The Story of a Marriage by Andrew Sean Greer

The Story of a Marriage by Andrew Sean Greer
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

There are some beautiful sentences and thoughts in this book, but let's not forget that the narrator doesn't necessarily know everything about the world or about love. She knows a very particular love- her one love. She misses another kind entirely. Therefore, I object to many of her ideas. For example, this seems completely wrong to me: “A lover exists only in fragments, a dozen or so if the romance is new, a thousand if we're married to him, and out of those fragments our heart constructs an entire person. What we each create, since whatever is missing is filled by our imagination, is the person we wish him to be. The less we know him, of course, the more we love him. And that's why we always remember that first rapturous night when he was a stranger, and why this rapture returns only when he's dead.”

Of course, it's exciting to meet someone and they are constructed entirely of your hopes for who you want the person to be. A new person is exciting anyway. But what if you're blessed to be married to someone who turns out to be so much more than you knew, so much more than you knew any person could be? What if in your darkest life moments you turn to the person you're married to and see a beacon of light? What if you let that person make you better too. Love isn't just rapture. Love is that which would make it easy to give your life for the other person.

So in general, I object to Pearlie's "love" for a shell of a character Holland. Of course, we can never completely know another person. But Pearlie never gives us something to admire about Holland. You can only really love children without reason in my opinion. I don't care about Holland, I don't believe Pearlie's deep love for Holland, and Holland is observed from such a distance that he didn't persuade me either.

There's more than a love story going on here, war, torture, and race issues, but nothing about it in particular spoke to me.

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Villette by Charlotte Brontë

Villette by Charlotte Brontë
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I loved it but I'm traumatized by the feeling that Charlotte Bronte does not like Lucy Snow. In contrast, I love Lucy Snow with all her little stiff curmudgeonly ways. So what does that say about me? And what does that say about whether I would like Charlotte Bronte, that I side with her fictional antihero over her?

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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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Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin

Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

There were times when I was reading this that I thought I didn’t like this book that much. It’s not an easy book. But I kept at it and finally it opened up. This is a classic among the classics.

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Lifelines by Heidi Diehl

Lifelines by Heidi Diehl
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

There are so many things I love about this book but definitely the characters are the best part. I feel like I know these characters, they are real people, and I want to sit down and drink coffee with them or go watch concerts with them. I'm sad that I can't!

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Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Haruki Murakami

Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Haruki Murakami
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I really did not like the beginning but the two woven narratives grew on me. Interesting but not great.

This is my 9th Murakami book and I think my favorite is still Norwegian Wood (honorable mentions to Wind-up Bird and After Dark).

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The Soul Thief by Charles Baxter

The Soul Thief by Charles Baxter
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is my first Charles Baxter so I wasn't comparing it like other reviewers to his other works. I thought it was pretty good, though I thought the ending was overdone. Nothing really sticks with me though and the characters feel a little washed out though that might be by design given the ending.

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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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Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson

Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption by Bryan Stevenson
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Informative, important, and extremely moving. I couldn't put it down until I finished it.

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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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Fleishman Is in Trouble by Taffy Brodesser-Akner

Fleishman Is in Trouble by Taffy Brodesser-Akner
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Generally enjoyed both the chatty feminist writing and the empathic story with a little twist. It felt a little unbalanced because there seems quite a lot of the first part and not enough of the third (?) part to fully develop the character.

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Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This was such a different reading experience. It's true crime but I was a few pages in before I realized it was nonfiction because it read like a really fun fiction book. I've been to Savannah and I love it-and unlike some reviews, I didn't necessarily think it evoked the Savannah the place, but rather the behind-the-scenes culture and society in Savannah. And ooh the characters! Amazing. Chablis! I'm so sad that she passed away in 2016. She was an American icon.

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The Color Purple by Alice Walker

The Color Purple by Alice Walker
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I was shocked by how wonderful this book is because I'd actually read it before as a teenager and I didn't remember it being this phenomenal. I think as a teen, I was so mired down in the horror and sadness of the beginning that that's what stood out for me the most. Plus, having no life or significant literary reading experience, I failed to get most of the brilliance of the book. But what a beautiful perfect book. Amazing characters, amazing sentences, amazing everything. Favorite favorite.

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Ask Again, Yes by Mary Beth Keane

Ask Again, Yes by Mary Beth Keane
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

An interesting and complicated story about two families living next door to each other. One home has a mentally-ill mother and alcoholic father and these issues in the one family ultimately affect both families. Both families also have one person each who born in Ireland which was mostly irrelevant but gave the book an interesting flavor. It's well-written and I became invested in all the characters.

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An American Marriage by Tayari Jones

An American Marriage by Tayari Jones
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This was very good and I definitely recommend it. It just sort of missed being one of my favorites this year because it lacked a little something. While I really became invested in Roy and all of Roy's parents, Celeste and her entire family lacked the same kind of depth. Andre was a decent enough character but I just didn't feel his significant connection to Celeste. Maybe I just didn't believe enough in Celeste as a character to believe in her relationships generally.

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The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea by Yukio Mishima

The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea by Yukio Mishima
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The writing is 5-star writing, but to me, the message of the book is 1-star. Noboru espouses a very non-Judeo-Christian view of the world, and while I am a student of languages, cultures, and foreign relations, a world view that privileges Greek and Roman-style daring and machismo above basic Golden Rule-type goodness -- is precisely the reason that I have become philosophically Christian. To my mind, the sailor Ryuji Tsukazaki is an admirable man. But to Noboru, and indeed likely to the author Yukio Mishima, he is soft and romantic and deserves what he gets. What a horror. Add to that the book's little dash of misogyny, like a cherry on top of the murder sundae.

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What We Talk About When We Talk About Love by Raymond Carver

What We Talk About When We Talk About Love by Raymond Carver
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I really only liked the first story, "Why Don't You Dance?"

I didn't even like the title story that much, though I did like this one quote in it: "Well, the husband was very depressed for the longest while. Even after he found out that his wife was going to pull through, he was still very depressed. Not about the accident, though. I mean, the accident was one thing, but it wasn't everything. I'd get up to his mouth-hole, you know, and he'd say no, it wasn't the accident exactly but it was because he couldn't see her through his eye-holes. He said that was what was making him feel bad. Can you imagine? I'm telling you, the man's heart was breaking because he couldn't turn his goddamn head and see his goddamn wife.'"

Took me much longer to read this collection than I expected given how short it is.

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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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Asymmetry by Lisa Halliday

Asymmetry by Lisa Halliday
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I really liked the beginning "Chapter 1," which was the first 50% of the book. Then it got tougher to read though I particularly appreciated Amar's views on God. Some things about the book, some of the Iraqi connections and who Ezra Blazer was based on, I got on my own. Other things I learned from reading multiple reviews. The fact that you even have to "get" it is a bit disappointing to me. I don't love gimmicks in my literary fiction. Frankly, I'm ambivalent about how I feel about the novel.

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