Mislaid by Nell Zink

Mislaid by Nell Zink
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Well, that was different. Well-written with too cutesy a plot which was then countermanded by all the ew moments. I think I liked it? I'm going to need to sit with it.

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The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio

The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Took me nearly 4 months to get through it because it is so long. It's a good quarantine read as the main characters are themselves in a bit of a quarantine bubble. There are a hundred stories of varying quality, but some of them were cheerful and bawdy. The tenth day of stories was a bit of a bummer though as things got even more misogynistic and cruel towards the end, especially with the husband that tortured the wife for years and is presented as wise for doing so.

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Normal People by Sally Rooney

Normal People by Sally Rooney
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I became very invested in the characters even though I low-key hate Connell. (I don't think I was supposed to hate him? I think I'm supposed to love him a little? But I definitely don't.) The writing carried me along and I barely put it down until I was finished.

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House of Sand and Fog by Andre Dubus III

House of Sand and Fog by Andre Dubus III
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Good writing, but what a horrible joyless book. Do I need to be hit over the head to be empathetic? No. As someone that is already fairly empathetic, reading this was stressful and awful for every minute of reading, and like having your insides ripped out in the least enlightening way possible. I can't believe I even finished it, and I definitely shouldn't have. Life is too short to read this.

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Charlotte's Web by E.B. White

Charlotte's Web by E.B. White
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

My first grade teacher, Mrs. Doscher, read this out loud to us in class, and I think it was the first time anyone read out loud to me as a kid. In my memory, it took us a few months to read it, chapter by slow chapter. I don't remember crying in class, but this book is still one of the saddest books for me.

As an adult though, it doesn't make a lot of sense. Why would the people in the book assume a pig was writing on a spiderweb? Wouldn't they rightfully assume it was the spider doing it?

Update from 2020: I'm rereading this to my kids and I realized I'm such a dummy! The farmer characters in the book thought God wrote in the Spiderweb! It totally took me 35 to get that. Maybe because I never really thought about the literature of miracles when I was younger. I have been humbled by my own stupidity. Haha.

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Superstition Freeway by Miles Waggener

Superstition Freeway by Miles Waggener
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Forlornness as breathtaking desert scenery.

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The Plague by Albert Camus

The Plague by Albert Camus
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is fantastic and-- despite the opinion of my friends who are horrified that I'm reading this right now-- this is the perfect time to read this. Covid doesn't allow you the ordinary-day emotional distance from the plague victims.

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Trick Mirror by Jia Tolentino

Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion by Jia Tolentino
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Well-researched and pretty well-written as you’re carried along sentence by sentence, but I felt like most of the essays left me wondering what her point was. A few days after reading it I only remember the general topics of each essay.

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Ongoingness by Sarah Manguso

Ongoingness: The End of a Diary by Sarah Manguso
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I liked this book a lot. It's only a little bit about the author keeping a diary, it's actually about time, and life, death, and motherhood. It conjured up my horror at our our ceaseless march towards not just death but oblivion. I'm a complicated type of Christian that doesn't think the universe owes me eternity, but rather that I owe the universe a lot of sacrifice to others. So to me, as to many others, the oblivion is a real thing that makes it hard to justify the little daily acts, and losing memories- mental or physical- is very much a step towards that oblivion.

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She Stoops to Conquer by Oliver Goldsmith

She Stoops to Conquer by Oliver Goldsmith
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The central problem in this play is that Mr. Marlow believes himself to be too modest to speak to women of a high class. He states his trouble in this way, “[a]n impudent fellow may counterfeit modesty, but I’ll be hanged if a modest man can ever counterfeit impudence.” But we soon learn that he's a complete douchebag. But I think that's the point. Hilarity ensues! And it's actually pretty funny.

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Humorous Stories and Sketches by Mark Twain

Humorous Stories and Sketches by Mark Twain
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Most of these stories didn't pass the test of time, but I enjoyed "The Private History of a Campaign that Failed," about some Confederate soldiers who avoid fighting in the Civil War.

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My Time Among the Whites by Jennine Capo Crucet

My Time Among the Whites: Notes from an Unfinished Education by Jennine Capo Crucet
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Capo Crucet is a Cuban-American woman that's approximately my age that moved to Nebraska, and I'm a Cuban-American that moved to Nebraska, so I was pretty excited to read this collection. I don't have the same Florida ties but I did live in a particularly Cuban-area of New Jersey until I was 6.

I could definitely relate to some of the ideas expressed by the author. For example, I also always have to field the "have I ever visited Cuba" question. Capo Crucet didn't explain why that one is tough (which she probably should have given her audience), so let me do it: the laws regarding travel to Cuba are complicated, and if you seek to do it legally, it's tough. You can't access American cash over there, so currency will be an issue. Additionally, many Cuban-Americans support the embargo against Cuba, so even if you don't personally, get ready to face the ire of many friends and family. But that's not really an answer that you have time to give every single time you're asked, and I get asked a lot.

I particularly liked the essay about her marriage, moving to Nebraska, and then crashing a bunch of weddings. I thought it was really vivid and interesting, and her feelings were palpable.

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Will You Please Be Quiet, Please? by Raymond Carver

Will You Please Be Quiet, Please? by Raymond Carver
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

There were 22 stories in this collection, and I especially enjoyed 5 of them: They're Not Your Husband, Neighbors, What's in Alaska, Bicycles, and the title story. Carver seems especially good at the sadness of disappointment though Bicycles, in particular, seemed like the opposite- about a boy's admiration of his father. I have been told I need to read What We Talk About When We Talk About Love.

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No Exit by Jean-Paul Sartre

No Exit by Jean-Paul Sartre
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Very dark and funny. Full of great lines exploring the simple tortures of everyday life.

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A Room with a View by E.M. Forster

A Room with a View by E.M. Forster
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

“Miss Bartlett, in deed, though not in word, had taught the girl that this our life contains nothing satisfactory. Lucy though she disliked the teacher regarded the teaching as profound, and applied it to her lover.”

This is the thesis that this book seeks to tear down, and it does so in the most delightful way.

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The Uninhabitable Earth by David Wallace-Wells

The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming by David Wallace-Wells
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I really want everyone to stop whatever they're doing and read this book. After reading this book, climate change now overshadows all my other concerns. It is worse than I thought, and of course, I knew it was already currently happening but he compiles the data on current natural disasters in a way that clearly separates them from previous weather events.

I moved to Nebraska a year ago. Nebraska is not even mentioned in the book. And yet, we have what are apparently new permanent bodies of water since the flooding events that have occurred since I moved here a year ago. They look like lakes or little rivers and they've survived even our record-breaking hot summer. There were multiple floods in the Spring, and the flooding in March cost over a billion in damages, a lot of which I think has not actually been repaired. See: https://www.npr.org/2019/03/21/705408364/nebraska-faces-over-1-3-billion-in-flood-losses. The book was already out by then, but I bet we still wouldn't have made it into the book because so many more damaging weather events are occurring all the time now.



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Number9Dream by David Mitchell

Number9Dream by David Mitchell
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I reserve “1 star” for books that are a net negative to the world. But I thought this book was a hot mess. I didn’t enjoy it at all, I thought it was unnecessarily confusing, meandering, and pointless.

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A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley

A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Great plotting, great sentences, and (unlike some of the other readers) I did feel for Ginny and Rose. I was surprised that this novel about feminine rage was written and acknowledged in the 1990s, though of course, everything we're talking about now in the #metoo is a great deal older that. But it was the palpable anger that seemed different than a lot of other novels I've read, giving it a completely different aspect, which feels very modern now. We all know Larry Cooks now, even if we don't always know their secrets. One thing which makes me unable to properly view this book though is that it's based on King Lear and I haven't read King Lear yet, so that's my next task.

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The Houseguest by Kim Brooks

The Houseguest by Kim Brooks
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This novel is full of beautiful writing. I'm looking forward to whatever Brooks writes next.

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White Noise by Don DeLillo

White Noise by Don DeLillo
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is an actually funny satire, that's also interesting and true. I'm very hard to please on the humor front, and I still didn't laugh out loud, but I found myself smirking and smiling a lot as I read along. I really enjoyed the exploration of how people do or don't conceptualize death.

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