there are also extensive endnotes), so it's possible I missed some key action points in the book.

But honestly, I didn't really care.  This book was fun, regardless.  I love the idea of just turning Victorian society on its head and showing us that maybe some of them had well-developed senses of humor and mischievous smiles and poorly-timed snorts of derision.  I always imagine Victorians as either completely buttoned up or letting loose in bizarre ways, and I liked how Padua made the Victorians much more vivid and real and relatable.

And at the center, of course, are Ada Lovelace and Charles Babbage.  (And, to a lesser extent, Queen Victoria.)  Partly because of the sense of motion and vigor in the artwork, partly because of Padua's great sense of fun, and partly because Ada Lovelace and Charles Babbage were just amazingly larger-than-life characters, they really made the stories come alive.

But it's not all fun and games.  Well, it is.  But it's also science and math and economics and probability and so much more.  Basically, these stories are based on the premise that Lovelace and Babbage design and refine a very complex machine (the Difference Engine) that Queen Victoria would like to use to solve ALL THE PROBLEMS.

And they make many reasonable (and unreasonable) attempts to do so, or solve more mundane matters, even including a fantastic cameo by George Eliot.  But generally, they don't really make great progress.  But again, who cares?  It's so fun.

I really enjoyed everything about this book, and I learned a lot of fun history and science along the way.  It is so entertaining and just so fun to read; I highly recommend it to anyone with even a modicum of interest in Ada Lovelace, computers, technology, Victorian England, pocket universes, or anything else.

Review-itas: Playing Catch-Up

I'm back from vacation and back to blogging!  I honestly didn't read a ton while I was away, but I am excited to share my thoughts on some books with you!  In an effort to get back into reviewing, but not spend a ton of time reviewing books I read months ago or about which I don't have much to say, here are some Twitter-inspired reviews (in that, Twitter inspired me to be succinct, but it's very difficult to work in 140 characters, people):

Third in a Ghanaian mystery series featuring Inspector Darko Dawson (I enjoyed the first but have not read the second, since I thought this was it), Murder at Cape Three Points tackles the environmental and economic impact of foreign oil interests on Ghana.  I appreciated learning more about this precarious balance (though maybe it's not really in balance), especially as I didn't really know there was oil drilling in Ghana.  Quartey shows the positives (big new resorts giving an economic boost to the region!) and negative (some serious conflicts of interest).  But Inspector Dawson is still hard to know, and his family is once again mostly in the background.  I would prefer more development on that front as the mystery series continues; why create so many great characters and then not give them any air time?  If Dawson's fantastic wife Christine doesn't get some spotlight in the next book, I won't be continuing on with this series.

Moving from Ghana to Zimbabwe, NoViolet Bulawayo's We Need New Names had been on my library "For Later" shelf for quite a while before the cover and the story finally captured my attention enough to get it on audiobook.  I was completely engaged at the beginning; I loved Darling's voice and the way Bulawayo shared so much about Zimbabwe by using a child narrator.  She packed a lot of information and emotion into the story; for a first novel, this is really impressive.

In the second half, Darling moves to the US.  Again, I think the author did amazing work bringing everything to life:  the difficulty of being an immigrant, the expectations of your family back home vs reality, the things that set you apart and help you fit in.  It all rang very true.

That said, I've read a lot of immigration stories in my life, and the structure of this one was pretty much the same as all the rest of them.  The writing is beautiful and evocative, but I don't think Bulawayo did much to break down any tropes.  That said, I am pretty excited about whatever she writes next.

I've been eagerly anticipating the second book in the Ms. Marvel comic series.  Generation Why doesn't disappoint.  We see Kamala further develop and understand her superpowers, and she gets more involved in the overall Marvel universe of characters by finding a pretty awesome mentor.  Savvy move by Marvel because now I feel like I should go and read more of the comics in the Marvel universe so I understand all these connections and backstories.  BUT WHERE TO START?!

I thought this book got a little preachy about how awesome the Millennial/Centennial generation is (though this didn't really surprise me, as G. Willow Wilson has a tendency to be preachy in her other books, too), but I could see that really appealing to teens, and hey, I believe in empowerment.  Such a fun series, populated with great characters I can't wait to get to know better.

I was pretty pumped to hear that Thomas King had a new book out, and snatched it up from the library as soon as I could.  The Truth About Stories is an essay collection about story-telling and how the stories we choose to tell and believe can shape our lives and perceptions.  There are many, many stories written about Native Americans.  Native Americans, for the most part, are only now starting to add their voices so that their stories can be heard, too.

I really enjoyed these essays.  King talks about oral storytelling vs written storytelling.  A lot of American cultures thrived on oral storytelling so that they could control the story.  But European culture focuses on written storytelling, and now they've come to dominate so many narratives that they don't really have a right to.  He talks about how most Native American and First Nation authors refuse to write history; they write contemporary literature.  This is something I've definitely noticed myself, and I was interested in his explanation - basically, that they don't want to touch the stereotype that exists in people's minds about Native Americans from long ago.  They want to assert their right to the present, and show that they have a place now.

A very thought-provoking and well-written read.  Also very short and full of reading suggestions, if you want them!

Review-itas: People coming together in difficult times

Zeina Abirached's graphic novel A Game for Swallows:  To Die, to Leave, to Return is one of the most beautifully illustrated books I've seen.  The drawings are in black and white, but the style and personality that come through is so strong and evocative.  You can tell on the cover itself - the hairstyles, the faces, all of the characters are so distinct.

The book takes place one evening in Beirut.  Zeina's parents went to visit her grandmother and telephoned to say that they are on their way home, but it's been hours and they have not yet returned.  So all of the other residents of the apartment block come to spend time with Zeina and her brother.  Zeina tells their stories in asides and flashbacks.  By the end, readers have seen several personal stories about life in Lebanon during the civil war.

I enjoyed this book, but I found it a little difficult to follow the story line.  I was often confused by whether we were in a flashback or the present day, and I didn't always know who the narrator was, since different characters would tell either their stories or other people's stories.  And I didn't fully understand all of the context.  For example, Abirached describes how her family went from using the entirety of their apartment to slowly using only one room, but I didn't quite know why their lives had become so constricted.  And I didn't understand why snipers would be on every street trying to shoot all these civilians instead of fighting other soldiers.  I have been lucky in never living in a war zone, so I didn't always understand the whys or hows behind what Abirached was saying.

But the main takeaway, that war made everything difficult and changed people's lives so completely, was easy to understand.

The first two volumes of March, by John Lewis, Andrew Aydin and Nate Powell, relate John Lewis' childhood and college years working for the civil rights movement.  John Lewis is one of the "Big Six" civil rights leaders in American history; he spoke in Washington with Martin Luther King, Jr. and is now a US senator.

It is timely that these graphic novels about the struggle to end Jim Crow and obtain equal rights and voting privileges for African-Americans came out recently, as it becomes more and more clear that Blacks are still fighting for so many rights.

I really enjoy this series and hope that it continues.  I liked the second volume more than the first one, but I think that's because it focused a lot on the freedom riders and the lunch counter protests vs the first volume, which had more to do with setting up John Lewis as a character.

Hopefully, by writing his memoirs in a graphic novel format, John Lewis will reach a new set of American readers who don't always read memoirs or history books.  I'm of the opinion that, for important topics such as this one, it's vital to tell the history in as many ways as possible, to reach as many people as possible.  I've read a bit about the civil rights movement in recent years, but I really appreciate getting multiple perspectives and visions to bring the period to life for me.  These books show just how terrifying it was to be a civil rights leader - they must all have lived in near-constant fear for their lives, and still they went out every day to make a better world.

For some reason, a memoir written in graphic novel format feels so much more personal and intimate to me than one written in only prose.  I'm not sure why, but I feel like I know John Lewis much better now for having seen his actions brought to life in vivid artwork.

Highly recommend this read to anyone who wants to better understand the American civil rights movement.

Review-itas: Characters in places they do not belong

It's hard to talk about Karen Joy Fowler's We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves without giving away a major plot twist, though I would say that the plot twist is given away in many reviews, so maybe it is not really a twist.

I hadn't really heard anything about this book until it showed up on so many people's Best of 2014 lists.  It's narrated by Rosemary, a hilarious and likable woman looking back on her childhood and her college years.  Rosemary had an unusual upbringing; her father was a psychologist and her mother a scientist, and there were many experiments performed on Rosemary and her siblings, Fern and Lowell, throughout their childhood.  But one day, Fern disappears, and then Lowell leaves, too, and Rosemary spends the rest of her life trying to put her family back together again.

I did the audiobook for Fowler's novel and loved the narrator.  She really captured the dry sense of humor that pervades the whole book.  While I don't think this book will end up on my best of 2015 list, I really enjoyed its quirky sense of humor and the way Fowler makes clear that our actions have consequences that can echo down for years and years.

This book did remind me a bit of Ruth Ozeki's My Year of Meats in that there are portions of it that are tough to swallow.  If you are an animal rights activist, be warned.  That said, if you are an animal rights activist, I think you would really get a lot from this book.

I picked up Nick Bertozzi's Shackleton:  Antarctic Odyssey on a whim at the library and read it that night as I needed a break from A Brief History of Seven Killings (more on that book when I finish it).  I find the whole era of Arctic and Antarctic exploration completely fascinating, and was excited to read about Shackleton's ill-fated trip to the South Pole in graphic novel format.

But a lot of things happened to Shackleton over a very long period of time, and I don't think a slim graphic novel is the best way to share the story.  This felt quite choppy and there wasn't much narrative flow.  There also wasn't a lot of explanation of what certain terms meant or why some decisions were made, which was disappointing.  I understand that one must condense, but here, it made me feel like a lot was missing.  Particularly at the beginning, where years and years passed by in just a couple of pages and I was scrambling to figure out who the characters were.

That said, Shackleton's story is pretty amazing, and it was fun to read about some of the things his crew did to keep themselves entertained through long, dark, and cold Antarctic winters.  They played soccer, drank a lot of rum, held dogsled races, and joked around with each other.  It was fun to read about these things but frustrating, too.  I can't imagine the psychological toll that being stuck in Antarctica for a year would take on people, and the way Bertozzi describes it, almost everyone was perfectly content and happy the whole way through.  I wanted way more depth.

Review-itas: The last reads of 2014

Wife of the Gods introduces us to Inspector Darko Dawson of the Central Investigation Department in Accra, Ghana.  Dawson is a devoted husband and father, though he also displays a rebellious and angry streak when he feels provoked.  Dawson grew up in rural Ghana and has been haunted for years by his mother's disappearance seemingly into thin air one day after visiting her sister.  Now, Dawson is sent back to that same area to investigate the murder of a promising medical student.

What follows is a mystery that takes many twists and turns before arriving at the conclusion, and a story that introduces us not only to the moody Darko Dawson but also to his extended family.  There's also a lot here about Ghanaian culture.  For example, the title Wife of the Gods refers to the practice of marrying a young girl off to a religious leader to ward off bad luck.  We also meet witch doctors, traditional healers and more modern doctors, learning how each interacts with the others.

I enjoyed this book enough to continue with the series, though as usual for me, this is more because I am intrigued by the potential for character development much more than I am the mystery itself.  I am particularly interested in seeing more of Dawson's relationship with his wife; there was one scene in the book in which his wife got very angry with him for not including her in an important decision regarding their son, and I look forward to seeing how the two of them navigate their marriage.  I also hope Dawson's older brother will have more of a role in future books.  In fact, I hope many of the secondary characters introduced here get more quality time in future books.

This One Summer is a great book to read in the depth of a cold, dark winter.  The cover itself made me feel like I was sitting outside with a book and a glass of chilled white wine, enjoying the glorious warmth of the sun.

But alas, summer has never felt further away.  And when it comes, it is always far too short.  This beautifully illustrated graphic novel by the Tamaki cousins makes clear just how fleeting summer is, and just how much people can change from one year to another, just how drastically people can be impacted by an event.

Rose and Windy are best friends who meet every year at the beach.  But it seems like this year they are kind of drifting apart.  Rose's parents are fighting a lot, and Windy doesn't understand why Rose is so obsessed with the older townie kids.

I have mixed feelings about this book.  On the one hand, I didn't like Rose very much, and I wasn't expecting so many heavy subjects to be covered here.  On the other hand, I think the Tamakis really captured the transition from childhood to adulthood perfectly, with all its false starts and skids.  Rose is just like any teenager, making snap decisions on people based on limited information, fairly self-absorbed, and almost callous in the way she treats and talks about other people.  Windy, just a year and half younger than Rose, serves as a great foil to show just how painful and wide the chasm can feel sometimes between childhood and adulthood.  A very realistic snapshot of a tough time in many people's lives, captured beautifully in lovely blue tones.

The most beautiful nightmares you've ever imagined

Quite possibly the most gorgeous book I read in all of 2014, Emily Carroll's Through the Woods is creeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeepy.  Less about things that go bump in the night and more about the terror we have of the unknown, this collection of short stories is absolutely brilliant.  I do not do well with scary stories, and these are pretty scary.  But the artwork is so amazing, I recommend all of you to get over your concerns the way I did and just go for it.

My favorite thing about this book is hard to describe via words.  But I shall try.  Here it is:  all of the stories have very different artwork.  It's amazing.  Often, you'll read a comic and say, "The art was so good!"  And it is.  But in this book, I was hit by just what an art form comics are.  The way Carroll wrote her words and incorporated them into her drawings, and the way she changed her writing and artistic style for each story both had SUCH strong impacts on the way I read and reacted to each story, and I just loved that.  I imagine it took a ton of work, too, from concept to idea to execution, and I truly appreciate all her efforts.  Here are some examples that hopefully exemplify what I mean:

See how different those all are?  It was glorious.  And as Ana says so wonderfully in her review,

Through the Woods is full of untidy endings that leave questions lingering and refuse to settle the tension her stories raise. When I went to see Sarah Waters discuss the Gothic tradition recently, she said that this lack of resolution and the way it lingers in your mind is one of the hallmarks of Gothic fiction. Through the Woods accomplishes that better than anything I’ve read in a long time.

Yes, yes, yes!  Definitely one to check out if you enjoy comics.  Or if you like creepy stories.  Or if you JUST LIKE ART.  If you qualify for any of the above, I think you will enjoy this read.

Life under the veil in Iran

I cannot believe it took me so long to read Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis.  I saw the animated film years ago, but what really pushed me to read this one was when I saw Satrapi about a month ago at the Chicago Humanities Festival.  She was just so vibrant and fun and apolitical (and said a lot of things about feminism that I pretty strongly disagree with) that it really made me want to read more of her books.

So, finally!  Persepolis.  The comic is the story of Satrapi's life in Iran, growing up with a big, liberal, loving family as the government becomes increasingly totalitarian.  Satrapi writes about the early influences in her life - her grandfather and uncle, both of whom fought for people's rights.  She moves onto her teenage years in Vienna, struggling to come of age in a country so foreign to her upbringing and so far from her family.  And then the difficulties of coming home to an Iran that was so different than what she remembered, and became increasingly difficult to deal with.

I loved this book.  The artwork and the writing are seamlessly integrated, in such a manner that I highly recommend Persepolis as a starter comic if you are concerned about reading a comic and are not sure how to deal with the words and pictures.  I am always concerned that I don't pay enough attention to the artwork in graphic novels, but in Persepolis, I had none of that concern:

I also feel like Satrapi does such a great job of showing us everyday Iranian life.  She did the same thing in Embroideries, and I can see why people say that Persepolis is so much better than Embroideries.  What I enjoyed about Embroideries was the rich, deep relationships that existed between the women in the book.  And that is true x1000 in Persepolis.  There is such a deep love between Satrapi and her parents, between Satrapi and her grandmother.  And her whole family is so supportive of her - not just when she shows her brilliance, but also when she makes mistakes.  And they never tell her to be afraid or to bow down to authority - they let her make her own decisions and live her own life and are very proud of her when she stands up for her rights.

This was truly a beautifully written, funny, and wonderful book.  I am so glad that I finally read it, and I can't wait to read Satrapi's Chicken with Plums and perhaps watch the movie that she directed this year!

Review-itas: Closing out 2014

Haruki Murakami is one of those authors that both intrigues and intimidates me.  The second book I read by him is one of his earlier collections of short stories, After the Quake, set in the months following the earthquake that shook Japan in 1995.

Murakami's stories always feel so ephemeral to me.  There is an other-worldly, dream-like quality to them that I can't quite grasp.  Only hours after finishing the book, I often can't remember what the stories were, though I remember the atmosphere of the whole collection.  I enjoyed After the Quake much more than I did The Elephant Vanishes.  Here, the characters are grappling with a huge and horrific event, so there isn't the same "meh" attitude towards life that pervaded The Elephant Vanishes.

The stories all center on characters who look back over their lives and try to understand when they were derailed, what defines them.  And often, they find that they've allowed themselves to be defined by other people or things that they don't like thinking about.  My personal favorite story was about a woman in Thailand who learns how to let go of the past so that she can move forward.  A simple lesson that shows up again and again in literature, but Murakami gives it a true touch of grace.

Cory Doctorow's In Real Life was much less successful for me.  There are a few positive points.  The main character, Anda, is a kind, shy, and slightly overweight girl who really comes into her own and gains confidence through online gaming.  And the artwork is really beautiful - Wang did a brilliant job in the way she used color.  But the premise of the story really bothered me.
There's not much I can say about this book that isn't already covered in The Book Smugglers' fantastic and thorough commentary, so I will direct you all there with this nugget to entice you to click through:

I felt utterly uncomfortable (to put it very mildly) about the depiction of the Chinese characters’ plight and the lack of viewpoint from their perspective – the stress on Anda’s feelings rather than Raymond’s about his own situation is problematic to the extreme and reeks, REEKS of white saviour complex and American superiority (cue me rolling my eyes when Anda was all horrified at the lack of proper health insurance in China when in America things are not exactly rainbows and ponies, are they.) 

 Almost immediately after finishing Lev Grossman's The Magicians, I went on to read its sequel, The Magician King.  I liked this one much more than the first book, though there was a scene towards the end that I found very disturbing.  The main character, Quentin, wasn't quite as insufferable in this book because he became aware of what a jerk he can be and seemed to take steps to remedy the situation a bit.

The Magician King maintains the humor and appreciation for the absurd that the first book featured, which I really liked.  And the audiobook narrator, Mark Bramhall, is pretty  brilliant.  I think he's a significant part of why I continue with these books.  And people tell me that the last book in the trilogy, The Magician's Land, is the best of the bunch, so I am in line to get that one on audiobook, too.  Hopefully it just continues to get better and better!

Review-itas: Life through the 20th century

Bud, Not Buddy, by Christopher Paul Curtis, is about a 10-year-old orphan boy living through the Great Depression in Michigan.  Bud's mother passed away when he was six and he never knew his father.  But in his suitcase filled with his most prized possessions, he has fliers that his mother saved over the years.  The fliers show a jazz band, and Bud's sure that his father is in that band, so he sets off to go find him.

I read Curtis' The Mighty Miss Malone earlier this year and quickly decided that I should read all of his other books, on audiobook if possible.  Bud, Not Buddy is my second Curtis book and Deza Malone even has a cameo!

I like the way Curtis writes about a black child's experience of the Great Depression.  While the Great Depression was difficult for everyone, it was particularly hard on people of color who were passed over for jobs, often couldn't own property, and were discriminated against in many ways.  I think Curtis does really well in bringing these important facts to life in ways that would make children curious to learn more and have a discussion with their parents or a teacher about how people experience the same world differently.

As with The Mighty Miss Malone, I liked how Curtis showed examples of different family structures.  Bud is an orphan but has many happy memories of growing up with a single mom.  He meets a stranger who is a proud father of a growing (and very fun) family, and a jazz band that acts as a family.  While I didn't love Bud, Not Buddy as much as I did The Mighty Miss Malone, I did enjoy learning even more about the Great Depression and am looking forward to Curtis' perspective on other important historical events in American history.

Jacqueline Woodson's memoir in free verse, Brown Girl Dreaming, is set in the 1960s and moves from Ohio to South Carolina to New York.  I did this book on audio.  I do better with poetry in audio since I don't worry so much about whether I am getting the pacing and the rhythm right.  Like pretty much everyone else, I loved it.

Woodson's stories tell of her early childhood growing up during a tumultuous time in American history, struggling with school, and falling in love with words and the art of story-telling.  I wish I had read this in physical form because the poetry is stunning.  I love the way Woodson confused facts and stories - she would hear something and then immediately incorporate that fact into a story about herself.  It wasn't lying, it was learning the art of the story, and she excelled at it.  This excerpt sums up very well the way I felt reading this book - I didn't want it to end, either:

“I am not my sister. 
Words from the books curl around each other
make little sense
until
I read them again
and again, the story
settling into memory. Too slow my teacher says.
Read Faster.
Too babyish, the teacher says.
Read older.
But I don't want to read faster or older or
any way else that might
make the story disappear too quickly from where
it's settling
inside my brain,
slowly becoming a part of me. 
A story I will remember 
long after I've read it for the second, third, 
tenth, hundredth time.” 

Aya:  Life in Yop City, by Marguerite Abouet and Clement Oubrerie is about 3 teenaged girls growing up in boom-time 1970s and 1980s Ivory Coast.  Aya is dedicated to going to medical school and doesn't let anything distract her from that goal.  Her friends Adjoua and Bintou, however, are more easily distracted.  The three of them deal with a lot of family drama (seriously - everything from paternity drama to secret second family drama to homosexuality and everything in between).

I am a little torn about this book.  On the surface, it's like a soap opera, with twists and turns on every level.  I don't know much at all about what life is like in a polygamous society, but it seems very complicated!  It was so interesting to learn about such a foreign culture, from the funeral parties to beauty pageant, from polygamy to witch doctors.  Everything was new to me!

On another level, though, the book touches on some really important themes.  For example, Aya wants to be a doctor, but her father just wants her to get married to some rich guy.  Aya's girlfriends seem sexually liberated and like they just want to have fun in life, but they both deal with very real consequences of their promiscuity while the men seem to get off pretty easily.  Aya's mother wrestles with the knowledge that her husband sleeps with many other women but gets very little sympathy because every man does that.  And the two gay men in the book struggle with their homosexuality and what to do, knowing that they will never be accepted.  And there are more examples of this - the beauty pageant, Aya's friend's impending marriage to a much older man, the catcalls every woman faces each time she walks down the street...

This is why I think perhaps the translation was a little lacking.  The translator did a great job of getting the humor and wit across in each panel, but it was harder for me to understand the deeper issues and social commentary that were under the current here.  Was Abouet just writing a fun drama?  Or did she have more meaningful messages that she wanted to share?  My opinion is that the latter is true (but I also probably look for feminism everywhere).  In any case, this book is worth reading just for the immersion in another culture and the fantastic, vivid art.  And, PS, it was made into an animated movie!  I'll have to try and find it (with subtitles).