The Memory Painter by Gwendolyn Womack

The Memory Painter by Gwendolyn Womack
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Because my book tastes have been adapting to the ridiculous number of books I consume, these days I'm surprised whenever I like a book that isn't literary. I liked it! It was fun! It was decently written! There were no ridiculous plot holes! It's even a book that might continue to interest me in a reread. This is a good start from Womack.

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Book Scavenger by Jennifer Chambliss Bertman

Book Scavenger by Jennifer Chambliss Bertman
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

A dangerous and exciting adventure in San Francisco as two friends try to break codes and solve a literary puzzle. Slow start, but fun exciting midway on.

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Fish in a Tree by Lynda Mullaly Hunt

Fish in a Tree by Lynda Mullaly Hunt
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a very good kids' book about what it's like to have dyslexia and learning disabilities, how to be a good friend, and how to get help when you need it. Well-developed characters. Strongly recommend for middle grade.

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The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah

The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

30 pages in: This isn't literary, so I couldn't enjoy it in that particular way.

250ish pages in: I enjoy genre fiction, but as genre fiction, it wasn't sufficiently enjoyable. I don't even grasp the concept of painful genre fiction really. The characters were insufficiently developed for me to care about very deeply, which is surprising considering how long this book was. Likewise, important relationships like Vianne and Rachel weren't sufficiently developed even though they're important lifelong friends. Isabelle falls in love with a guy she barely knows and I couldn't care less. Okay so maybe it's like an action book? With action and nothing else?

About 300 pages in: But the thing that bothered me the most was the concept of the "Nazi with the heart of gold." We're not even talking about Hitler youth, we're talking about a grown man who seems fully cognizant of the Nazi plans. Who does in fact personally send Jewish people off to concentration camps. But he "doesn't like it" so somehow that's okay? But Vianne still thinks he's a really nice guy. Maybe that sort of thing seemed cute in 2015 before the 2016 election? Well, it wasn't, and F that. Evil nonsense like that is why the planet is burning right now. I get that people that are initially good can be corralled into doing evil things. That's part of the horror of the Third Reich! However, once a person gets to a certain point and doesn't turn back in any way-- let's not pretend that person is "good" anymore. If an active Nazi - no matter how he got to that point- isn't evil, then evil has no meaning.

301 pages in: Oh no, seriously, there's another 140 pages to go? Then the really bad stuff happens... I have other complaints about this section that I will skip because they're spoilers.

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Selfish, Shallow, and Self-Absorbed by Meghan Daum

Selfish, Shallow, and Self-Absorbed: Sixteen Writers on The Decision Not To Have Kids by Meghan Daum
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The idea that people who choose not have children are selfish has always been completely preposterous to me. I have two children I completely love and adore, but the reasons I chose to have them were (in my opinion) "selfish, shallow, and self-absorbed" even if the actual raising of them sometimes requires saint-like patience and sacrifice. That is, I desperately wanted my own kids, my own family, little me's to shower with affection. In contrast, I think people who adopt or even those who don't have children, are way less selfish and shallow. Especially since our overpopulated planet is basically on fire now. (Sorry fellow moms, it's not a judgment on you, it's a judgment on myself.) And furthermore, I desperately want my own children to give me grandchildren one day- even at the potential cost to some of their own happiness- how's that for selfish? Additionally, my own mother seemed - quite the opposite of me- a somewhat reluctant mother. So I was very receptive to this collection, and it went beyond the ideas that I already held, enriching my overall view of other people's decisions of whether to have kids or not.

I especially enjoyed "Maternal Instinct" by Laura Kipnis which is a really interesting feminist take on the decision not to have children; "Be Here Now," by Lionel Shriver which highlights some of the racist and cultural motivations in the perpetuating the idea of reproduction in particular countries; "The Most Important Thing" by Sigrid Nunez which explored the time when having children was often a misfortune; "Over and Out" by Geoff Dyer, and “The End” by Tim Kreider. I also noticed a thread of a number of writers who felt unsatisfied with their own childhoods.

Though I noticed that for such highly intellectual and often atheistic arguments, the women in these essays never doubted the importance of the "work they wanted to do." Geoff Dyer touched on this issue a little and Tom Kreisler addressed it more directly: in a nihilistic universe, what value does your work have? Hypothetically, if we are a bunch of bacteria on a rock hurtling through space, then the value of our work probably isn't in any discernible way more significant than any other particular experience including the experience of being a parent. On the other hand, if there's a God (and maybe even if there's not) and an understanding of deep sacrificial love is the greatest earthly value or experience then maybe they're missing the mark? The authors of the essays are all professional writers so they all have work to do which is imbued with spirit in a way that many other people's jobs are not. So maybe the sacred nature of their work particularly skews their view of this issue. But for example, what particular value is Randall L. Stephenson or Michel Combes providing to the world as the CEOs of ATT and Sprint respectively? None that I can think of. But I get it, if it's your heart's passion is to be a CEO, rather than to be a parent, and as a woman, you think that being a parent will get in the way of your CEO dreams, you should do you.

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The Light of the World by Elizabeth Alexander

The Light of the World by Elizabeth Alexander
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This reminded me a lot of Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking except I liked it better because I could palpably feel the love and loss of Alexander's husband Ficre. Alexander's writing is wonderful, and to read this book is to understand love on this earth a little better.

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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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Never Broken by Jewel

Never Broken: Songs Are Only Half the Story by Jewel
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This was pretty good (I think my ratings are getting tougher as I read more and more, so maybe the old me would have given this 4 stars). Jewel's life so far has been interesting and she's clearly learned a lot which she tries to impart. There's a lot of stuff that feels like filler. It feels like she shoved an entire poetry/songbook inside the memoir and that should be a separate book. (In fact, she already has a poetry book, so it was strange that she decided to cram all this in.) There's also a lot of cliche-sounding self-help in this book. I don't personally appreciate the mix of self-help with memoir. If she just gave a sentence of advice here or there, it would have been fine, but it was pretty heavy-handed in giving entire lists of positive-thinking and meditation-type advice. I've read books on meditation as well, and there are many authors that cover it better than Jewel. Generally, she just needed a tougher editor and a book about 3/4ths the length of this one.

Here's a good one though: "We're so busy looking for and working towards the things that will make us happy that we blow right by our actual happiness... sitting quietly under a tree, being present with your child while you read a book to them, living in a smaller home, perhaps, so you can work less and have more quality time with your family, doing fewer enrichment activities so that you and your children can experience the joy of play."

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The Japanese Lover by Isabel Allende

The Japanese Lover by Isabel Allende
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This novel could have been titled, "Everyone Has Secrets," as it appears to be more about that than "The Japanese Lover," who, by the way, to my mind, is American. This was very readable, and I was always glad to return to the story, and the characters were interesting. I didn't precisely become attached to the characters the way I do with some characters (I even get attached to unlikable characters sometimes). I would recommend this book in general.

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The Senator Next Door by Amy Klobuchar

The Senator Next Door: A Memoir from the Heartland by Amy Klobuchar
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Klobuchar is clearly a good person, but wow, I was deeply unimpressed by this book. Nearly 3/4th is just memoir, which speaks of the excessive self-importance shared by candidates like Hickenlooper.

Additionally, I don’t think Klobuchar is part of the modern Democratic Party. There are too many urgent issues in this era, many of them caused by the far right, and it’s my opinion that centrists such as Klobuchar or Biden properly belong in a third party. The Republicans won’t have them, and neither should Democrats.

She seems to lack large vision and is mired in accomplishing little fixes. It wasn’t even clear if she failed to cover her policy in this book or if she’s completely lacking policy. I know she’s “tough on crime” and that she thinks we can’t be isolationists. Other than that, I don’t know too much about her policies after one of the lengthiest candidate’s books. Well, maybe it just felt like the lengthiest.

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Errata by Lisa Fay Coutley

Errata by Lisa Fay Coutley
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Poetry is so hard to write about, especially, when, like me, you don't read enough poetry. These poems feel very geological but the terrain is all feelings and memories. The poems are dark, but the terrain is bright. There is a languid feeling about the poems, but the terrain is urgent with extremes of cold and heat. After reading through the collection I felt hollowed out, not in a depressed way, but in the satisfied way I imagine Pinocchio felt after Geppetto made him.

*Lisa Fay Coutley teaches at the University of Nebraska at Omaha Writer’s Workshop.

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Maybe in Another Life by Taylor Jenkins Reid

Maybe in Another Life by Taylor Jenkins Reid
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I think based on a lot of the quotes people liked about this book, they missed the point that the book makes that nothing is fated (unless every potential outcome is simultaneously fated per physics).

It was interesting and fun, and I fell in love with some of the characters. The plot was not especially original (Sliding Doors), but it was still an ambitious undertaking. Despite a complicated plot, the author kept things like the characters internally consistent, which I appreciate.

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Proteinaholic by Garth Davis

Proteinaholic: How Our Obsession with Meat Is Killing Us and What We Can Do About It by Garth Davis
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Davis is persuasive that animal-derived products are mostly terrible for you. I especially enjoyed the section where he explains to the public how to look at scientific studies. I also enjoyed the very scientific bent of the book with study after study because I generally enjoy super-nerdy-science reading.

This book isn't a diet book though. He's strong on the not-eating-meat point, but he doesn't spend much time on other things you shouldn't eat, and he only spends a little bit of time on things he thinks you should eat. I suspect that the vast majority of his research was on meat only, and he has very little idea about the specifics of say, wheat. I'm dubious based on the science that I've read that wheat is a healthy food to consume. Yes, maybe meat is even worse, but that doesn't mean you'll do great on a high wheat diet. The Okinawans don't eat much meat- though they do eat some fish- and they don't eat wheat. I don't doubt that some very specific healthy wheat products are available (and likely to go bad quickly because of lack of preservatives), but it seems like the majority of wheat products are pretty bad. And sugar is the devil.

Conclusion: working on cutting the animal products out of my diet.

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A Manual for Cleaning Women by Lucia Berlin

A Manual for Cleaning Women: Selected Stories by Lucia Berlin
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Lucia Berlin is amazing and almost all her stories in this collection are amazing, but oh boy, they get so painful after a while. I think I could have handled it better if either this were two smaller books, or if the misery were somehow broken up a bit.

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Why We Work by Barry Schwartz

Why We Work by Barry Schwartz
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a great book for employers, human resources, managers, and business owners. The rest of us are already well aware of all this.

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Rising Strong by Brené Brown

Rising Strong by Brené Brown
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Some good stuff in this one regarding shame. Science doesn't necessarily agree with Brown that you should never retaliate against bad actors though (and it hardly seems fair that someone else's bad behavior always reflects negatively back on your own shame somehow). Civilization is largely built on social consequences for bad individual actions.

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Follow Your Gut by Rob Knight and Brendan Buhler

Follow Your Gut: How the Ecosystem in Your Gut Determines Your Health, Mood, and More by Rob Knight and Brendan Buhler
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Great little book about bacteria. The stuff everyone should get in an owner's manual to your own body.

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The Givenness of Things by Marilynne Robinson

The Givenness of Things: Essays by Marilynne Robinson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The first few essays were tough to get into but some of the essays in the middle deserve 10 million stars. This is really challenging reading, but so worth it. Where I don't agree with Robinson I have to suspect I might be wrong or missing crucial information because she is just so brilliant.

I highlighted many sentences but this is one of my favorite: “We would not now have a sizable part of our own population prepared to engage in homicidal violence if they truly believed that that young man in the hoodie was an image of God.”

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Lose the Clutter, Lose the Weight by Peter Walsh

Lose the Clutter, Lose the Weight: The Six-Week Total-Life Slim Down by Peter Walsh
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

There is no shocking or new information in this book, but everything Walsh says is true and important to keeping a healthy body and an organized life.

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Goodbye, Things by Fumio Sasaki, Eriko Sugita (Translator)

Goodbye, Things: The New Japanese Minimalism by Fumio Sasaki
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Short quick read. Has a lot of interesting thoughts. Equal parts: Marie Kondō, Minimalism, behavioral economics research, Fight Club quotes. Doesn't pack the life-changing punch of Marie Kondo, in my opinion, (and here's another minimalist without children), but certainly has more information and advice than MK.

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