When Dimple Met Rishi

A month ago, I became an aunt to an adorable and winsome boy named Rishi.  Around the same time, people started telling me about the book When Dimple Met Rishi, and I thought I would read the book and then maybe give it to my sister to read and imagine a fun future for her child.

When Dimple Met Rishi is about two Indian-American kids who go to an app development summer camp the summer between high school and college.  Rishi and Dimple's parents are friends and want their children to meet and get married.  Rishi is totally on-board with this, and he goes to Insomnia-con just to meet Dimple and propose (with his grandmother's ring, no less).  Dimple has no idea; she's at Insomnia-con to develop an app to help people deal with diabetes.  They meet, Rishi basically proposes, and Dimple freaks out.  But then they get to know each other, and Dimple realizes that he's not all bad.

In general, I veer away from young adult romance because I find it too angsty and dramatic.  I would never want to return to the period of my life when I was an overly-dramatic teenager, and it is hard for me to read books centered on characters at that age without rolling my eyes multiple times.

But I also grew up Indian-American, and I love that this book exists.  There's an Indian girl on the cover, there are Hindi words in the text, there are Indian narrators on the audiobook (who pronounce all the names and words correctly!!!).  All of these things are so great.  It is like the YA romance version of Hasan Minhaj's Netflix special.  I also appreciate that in this book, it's Dimple who is ambitious and driven and totally into being a techie, with big dreams on how to make it happen.  And that Rishi loves art but feels like he needs to go to engineering school to make his parents happy.

Much about this book rings true, as someone who grew up here to Indian parents.  One of my favorite parts, a tiny detail, was when Rishi explained to Dimple's friend that he speaks Hindi, but that he speaks a version of Hindi that is from Mumbai, where locals speak Marathi.  And his parents went to Mumbai from elsewhere, as did many other people, and so the Hindi they speak is not often understood outside of Mumbai.  This is so 100% true.  My parents grew up in Bangalore, which is a Kannada-speaking city.  But their families are both originally from Andhra, which is Telugu-speaking.  But so many people from Andhra go to Bangalore that the version of Telugu they all speak is completely different than the Telugu spoken in Andhra.  It's a small detail, but many Indian people live through it, and I loved that it somehow made its way into this book.

I also appreciate that the author, Sandhya Menon, made cultural pride and knowledge such a positive thing in this book.  Rishi in particular is very well-versed in his heritage and has no embarrassment at all about fully embracing it.  I think that is a really great lesson.

But there were also many things in this book that bothered me.  Putting aside my general annoyance with young adult romance (and this book had many of those same tropes and bothers), there were things that just were too much for me.  Granted, I am 100% sure that I would notice these and judge these more as an Indian than probably other people would.  But they still grated.

For example, Rishi.  He's this really perfect guy.  He's extremely rich and goes to private school with other rich kids, but somehow he's not spoiled or bratty or entitled, even though all the other rich kids in this book totally are.  This is never explained.  Also, he is really smart and funny and kind.  And he is an AMAZING artist who tells his dad that his "brain just doesn't work the same way" as an engineer's brain does.  But... he somehow managed to get accepted to MIT, anyway, and is going there to major in computer engineering.  Because THAT's an easy thing to just swing.  Also, as a 17-year-old, he just shows up somewhere with his grandmother's engagement ring to propose marriage to a complete stranger and this strains credulity to me.

Also, Rishi had this whole encounter with this other Indian guy, Hari, that annoyed me.  Hari was a jerk in the book, but there was one point when Rishi asked him where his parents were from (meaning, where in India) and Hari very pointedly said that his parents were born in the US.  And then Rishi somehow "won" this competition by talking about how he was so happy and proud to go back to his family's home in India and really connect with his culture and background.  This seemed to imply that somehow Hari was less Indian or less whatever than Rishi.  This really bothered me because, personally, I despise when people ask me where I am from and then act as though my answer ("Chicago") is incorrect, as though they assume I am from somewhere else just because I am Indian.  I realize that this question is different when asked by one Indian to another, but I completely understood Hari's anger in the situation, and I found Rishi's "I love my heritage and go to India all the time" holier-than-thou attitude pretty grating in that instance.

And then there's Dimple's relationship with her parents.  Apparently, Dimple's mom wants her to wear Indian clothes all the time, even at school.  (And Dimple does this, as there are multiple comments on her kurtas and odnis).  And her mom wants her to wear a bunch of make-up and get married stat.  Whereas Dimple wants to wear her glasses, no make-up, and focus on school.  This part just never really rang true to me because it seemed like the author really wanted to set up this weird misunderstanding/antagonistic relationship between Dimple and her mom, but it was hard to believe in (as an adult, anyway) because her mom didn't come off that way at all, really, when you encountered her in the story.  Maybe that's the way an adult would read the story, though, whereas a teenager would read it quite differently than I do :-)

The other thing about this book that just was off to me was the relationship between Rishi's brother, Ashish, and Dimple's friend, Celia.  It felt like a waste of time and space to me, and I don't really think it needed to be included at all.  Especially as I felt like the book dragged a bit at times with the plotting, and getting rid of that would have made it a bit tighter.

I think what frustrated me most was that it didn't quite rise as high above the Indian stereotypes as I would have liked.  You still have two really good kids who do not rebel much at all against their parents.  They both somehow get into Stanford and MIT (because God forbid they go to a place like UC-Berkeley or something).  They watch Bollywood movies and, conveniently, perform in a talent show with a Bollywood dance number.  And their parents want to arrange marriage for them at 18.  Honestly, I'm surprised there wasn't a mention that Rishi had won the Scripps spelling bee as a child.

But!  This book exists, and it is so proudly Indian-American, and it owns that culture, and I love that.  I'm so glad that Dimple was going after her coding dreams and that Rishi had a great love for art,  but I wish that it could have gone a bit further.

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.

Be kind to yourself

When I was younger, I really hated the word "nice" as a descriptor of people.  I thought nice meant boring.  I hoped that no one would ever use "nice" as the first word to describe me.  I was so much more!  Fun and witty and opinionated and all the rest.  I wasn't boring.  And I didn't want to be thought of as just nice.

I'm in my early 30s now, and my perspective has completely changed.  I love nice people.  I would be thrilled if someone were to describe me as "just a really, really good person."  I can't think of any personality trait that I find more attractive than kindness, except perhaps a sense of humor that is similar to mine.

Sara Eckel's book, It's Not You:  27 (Wrong) Reasons You're Single, is a kind book.  It is a longer version of her excellent, very popular Modern Love essay in the New York Times.  It's about being kind to yourself, which can often be very difficult, especially if you are a single woman in your 30s or 40s.  Inevitably, people think there is something wrong with you.  Eckel does not.  She says that if you're single, it's not because something's wrong with you.  It's because finding someone is hard.  It takes a lot of luck.  It's about timing.  And if it happens, that's great.  But if it doesn't, it's not your fault.  You are no less worthy of love than other people are.

So many things that Eckel brings up here as the reasons why women are single (you're too picky, you're too intimidating, you're too available, you need more practice, you aren't playing the game, etc.) are things that have been said to me by well-meaning friends and pretty much complete strangers.  Eckel takes 27 of the most common reasons self-help books and well-meaning friends tell you that you're single and refutes them.  She tells you why vulnerability is a good thing, why you should stand up for yourself.  She is just that really wonderful girlfriend who listens to you and doesn't judge you but instead gives you support and a really excellent hug.

I've been single for pretty much my entire life.  I have done so many of the things Eckel mentions here.  She talks about all the projects and tasks single women take up, trying to make themselves more well-rounded, better, worthier people for relationships.  They exercise, they learn to cook, they host dinner parties, they volunteer in their communities, they travel alone, they work really hard to make new friends and keep long-established friendships alive.

And it's true.  I am in the best shape of my life right now, I have more friends than I've ever had before, I make sure that I have a full calendar (though I will never use the word "busy" to describe myself as I hate that word), and I put myself out there far more often, and in ways that make me quite a bit more uncomfortable, than I ever would have thought possible even 5 years ago.  Being single has made me into a better person, even if being single can be really hard sometimes.  But has it made me more "worthy" of finding someone?  No.

Eckel talks a lot about self-compassion and Buddhist teachings (though she does not consider herself a Buddhist).  This is an idea I have been thinking about quite a bit over the past several months, mostly because I think so many people are kind to others but are not kind to themselves.  We do not trust ourselves, we do not give ourselves credit for going out there and giving it the ole college try, we assume there must be something wrong with us.  Eckel references a TED Talk by Brene Brown that I looked up after finishing the book.  It's about the power of vulnerability, and it is excellent.  Brown says, yes, it's hard to make yourself vulnerable.  It makes you feel weak, it makes you feel exposed, and it can be horrible when it doesn't go well.  But... making yourself vulnerable also opens you up to richer, more wonderful relationships with people.  It gives people the opportunity to be vulnerable with you, too.  You learn more about someone.  Your friendship deepens.  You are kinder, gentler, more forgiving.  They are, too.  And it's worth it.  "The people who have a strong sense of love and belonging believe they are worthy of love and belonging.  That's it."

Eckel also talks about the whole "ice queen" idea - that if a woman really wants to get a man's attention, she should basically ignore him and pretend she doesn't care about him, because if he realizes she cares, then he'll leave.  Of every piece of dating advice out there, this one always comes up.  Don't show too much interest.  Play the game.  Don't respond to his text for like, 8 hours, even though everyone knows you saw the text as soon as it was sent because what are the chances you don't have your phone with you?

I would say this is always the one I struggle with the most because I think it's really bad form and quite rude not to respond to someone who contacts you.  I also have very little patience in spending time with people I don't like when I could spend time with people I do like.  If I like you, I will make time for you.  If I don't, I won't.  The idea of not making time for someone that I like is just ridiculous to me.  The idea of treating someone I really like unkindly is also very hard to take.  As Eckel says,

Think about the most self-assured people you know.  Are they inconsiderate, selfish, or withholding?  Do they try to make you feel small and powerless?  Or are they the ones who offer to take your coat and give you their full attention when you tell them about the book you're reading?  Are they the ones who notice when you've done something well and tell you so?

Like I said, I want to be the nice person.  I don't want to be the cause of angst or anxiety in someone else's life, I want to be a source of support.

And that's why I think this book was so great.  It was not at all self-help-y, it was not about finding ways to find guys, it was not about anything except feeling good about yourself.  And that means a lot.

One of Eckel's single friends, when asked what she wanted in a man (because some people thought she was too picky, and other people thought she just didn't know a good thing when she had it), said something that I think is pretty much perfect, and will be my criteria going forward:

I want to find a guy who delights and surprises me as much as my friends do, but I also want to make out with.

Word. 

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.

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.

Gloriously diverse Regency era fantasy

If you remember my post about Zen Cho's short story collection Spirits Abroad, you'll know that I was super-stoked about Cho's full-length novel coming out, Sorcerer to the Crown.  I got an advance copy of this book through the help of fate and magic and pure luck, and so now I can tell you ALL OF MY FEELS about the novel!

I am probably the prime target for this book because:
1.  It is set in late 18th/early 19th century England.
2.  It is a fantasy novel.
3.  The main female character is half Indian, and that half is from southern India.
4.  The main male character is a former slave.
5.  The other kind-of main character is an old Malaysian woman.

Actually, now that I review the list, I feel like those are five things that would probably make ANYONE want to read this book, though I understand some people don't love fantasy and some people don't love historical fiction, and even though that is my ideal combination of all sorts of books, I know that is not the case for all of you.  In general, I feel sorry for all the amazing stories you are missing, but I get it!  I am probably missing BOATLOADS of awesome stories because I veer away from "literary fiction" and women's fiction.

Anyway, back to Sorcerer to the Crown.

The story centers on Zacharias Wythe, a freed slave with super-impressive magical abilities who, much to everyone else's chagrin, becomes Sorcerer Royal of England.  But magic seems to be leaving England, and Zacharias faces opposition and threats from everywhere, not least from some tiny island nation in the Pacific where vengeful female ghosts are attacking the populace.  Luckily, he meets a beautiful and amazingly talented woman, Prunella, who technically shouldn't practice magic but is really good at it, and the two set off to make everything better.

I admit that if I had a slight problem with this book, it was in the character development.  There are just a lot of people in this book.  And while I enjoyed spending time with both Zacharias and Prunella, and I think they were both awesome, I wouldn't say that they were fully fleshed out, complex people.  I would have liked to dig a little deeper with them.  But maybe Cho just had so much going on in terms of setting the scene and introducing the magical elements and explaining the class/gender/race relations between everyone that there just wasn't enough time to also develop the characters that well.  What I knew of Zacharias and Prunella I liked, but I hope that in future books, they are more full-fledged oil paintings than pencil sketches.

But seriously, I liked so many other things about the story!

One of my favorite things about Spirits Abroad was the way Cho infused all her stories with Malaysian culture, from using dialect to describing food to incorporating folklore and so much else.  She does the same thing here, even though the book is set in London and the main characters are not Malaysian, and I love that.  THIS IS WHY DIVERSITY IN PUBLISHING IS SO IMPORTANT.  How many people would think to combine Indian history with Malaysian folklore, add a healthy dollop of English Faerie, and then make light but awesome references to equal rights for women and people of color?  Not many.

And the feminism, it is awesome.  There so many different women, most of whom wield different sorts of power that complement and contrast with one another.  And Cho doesn't just hit you over the head with the feminism, she really just kind of pokes fun at history and pokes holes in its rules, and it's a lot of fun.  And then she also shows how women in different cultures (English, Malaysian, Indian and, er, faerie) push against their boundaries even while working within their cultures.

And then there's the race stuff, too!  I think Cho maybe could have gone further on the race component than she did, but this is a pretty light book, so I can understand why she didn't.  Suffice it to say that Zacharias (and, to a lesser extent, Prunella) never forgets that he is different, and so much of his personality and actions are informed by that fact.  He's always a complete gentleman, and utterly polite to everyone, so that no one knows just how frustrated and angry he is.  All because he doesn't want to give them any reason to remember how different he is.  It's subtly done but so powerful when you catch on.

All in all, this book is great!  I think you should read it.  And then tell your friends to read it!  Perhaps for A More Diverse Universe :-)

Note:  This review is based on an advance reader's copy.  I received an e-galley of the book in exchange for an honest review.

The consequences of swiping left

I waited (im)patiently for weeks to get Aziz Ansari's book Modern Romance on audiobook from the library.  Rather than going the route most comedians take, of writing about how they got their start, or basically writing a stand-up routine down on paper and selling it as a book, Ansari decided to do some research on modern dating.  And, luckily for us, he shared his research and findings with us in a really entertaining book.

I specifically wanted the audiobook version of this one because Ansari narrates it himself.  While he engages in some good-natured ribbing at the beginning and the end of the book about how lazy people are if they listen to audiobooks rather than actually reading books, I would say that it's absolutely worth it to go for the audio here.  Ansari is a great narrator, and he also hilariously gives everyone quoted in this book a really strong southern accent, which made the book even more entertaining to me.  That said, there are a lot of photos and graphs that I missed out on in the audiobook version, so just keep that in mind.  I didn't really feel like I missed much, but then I don't know how amazing those graphs were, so I could be wrong.

Ansari teamed up with a sociologist and conducted a lot of focus groups and online discussions around the world to populate this book, and the result is really interesting.  As a single woman in my early 30s, I'm right around the same age of Ansari and I found a lot of the insights he shared to be very relevant to my life and my experiences.  He did make sure to talk with people who are older and younger than me, though, so I think that you would find the book beneficial regardless of your age or relationship status.

Ansari discusses how Tinder has moved from a hook-up app to one that people use for legitimate dating purposes, the rise and prevalence of sexting (particularly among younger people, who apparently do it ALL THE TIME), the way people use their phones and text conversations as crutches vs actually talking to someone, how complicated it is nowadays to actually schedule a date, and mostly, how people feel so spoiled for choice in dating that they really never want to get to know anyone.

One thing that stood out most to me was that most people these days will go on a date or two with a person, decide that person is boring or weird or awkward, and then end it.  (I myself am very guilty of this behavior.)  However, you can't really tell what a person is really like or how much of an outlier a particular comment was until you know a person a bit better.  So he said rather than go on a lot of first and second dates, maybe we should stick it out to the fifth or sixth date with a person and we'd probably like them a lot more.  I found this a very refreshing take on dating (though I admit it's hard to get excited about someone that you already think is boring after date 2), so I think I may try it.

Ansari also shared his own dating experiences, and how he has moved from casual dating to now living with his girlfriend.  It was really nice to hear from a guy just how excited he was to find someone he wanted to commit to, and all the steps along the way it took for him to get there.  It added a lot to the book, and I'm glad he included his personal stories here.

If you're single now or have ever been single, I highly recommend this book as a fun and insightful look at dating now and in the past.  It's a great way to put your experience into perspective and realize that it's really hard out there for everyone, not just you!

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: The TBR Edition

Every once in a while, I will look at the many bookshelves in my house filled with books that have sat patiently unread for years (and seriously... many, many years) and be filled with a sense of panic.  What am I doing borrowing all these books from the library when I have at least a couple hundred on my shelves that I haven't read yet?  It makes me feel guilty and stressed out and pretty far behind.

This past weekend, I did a shelf clean-up and got rid of a few dozen books that I really don't have any interest in reading any more.  My tastes have changed, as you will see from the reviews below.  I frankly no longer really care that much about Medieval England's religious struggles. class struggles, and gender roles.  I really don't care that much about Medieval England at all.  As various periods in English history have prominent placement on my bookshelves, this was a difficult lesson to learn and I don't know if I have fully come to terms with it.  I think I am still a huge fan of 18th and 19th century British history.  I am absolutely fascinated by the class struggles and gender roles in that era and how technological advancement impacted social norms and roles.  At least, I think I am.  But it's been quite a while since I read a book set in that era, too, so I don't quite know.

Also, I read much more diversely now, and my bookshelves aren't very diverse.  This makes it even more difficult to pull books from my shelves to read because I want to make sure I maintain a good balance in the diversity of the authors I read.

Basically, I've come to realize that my bookshelves no longer fully reflect my reading tastes, and I've been having trouble coming to terms with that.  There are still a lot of books there that sound interesting to me!  Hopefully I find some sort of balance and read those in the coming years without panicking too much about how or when I choose to read them.  Until then, though, I will probably continue as I am now, with spurts of reading from my shelves coming all at once, brought on more by guilt and panic than by pure interest.  So it's no surprise, then, that I am fairly lukewarm about the results:

Based on the above, it's probably no surprise that I didn't finish The Illuminator, by Brenda Rickman Vantrease.  I read it because it has been on my shelf for years (at least 8) and it was available on audio download at the library and I wanted to feel like I was making progress on my TBR.  Not exactly the most promising of situations, so I apologize to the author.  No one wants to be up against those odds!

A widow is trying to care for her property and her family, even against the grain of society at the time.  And then a man comes into her life and sets her heart racing and her mind thinking and complications ensue.  And the man is an illuminator who transcribes the Bible (very prettily).  And he transcribes other (Treasonous!  Heretical!) things, too.  Also, there's a mystery around the murder of a corrupt man of the cloth.

Considering that I didn't really have much interest in reading this book, I actually found the story and the audiobook quite engaging.  The characters are real and likable, though they felt very likable to my tastes.  I get that there were dissenters throughout history that had progressive views, but I do think that you can make a character likable and powerful within the confines of their environment rather than always being the one person in a crowd who looks away from a hanging or thinks that servants are basically the same as rich people, except not as rich.  Anyway, later on in the book, one of the main characters expresses very anti-Semitic viewpoints, so that took us right back to the 1300s.  Or the 1940s, anyway.

I think I just didn't finish reading this book because another one came up in my library audio queue that I really did want to read.  And because, while I was interested in the story, I wasn't terribly engaged or excited by it.  I didn't really care what happened next.  Again, I think that is just because my reading tastes have changed.  I can see 23-year-old Aarti being very into this book, and 23-year-old Aarti was pretty great, too, just different.  So if you enjoy Medieval England and tales of religious dissent and the way people of different classes were treated in that period, I think you would really enjoy this one.

I distinctly remember reading a review of The Pericles Commission in a newspaper and noting it down because I was finished with the Marcus Didius Falco mystery series set in ancient Rome, and I thought that a mystery series set in ancient Greece would be a good fix.

The Pericles Commission works very well as a Falco substitute.  You have a private investigator who is middle-class and trying to make his way up in the world.  He meets a beautiful and savvy young woman, totally ineligible for him, and the two become partners in crime-fighting.  The guy has a pretty entertaining and fun family that we get to meet and spend time with (including a precocious younger brother named Socrates).  And the author seems to know his stuff - you learn a lot about ancient Athens, from the geography to the historical figures to ancient laws and customs and much more.  There's some humor, too, but if you are used to Lindsey Davis' quick-witted, self-deprecating, and completely lovable Marcus Didius Falco, it will be hard for Nicolaos to compare.

The Pericles Commission was just what I needed.  I had just finished Who We Be, which was an amazing book, but not exactly light reading.  And people were rioting in the streets all over America over a grand jury's lack of indictment over the events in Ferguson, MO.  Basically, I wanted a book that was fun and didn't require me to think very much.  And, damning as that might be to the author, this book really fit the bill, and I enjoyed it for that reason.  There are fun scenes here!  And while sometimes the dialogue (both internal and external) and the clue-dropping (or red herring-dropping) can be clunky, that is to be expected from a first novel.

I am not sure if I will continue on with this series, just because as I've gotten older, I've gotten progressively worse at keeping up with series.  And because I honestly don't think that ancient Greece has the same pull on me these days as, say, 1950s South Africa or 1960s America or ageless Henrietta or countless other settings.  But it was fun and it was light and I learned a bit more about Athens circa 450 BC.  And that was just what I wanted,

Don't Wake the Third Sleeper!!

Blue Lily, Lily Blue is the third book in Maggie Stiefvater's Raven Cycle series.  I got into this series after Ana, Jenny, Teresa and Memory told me about it, and now I am totally into it, too.  Every time I read a book in this series, I start out really cool and disinterested.  And then I get further in and.  I.  Just.  Can't.  Stop.

This was particularly difficult in the past as read the books on audio, so there was only so long I could sit in the car without being late for a meeting at work.  This time around, I read it as a physical book, and instead of being late for meetings, I drove super-groggily to work after staying up late at night tearing through the last 150 pages of the book.  It sucks you in the way Glendower sucks Gansey and company in, and I don't know when the next book is going to come out, but I am SO PUMPED.  (And nervous.  There are many loose ends to tie up.)

I am not going to do any sort of plot summary here because this is the third book in a four book series.  The story?  It continues.  The plot?  It advances.  The plot?  It thickens.  (Though in pretty expected ways.)

The characters?  They are amaze-balls.  I feel like in every book review, I say "Adam!!  Ronan!!"  And here, I shall continue to say, "Adam!!  Ronan!!"  I mean, Blue and Gansey are fine, but they are in this whole, "Our love is doomed!" camp and Gansey is everyone's best friend and Blue is the lone girl in the book, and while both of them are fully fleshed-out and interesting characters, I can't help but feel that they're both shallow pools compared to the depths we see in Adam and Ronan.

Adam and Ronan separately are wonderful here.  Adam really grows up, learns that friends often want to do things for him because they like him, not because they feel sorry for him.  There is this scene with his father, and then this scene in a courtroom, and both times, I just wanted to hug him.  And Ronan, for the first time in this book, seemed like someone who would maybe accept a hug from people.  And the way he works so desperately hard to keep his mom and brother safe... oh, it's so lovely!

But Adam and Ronan TOGETHER.  That is like, the best thing ever.  Seriously, when these two team up with each other, it just makes my heart happy.

Blue and Gansey - well, they are feeling all the feelings, but they don't really let that get in the way of the bigger picture.

And that's what I really love about this series.  Yes, there's a Doomed Romance that is kept secret because the two involved don't want to hurt other people (though, honestly, I don't think the others care very much).  But what's at the center of this book is the people and their relationships with each other.  Family bonds and friendship bonds more than any other kind.  I LOVE what these friends do for each other, in every way.  Not just the teenagers with each other, but the adults with each other and the adults with the children.  There are friendships on all levels and across multiple generations here, and they are all beautifully written.  I can't wait to see what happens next.

Hey, 1998 called and wants its girlfriend back

Landline is the second book by Rainbow Rowell I have read.  Similar to The Shadow Hero, it really helped get me out of my reading rut, though Landline helped me more on the audiobook front.

I read this book very quickly.  As soon as I finished it, I gave it a 5-star rating on GoodReads.  When I went to add it to LibraryThing, I went down a star to 4.  And now, as I prepare to review it, I am not entirely sure how I feel about it.  All of Rowell's best traits are present here - her wit, her humor, her realistic characters who are so lovable and flawed, and her wonderful way of bringing relationships to life in vivid, realistic ways.  And yet...

Landline is about Georgie McCool (yes, that's actually her name).  Georgie is a writer on a comedy TV show - I imagine her as a less fashionable and social media savvy Mindy Kaling - and she's just gotten her big break.  She and her best friend have been given the opportunity to write a pilot for their own show.  HUGE!  The only thing is, they have to work over Christmas to get the scripts ready, and Georgie is supposed to go to Omaha with her husband and daughters.  She and her husband, Neil, have been going through a rocky patch recently (or for the entirety of their relationship, more or less), and Georgie knows this will be a tough conversation.  It is, and Neil ends up taking their kids to Omaha while Georgie stays behind t work.  And then, when Georgie tries to call, she can never get through to Neil.  Or, at least, not to Neil now.  She is able to use her mom's landline to reach Neil 15 years ago, just before he proposed marriage to her.

There were a lot of things that I liked about this book, but many of those same aspects could be flipped and bother me, too.  Maybe this is why I don't know how to rate it.  For example:

• The premise of mother as provider and father as nurturer is taken for granted and not even discussed, which I appreciate in that it normalizes the situation.  I love that Georgie works and doesn't really spend a lot of time talking about how bad she feels that she doesn't drive her kids home from school; in fact, she barely talks about her daughters - this book is about her marriage, not about her entire family.  
• However, this situation really is not quite natural for most people, and there's a lot of guilt on the mom's side, at least, and while that came out a bit subconsciously with all Georgie's comments about how great a father Neil is and how much his daughters love him (would these gushing comments ever be used to describe a stay-at-home mom, I wonder?), I can't help but think that a lot of the tension in Georgie's marriage came from the fact that she worked long hours and her husband stayed at home, and as that was never dealt with, I felt like the story could have been a lot more.

The Stuff of Dreams. But in real life, not in Dreams.

The Dream Thieves is the second book in Maggie Stiefvater's Raven Boys series.  Surprisingly, I enjoyed this book more than The Raven Boys, even though it's in the middle of the series.  I think this is mostly because each character finally has a distinct personality, and the focus is on the two characters that interest me more than any of the others, Adam and Ronan.

Adam!  Ronan!  Those two are so intense and are at that point in their lives where things can go in so many directions and so they make some really horrible decisions but some brilliant ones and sometimes they are jerks and sometimes they are sweethearts, and I just loved it.

Adam has so many personal demons, growing up unloved and trying to be a better person than everyone around him.  His struggle not to become like his father is so painful to watch, and you cannot help but want him to win REALLY BIG in the lottery of life because he works so hard to deserve it.

Ronan is a completely different kettle of fish.  I don't know if I understand him much better now than I did before, but I like him, and I liked being in his head.  He certainly doesn't waste words or time or space on anyone he deems unworthy, but he is willing to go deep-sea-diving without an oxygen tank for those he loves.  There was this scene when he realized that he didn't have to steal things but could just ask for them and people would be generous enough and love him enough to give them to him, and that was just great.  And his whole development as a rough guy into someone with moments of generosity and kindness - it's great.

I mean, Gansey and Blue are fine, but they seem likely to descend into doomed lovers mode shortly, and I don't think that will appeal to me.  Of course, I thought that would happen in the first book, and it didn't, so perhaps Stiefvater will pull through for me again.

I am not sure what all I can say about this book as it is the second in a series.  Suffice it to say, the plot moves forward, and in very compelling ways.  We get more backstory on all of the characters, and we even meet a new one, Mr. Gray, who was one of my favorites.  Honestly, Maggie Stiefvater, I feel like you do not get enough credit for writing Mr. Gray so well because people are so obsessed with the Raven Boys themselves, but I found Mr. Gray's development fascinating, and I loved spending time inside his head.  That a hit man (not really giving much away here, we know this very quickly in the book) could be given so much depth and that you can have compassion for a character who is both terrifying and suffering from his own internal angst and fear is just glorious.

I have gone on at length about the characters, and that is probably because I feel like I lost track of the plot a bit in this book.  I am not *quite* sure where we are going, but I trust Stiefvater to get us there in an exciting and unexpected fashion.

Review-itas: Japan Edition

Guys!  I went to Japan in May, and due to the long flights and some down time, I got some reading done.  I am reviewing a couple of the books separately, but I think I can do the two below as mini-reviews.  Not because they are not complex books!  But because sometimes, brevity is a virtue, and I need to practice it.

Scattered Among Strange Worlds, by Aliette de Bodard.  I told you before why you should read Aliette de Bodard, and I stick to my story here.  Scattered Among Strange Worlds is a collection of two short stories, one set in the same universe as On a Red Station, Drifting, and one set on Earth, though a future, different Earth.  I enjoyed these stories for many of the same reasons I enjoyed On a Red Station, Drifting:  they center on thoughtful women who are just living each day (though the first story does include the reminiscences of a rabble rouser, who is also a thoughtful woman), and they focus more on civilian life during a time of strife than they do on war maneuvers.

The first story is set at a funeral and has a wistful tone.  It really shows how people start revolutions and movements with a lot of hope and optimism for how things will change, but often ... things don't change that much.

The second story is set in France and the main character is a mermaid.  This story was also about well-meaning people trying to improve the lives of mer-people by bringing them to land, but the mer-people were just unhappy and desperate to fit into a world they did not really like.  This story referenced colonialism to my mind, but I find references to colonialism everywhere.

Both stories were very good, and I plan to read as much de Bodard as I can in future.  I recommend you to do the same.

Yukio Mishima's The Sound of Waves is the only book by a Japanese author I read while in Japan.  I often try to read books written by authors from the place I am visiting, and I often fail at at this endeavor.  I also took The Devotion of Suspect X with me on my trip, but for some reason, it did not appeal to me.

The Sound of Waves is set on a Japanese island during the 50s or 60s.  It's a pretty remote island; everyone knows everyone else, and everyone fishes for a living.  Shinji is a young fisherman who is not particularly smart but is very hard-working and strong.  Hatsue is new on the island and generally pretty, so obviously everyone is intrigued by her, including Shinji.  The two meet and like each other instantly, but it's hard work being secretly in love on a tiny island, and the two become victims of gossip and misunderstandings before long.

This book has won several awards and is something of a modern classic.  I admit that I'm not sure why.  Maybe it was just my translation, but I didn't think it was very memorable.  I did enjoy many aspects of the novel.  There are beautiful descriptions of island life, the theme of Japanese traditions at war with western influence, the impact of cruel gossip in a tiny tine, the sacrifices people make for family.  And it was refreshing to see a story about two teenagers who didn't really have much angst - there wasn't really a love triangle, the two didn't toy with each other's feelings, and they were pretty much completely honest with each other.  Woohoo!  But I didn't find the characters very interesting.  I think Mishima has written longer novels, too, so I think I may check one of those out - perhaps the characters will have more time to develop in a longer form novel and I will be more engaged.

Rapunzel, MD

Sold for Endless Rue, by Madeleine E. Robins, is an adaptation loosely based on Rapunzel, though I didn't even realize that until near the very end when the Rapunzel character chopped off her hair.  It is set in Medieval Italy and focuses on a female line of healers and physicians.  The second in that line, Laura, is an orphan adopted by a kind and confident healer.  Laura is very intelligent and goes on to become a physician in the city.  Her adopted daughter Bieta also wants to be a physician but struggles a lot with her studies and falls in love with a fisherman.  This angers her mother, who wants her to study only.  The fisherman is not acceptable.  Thus, Bieta's life becomes more and more limited, and then there is mention of her long hair, and that is when I realized that Bieta was actually Rapunzel and Laura was the villain.

I really love Robins' Sarah Tolerance series, set in an alternate history Regency England with an awesome fallen woman private investigator.  However, I have not enjoyed any of her other books nearly as much.  Sold for Endless Rue was fairly disappointing as well.

What I did like was the detail about medicine in 13th century Europe, and Robins making clear that women, whether as midwives, rural healers, or highly respected physicians, had a very strong and respected role in healing.  I also enjoyed reading more about the rigorous training required to be a physician in the 13th century, though there is of course the irony that the physicians spent a lot of time learning things that, I assume, did not make them much better at all than their rural healer counterparts who did not need to understand algebra and astrology to help their patients.  I do think that Robins is quite skilled at showing how women in history expanded their worlds, proving that our narrow way of assuming that all women ran homes and nothing else is false.  And even if it's mostly true, women did do a lot that we don't give them credit for.

Love and espionage in North Korea

Adam Johnson's The Orphan Master's Son is a novel set in North Korea.  After reading several non-fiction books about life in North Korea, I have become completely fascinated with the country and how people make their lives there.  Johnson's novel brings a new take on that country to life - it is about the people there who know that their Dear Leader is a corrupt liar, but do their best to improve their lives and those of their loved ones.

Jun Do grew up in labor camps and then became a kidnapper, stealing people from their lives in Japan to become teachers, singers or other workers in Korea.  He's good at his job and rises through the ranks quickly, shedding previous versions of himself so that no one ever really knows who he is.  As he gets closer and closer to the Dear Leader's inner circle, he wants more and more desperately to get out and to get his family out, but struggles to find a way to do so without endangering everyone.

The narrative of this story was difficult for me to follow sometimes, probably because I was reading it on audiobook.  The perspective would shift from one character to another, and the timeline would move back and forth and characters would change facts to tell a story that was far more likely to get them off lightly than to tell the truth.  Usually, this would involve triple rainbows in celebration of North Korea, or about starving Americans being helped by beneficent Koreans.  While I enjoyed the audiobook version, I think I would recommend this one to be read in written form to decrease the amount of confusion (though it seems like people who read it in print also struggled with the shifts).

There was a lot of brutality and propaganda and unhappiness in this book.  It was tough to read.  But I really appreciated Johnson's humanization of all his characters.  Jun Do does horrible things, but he also inspires trust and loyalty in the people who are closest to him.  He tries his best to stick to a moral code in a country where there really is no moral ground, just whatever the state decrees.  It's easy to think about North Koreans always turning each other in and reporting each other's activities to authorities and living completely paranoid lives.  But within that system, friendship and love and loyalty do still exist, and Johnson brought that very much to life.

I also liked how Johnson brought some humor into this book, though it was a bit of bleak humor.  The second half of the book has three narrators:  Jun Do, his interrogator, and the North Korean radio broadcast.  All three of them are ostensibly telling the same story, but they tell it in completely different ways.  It's fascinating to see how the interrogator draws conclusions based on what he has been told and what he's found out, and how that stacks up against what Jun Do really did, and how all of this is warped into a story by North Korean radio to either laud or revile the parties included, depending on how the government wants to sway things.

I think sometimes my confusion over the timeline and narrators kept me from loving this book as some others did.  While I liked Jun Do, I didn't really care for any of the other characters.  And the narrators in the book are quite unemotional.  Which I think is the point - I get the impression that North Korea is not a country known for excessive emotion - but it made the book a little monotone.

However, there are only so many books on North Korea out there!  And this one definitely brings nuance and breaks new ground.

A frothy, fun romance for the landed gentry

I read my first book by Angela Thirkell, High Rising, about four years ago and thoroughly enjoyed it.  I had a lot of trouble finding any other books by her, though, so didn't get to any further in her series.  Luckily, though, I am now part of a large library system and I was able to find the second book in the series, Wild Strawberries.

As far as I know, Wild Strawberries does not have any of the same characters as High Rising, but it has been four years since I read the previous book, so it's possible that I just don't know.  This story is set in a Barsetshire country house, where the Leslies make their home.  The eldest son in the family was killed in World War I, and Lady Emily and her husband have not quite recovered.  But it's the Roaring 20s and the younger set is happy, optimistic and bright, as many wealthy young people often are.  Mary Preston comes to stay as a companion for Lady Emily, and we hear most of the story from her point of view.

Much like High Rising, this book was high on wit and humor, and pretty light on character development and plot.  Mary was naive and silly, though her elaborate imaginings about saving her love from a fire or nobly stepping aside so that another woman could be happy were fun to read.  We didn't get to know the hero very well at all, though we were assured throughout the novel that he was a very kind, intelligent, and thoughtful man.  I think I was turned against John fairly early, though, because he said a horribly racist thing in a quite off-hand manner.  And YES, I get the whole "Oh, Aarti, everyone was racist in the 20s!  Don't hold it against them!" thing (a comment that I find extremely offensive, so please don't say it to me).  But it's hard to give your heart and soul to a character in a book when he makes it so plain that he considers you beneath him.

What Thirkell excels at is in pointing out the foibles and inconsistencies of the British upper class with gentle irony.  One of the characters decides that he is a French royalist, but we find out a bit later that in previous years, he thought himself a Bolshevik, a Communist and all sorts of other things, so we know not to take him too seriously.  Another character, David, kind of wants a job, but he just can't take himself seriously enough to find one.  And then there are the women, all so vague and unaware of their surroundings that you can't help but think they must be addicted to laudanum or something.

This was a fun and light read (except for the racist bit), and while I don't think the characters were as realistic as I'd like, and the plot was pretty shaky, it was a good way to unwind after a tough day at work.  Recommended for fans of Wodehouse.

Tolerance is more fun when packaged in a humorous book

I realized after reading The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry that I enjoy books with older protagonists.  They have a different perspective on life and what's important, and it's quite difficult in life to really get to know someone who is of a different generation (besides your parents and their friends), so reading about them is a good way to do so.

Major Pettigrew's Last Stand, by Helen Simonson, also features older protagonists.  There's Major Pettigrew himself, of course, a man probably in his late 60s/early 70s, and then all of his friends and acquaintance, most of whom are middle-aged or older, too.

Major Pettigrew's Last Stand is a very popular book, so I am not sure that I have much to add to the discussion that hasn't already been said.  Therefore, I'll focus on one aspect of the book in particular in this review - the portrayal of the kind, bumbling but narrow-minded villagers.

Major Pettigrew's Last Stand is set in what I assume is a not particularly diverse English village, where the Major has lived for much of his life.  There is a Muslim widow, Mrs. Ali, who works in the shop (she is of Pakistani descent, but was born and raised in England) with her nephew.  Major Pettigrew gets to know Mrs. Ali after his brother passes away, and the two become fast friends. 

16 Candles grows up

32 Candles is one of those books I probably never would have read if I hadn't found it on audiobook.  There are many  books that I've discovered this way, and quite a few of them are very good, and I'm really glad that I have rediscovered the pleasures of browsing with the audiobook selection from the library.

32 Candles, by Ernessa T. Carter, is about Davidia "Davie" Jones, a girl who grew up poor and abused in Mississippi.  She escaped from her alcoholic mother and cruel classmates by going mute and immersing herself in 80s era John Hughes films, particularly 16 Candles.  She has her own Jake Ryan in the form of James Farrell.  15 years later, working as a lounge singer in LA, James Farrell re-enters her life and they embark on a romance that forces Davie to confront all her past demons.

You may be able to tell some of this from the cover - this book is about a proud, Afro-sporting, dark-skinned Black woman who weighs a few more pounds than she would like.  I loved that about this book, and that Davie's story was so universal.  Her self-esteem really took a beating in high school, but she got past that and really grew into a strong and likable heroine.  She also had some fantastic friends by her side - her adoptive Lesbian mother Mama Jane, her father figure ex-boyfriend who gives her some tough love, and then the gambling addict actor whom she gives tough love.

The main issue I had with this novel was that Davie went all sorts of crazy in this book, in ways that were a little overwhelming and hard to understand.  And then she sees an ad for the movie Atonement and suddenly decides to turn over a new leaf.  It was a somewhat awkward structure as we started in the past, then went forward, and then did the "in-between" section towards the end.  So it seemed like the characters had some inconsistency in their growth based on how we knew them.

Also, the book had allusions to so many teen movies I can't even list them all.  16 Candles, Never Been Kissed, Carrie and probably a bit of every romance film with the whole "I'm sorry, let me make it up to you" part of the story.  If you're a fan of those movies, or if you just want to read a fun book about someone a little bit insane who still comes out on top, this may be a good one for you.

Bridget is back, and exactly the same

When I heard that there was a new Bridget Jones book coming out, I was surprised but quite excited.  Then I found out that Mark Darcy was not in the book, and I was really upset.  Really upset.  Seriously, when a story is supposed to end in Happily Ever After, why can't people just leave well enough alone and let those characters actually live as they are supposed to?!

Alas.

Anyway, so going into Bridget Jones:  Mad about the Boy, I probably was not in the best state of mind.  I wanted to have read the book, but I wasn't particularly excited about actually reading it.  And the whole way through, I found it completely disappointing.

Bridget is now 51 years old, a single mom with two young children.  She is independently wealthy and she has no job, though sometimes she spends time working on screenplays.  Apparently, because of this screen play "work," she requires the services of a full-time nanny who is good at everything.  Her friends tell her it's time she starts dating again, so she goes on a self-improvement plan that involves losing 40 pounds in less time than it takes me to lose 4, joining Twitter, dating a man 20 years younger than her, and going out on the town wearing a short dress and thigh boots.  Also, she's still the mess that she was when she was 30.

I don't know many 50-year-old women except for those that I work with, and none of them are anything like Bridget.  The character has in zero ways developed, maturity-wise or organization-wise or any-wise, since the last book, even though she has two children and has gone through quite a bit.  Also her 30-year-old "toyboy" says things like, "I heart you" with true sincerity  which is completely ridiculous and hard not to laugh at and I know many 30-year-old men and none of them would ever use the phrase "I heart you" ever.

In reading reviews all over the internet, I see this book is very polarizing.  People either seem to love it or hate it.  I definitely fall into the latter camp.  I really missed Mark Darcy, and I know that life isn't always rainbows and unicorns and that we need to be more realistic about the fact that horrible things happen, but... well, Bridget doesn't have a very realistic life at all, so if you're going to be realistic about some things, then you should be realistic about the others, too.

It's unfortunate because there are some good nuggets here.  Bridget trying to re-enter the dating world at 50 years old with two young children is a situation that I think many women deal with, and to see her laugh and cry her way through can be quite fun at times.  And there are some really beautiful moments of being a single mom struggling through the holidays and trying to be brave for her children when she just wants to curl up and die.  There is heart in this book, but just not enough of it.

A girl's death-defying feats of courage

I put Keturah and Lord Death on my Amazon wish list in 2007.  Every once in a while, I'd go through and clean up my wish list, but I never removed this book from it.  Maybe because of the beautiful title?  The very eye-catching cover?  The inference that the story just could not end well but would be a truly heart-rending, wonderful story nonetheless?  I'm not sure.

But today, I came across it on the library bookshelf.  And I read it in approximately two hours, straight through.  It took over six years for me to finally get around to it, but I'm glad I did.  While the book had some flaws in continuity and character development, those are petty standard for fairy tales and I enjoyed the lovely language Martine Leavitt used to share her story.

The story is a medieval Europe combination of folk tale and Arabian Nights.  Keturah is a beautiful teenager who gets lost in the woods one night.  Death come for her, but she pleads with him for one more day so that she can find her true love and warn her village of imminent danger.  She tells him a story, leaving him with a cliffhanger ending, promising to finish the story the next day.  He agrees.  She leaves and sets to her tasks.  The next night, he finds her and she again asks for another day as she has not yet found her love and the village is still in danger.  She continues the story, and leaves him with another cliffhanger.  He agrees to extend her life by one more day.  And so she goes home again, frantically looking for the love of her life and hoping to make life better for her friends.