A Portable Magic – Page 9 – A Life In Books

January 1, 2023

What A Year: 2022 Edition

As I abandon my previous, birthday-to-birthday format for my yearly updates, I’m starting a new tradition. What A Year will be a look back at the major events of the previous calendar year, both personally and thoughts on what I’ve read as well.

In Life…

What a lot of changes from where I was a year ago! Baby C was still an inside baby, kicking away at my ribs. I think back on the long stretches of free time that I had back then, and as much as I love my son, I have to admit I do miss it. I was pretty uncomfortable for those last six weeks of pregnancy and sleeping was a challenge. Everyone who tells a pregnant lady to “sleep while you have the chance” should have a watermelon taped to their abdomen and try to turn over in bed. C was late, so I had an induction scheduled for first thing on Valentine’s Day, and we watched the Super Bowl and then headed to the hospital. C has always had his own idea of how to do things so he did not join us until the next day, and I have not felt well-rested since. But we are so lucky, he is such a happy little dude with so much curiosity and such a good nature.

Becoming a mother has been wild. As I’ve written about before, my mental health was Not Great after birth and I am still being treated for post-partum depression and anxiety. Our dryer crapped out TWICE and our water heater tried to burn the house down in the first month after we brought C home, which certainly did not help the state of my brain. We’ve had formula shortages, antibiotic shortages, children’s pain reliever shortages. C has gone from being a little potato to a crawling, pulling-up-to-stand, babbling baby who loves to play with his stacking cups and watching him grow has been so fun. His giggles are my favorite sound. But motherhood has meant an inevitable change in my conception of myself. This is hardly an original observation, I know, but it’s true. The things that I thought of as fundamental to being who I am have had to get crunched down into smaller spaces because so much is taken up by parenthood. I have a new appreciation for the challenges my mom faced as a single mother because I struggle to imagine doing this without my husband. Parenting is scary and exhilarating and joyful and hard. I am not the same person I used to be, for better or for worse.

I’ve tried to not let go of everything, though. I made my first international trip since 2015 to head to Skate Canada International in Toronto with my best friend for two full days of figure skating and catching up in person. And then my annual girls trip with my high school besties resumed for the first time since pre-pandemic (I still remember, in the early days, debating whether we would be able to go on our June vacation, which was scheduled for Charleston). We spent a long weekend in San Diego and explored museums and breweries and shopping and talked and talked. Both were very fun and very good reminders that I am a person outside of being a mother. And, of course, I’ve read. Significantly less than I have previously…I won’t hit 50 books this year, which marks the first time since 2014 that’s happened. I’ve noticed that my taste, for the moment, has been changing as well. My familiar favorite doorstopper character studies have been harder to get lost in. I simply don’t have the time to immerse myself in a slow-moving, nuanced world the way I used to. I’ve tried dipping my toes into romance and YA, with mixed results. Maybe more mysteries? Maybe more light nonfiction? I’m sure as C continues to get bigger and his needs change, my preferences will continue to evolve. But books are, as always, my favorite form of portable magic.

In Books…

Read: 46. This is not a terrible total honestly, but is less than half of my top recent reading year (2016). I could make excuses to myself about longer, denser books tripping me up but the reality is that I read four of the Bridgerton books, too, so it all balances out.

Added To My Physical TBR: 125. Eep.

Favorite Book: Wojtek the Bear

This book relies on the shock value of the idea of a beer-swilling, cigarette-eating bear who was adopted a cub by a Polish Army regiment and went with them to World War 2 as its hook, but the story goes deeper than that. Not just of Wojtek himself, who is saved from an almost whimsical storybook quality by occasional reminders that he is in fact a bear, but the story of the regiment and the story of what happened to them after the war. It’s a story of love, and loss, and new beginnings, and it’s all true, and it’s a great book.

Unexpectedly Wonderful Book for Younger Readers That Older Readers Will Enjoy Too: The Graveyard Book

I should not have been surprised that Neil Gaiman wrote something wonderful but I do have to admit that it being a Newberry Award winner, and aimed at a tween/teen audience led me to expect something less…delicate, almost. That was my bad, because this book about a little boy who grows up in a cemetery was one of the highlights of my reading year. There’s adventure, there are of course some spooky moments, there’s a poignancy that grabbed me by the heart. Do not let this one pass you by.

A Book That Should Stay With Younger Readers: Tuck Everlasting

This is a “childhood classic” that I’d never read but seemed like it would be easy enough to get through in the newborn days. It was in fact too easy to get through, with a plot twist that can be seen coming a mile away and a central romantic relationship that would absolutely seem swoony to a pre-teen but to an adult felt creepy and weird. Some books really aren’t meant for adults and that is 100% fine!

Book That Made Me Want to Know More About Zelda Fitzgerald: Tender Is The Night

Though my reading this year also included the fictionalized account of her life, Z, by Therese Anne Fowler, the book that actually made me want to learn more about her was Tender Is The Night. A thinly veiled account of their marriage (along with being a portrait of the world of American expats in post-WWI Europe), F. Scott renders the Zelda insert character, Nicole, as much more interesting than his own alter ego, Dick.

Surprisingly Readable Intersectional Feminism: Feminist Theory, From Margin to Center

I’d never read bell hooks before, and was a little intimidated to start this because I thought it would be academic and dense. But hooks doesn’t let herself get bogged down in jargon. Her arguments that a full implementation of feminism would be a radical change and that in order to fully effectuate that change and liberate all women, we must break down other oppressive systems like race and class, are clear, incisive, and insightful. Is it like, light reading? No. But neither does it feel like a homework assignment.

Book That Turned Out To Be Less About Ballet Than I Thought Based On Its Title: Pointe

Theo IS a ballerina, and her dedication to dance is very much a part of the narrative. But the cover and title suggest that this is a “ballet book”, when it’s in fact about a Black teenage girl living in white spaces, like her high school and ballet studio, who is learning how to recognize her past experiences for what they were instead of what she’d imagined them to be at the time. I quite liked it, though I thought it was perhaps trying to do too much plot-wise. There is a LOT going on in this book, but it ultimately works because of Theo herself, who is not always 100% sympathetic but is always making choices for understandable reasons.

Book That Was Weird But I Got Really Into: Chime

I can’t even recall how this book ended up on my radar, exactly. It plunges you right into its own kind-of-fantasy, kind-of-real-world, vaguely steampunky atmosphere and does not give you any explanations. You discover as you go, but the more fantastical elements of the story are counterbalanced by a beautifully portrayed, complicated relationship between sisters Briony and Rose. There’s a mystery plot and a romance and the aforementioned supernatural bits and I feel like it would go very love-it-or-hate-it but I loved it.

Non-Fiction That Is Excellent But Really Hard To Read As A New Parent: One of Us

It is absolutely horrifying how normalized it has become for there to be mass shootings in the United States. When it happens elsewhere, it’s much more surprising. This is a comprehensive examination of the 2011 terror attack in Norway committed by Anders Breivik, including an in-depth examination of the perpetrator’s life, how he came to be the person he is, how he prepared for and committed the attacks, and the trial afterwards. It also highlights a few of the students who were murdered, exploring their families and their stories. It’s masterfully done and very compelling but oh is it so hard to read while your own little baby sleeps in his crib.

A Book I Should Have Loved On Paper That Never Really Clicked For Me: Intimacies

This seemed like very much a “me” book! Young woman coming of age, really into the idea of language as a concept and what it reveals and what it hides, ambiguous relationships. But it failed to hook me and felt like it was relying on its refusal to provide answers to suggest a deeper profundity than what was actually present.

December 31, 2022

Three Months In The Life: October, November, and December 2022

Long time no chat, friends! It’s been a minute. I didn’t mean for it to be a minute. But life happens, eh? It’s been a busy few months, but I’m glad we’re here together to celebrate the end of the year together. Let’s get caught up!

In Books…

Ash: This is often billed as “lesbian Cinderella”, and while it’s certainly a retelling of the classic tale that has a female/female romance involved, that description doesn’t feel quite right. First of all, it’s really more “bisexual Cinderella”, because the plot is driven by a love triangle centered on the titular Ash and her connections to both the beautiful King’s Huntress Kaisa and the fairy prince Sidhean. Second, the romance(s) are incredibly underdeveloped, as are the characters themselves. It really relies on our memories of the fairy tale to do the heavy lifting. It annoyed me in that it drove the narrative tension through a choice that Ash would have to make…which had a payoff I found deeply unsatisfactory. I wanted to like this, but I just didn’t.
The Inquisitor’s Tale: This was recommended to me by a coworker who had really enjoyed reading it to her young sons, and I can see why she thought I’d like it (which I did)! It tells the story of three young children who all have a supernatural power of some kind…and their dog. Two of the three are based on real historical figures (most notably Joan of Arc) and it’s an interesting exploration of the beliefs and prejudices of the medieval world through an adventure story with winning characters and an engaging plot. Was it a total home run for me? No, I’m nearing 40 and this is absolutely a book for younger readers. I want a richer and more thematically complex read. But it was very cute and fun!
Dread Nation: I’ve always found alternate histories to be interesting thought experiments. In this case, what if the North won the Civil War…because the dead rose on the battlefield at Gettysburg. In this world, slavery has been abolished, but Black people (along with Native Americans) are still treated as inferior to whites and young women, in particular, are placed in boarding schools to train them to protect white people from the very much still present threat of the dead. Jane and Katherine, two teenage Black girls, find themselves exiled from their exclusive combat school to the country’s frontier, where they discover that there is much more to the state of things than they’d been lead to believe. The characters are compelling, and while the plot doesn’t always entirely work, it definitely hooked me and I’m very interested in reading the sequel!
Blackout: I remember when Britney Spears dropped Blackout. I was in my early 20s, in law school. I followed celebrity gossip closely, though I tried to avoid Perez Hilton because I found his habit of drawing splooge on young women distasteful. There was no denying that Britney was a whole-ass mess, but the album she released in the midst of this turmoil became one of the most well-regarded of her career. In this edition of the ongoing 33 1/3 series, Natasha Lasky does a deep dive on the record, examining everything from the producers behind it, like Danja and Bloodshy & Avant, to the paparazzi culture of the time, which rewarded people like Perez and the photographers that would stop at nothing for a shot of one of the maligned, breathlessly covered out-of-control ingenues of Hollywood. A few songs (“Gimme More”, “Piece of Me”) see lots of focus, but I’d hoped for a more comprehensive look at the entire tracklist. Nevertheless, this is a very good read, especially for a pop-culture focused Elder Millennial like me.
Frankenstein: For such a fundamental text of Western literary culture, I was surprised that I hadn’t ever read this. Of course I know the outlines of the story, but it was more interesting than I would have expected to actually read. I don’t think I knew that this was an epistolary novel? More substantively, though, both Frankenstein and the creature he creates are alternately sympathetic and monstrous, and the book raises questions of moral responsibility and what people owe one another, and even who counts as a person at all.
One of Us: Mass shootings have always freaked me out. I was in middle school when Columbine happened. I’ve always had a little voice in the back of my head telling me that it might not be completely safe to be in public virtually anywhere. And now that I’m a parent, I hate even more that the country I live in has taken no effective steps to protect us from that violence, particularly in school. One of the most horrifying recent mass shootings, however, took place in Norway, and this book (translated from Norwegian) takes a deep dive into both how the killer became who he was/is, the lives of a few of the victims, and the awful lapses that failed to prevent more bloodshed on the day it happened, wrapping up with an account of the trial. Obviously this was incredibly difficult to read, often completely heartbreaking, and it took me longer than expected to finish because I could only deal with so much at a time but it’s honestly extremely good and very much worth reading if you’ve ever wondered how something like this could have happened there.
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde: Another classic story I’d somehow managed to never get to! It’s short, and unlike Frankenstein, I don’t know that I thought there was a ton to be gained by reading the actual text despite already knowing the gist of the story. The Victorians really were obsessed with the dichotomy between people’s public v. private selves.
Madame Bovary: I’ve read quite a lot of classics lately, huh? This one took a while to get through, even though I very much liked it. It tells the story of a young woman who strives towards an idealized romantic world that she can’t quite manage to find as the wife to a simple country doctor in a small city in France. It’s the kind of book I have traditionally been drawn to, a character study where the dramas are intense but small, and beautifully written (at least in the translation I read by Mildred Marmur). I’m coming to realize, though, that I’m at a place in my life where I need something with more plot to grab me in my limited reading time.
The Promise: A book club read! It’s always gratifying when we read something that was already on my list (which this one was because it had won the Booker Prize). This is the third South African book I’ve read, all of which have dealt with apartheid, and all of which have been written by white people. Which isn’t meant as a criticism, I quite enjoyed this book. It chronicles the downfall of the Swartz family, Afrikaaners who own a farm. The novel opens immediately after the death of the mother, Rachel, and the promise she extracts before she passes from her husband to give the family’s longtime Black servant the title to the home she lives in. This promise is witnessed by the youngest of the family’s three children, Amor, but is not immediately fulfilled and remains unresolved over the years as the remaining members of the family move on with their lives. The prose is the highlight of this book, filled with sharp, witty observations and insights, while the characters (particularly Amor) remain at a sometimes-frustrating remove.
Blue Monday: With my recent increased interest in more plot-focused books, I had high hopes for this initial entry in a mystery series focused on Freida Klein, a London-based psychoanalyst who is drawn into the police investigation of a missing boy when a patient tells her about having strange dreams about a child that looks just like the one who has been taken. But honestly it fell pretty flat for me. You can tell it’s setting up a series because the first third of the book is dedicated to setting up Freida’s circumstances and introducing the various people in her life, which makes it feel draggy. Once things did start moving along, I just found myself with so many questions that the narrative had no interest in answering. There are some twists, of course, but it felt like one of them in particular just became an excuse for lazy plotting. Though there are some interesting characters, I doubt I’ll continue this series.

In Life…

I turned 37: I’m officially in my late 30s now, I think? And a mom, so I’ve officially given up on being cool and it’s kind of great. I feel like it’s such a cliche to talk about how I care less and less about what other people think as I get older, but I’m super focused on my family right now and it’s freeing in a lot of ways to feel that increased sense of purpose with outside distractions falling away.
My best friend and I made our annual trek to a skating event: This turned out to be my first international trip since Italy in 2015! A slightly less glamorous destination, though. Skate Canada was held in Mississauga, Canada, at the end of October. My best friend’s mom lives about an hour outside of there and was generous enough to open her home to us, and we had a super time hanging out and talking about skating and motherhood and everything else that crossed our minds.
My mom visited: She’d come to see us shortly after C was born to meet him, but got sick halfway through the trip and he was so teeny that we were forced to cut it short. So it was super nice that she was able to come back, especially now that he’s a much more active baby with a personality and less a potato, and we had a lovely time together!
Girls trip resumed: I still remember talking with my two best friends from high school in spring of 2020, waffling over whether it made sense to cancel our annual trip, which we’d set for Charleston in June. Obviously, the world decided for us that it wasn’t going to happen the way we’d planned it. And then the pandemic continued, and then I had a baby, but we finally made it happen. In San Diego, rather than Charleston, but we had a ton of fun visiting breweries and whale watching and just spending time together!

September 30, 2022

Two Months In The Life: August and September 2022

And now it’s the end of September! Everyone told me that time flies when you have a kid but I don’t think I really realized how fast it would go! This time last year my pregnancy was just starting to really show and now I have a baby who can sit up unsupported and babbles and laughs!

In Books…

Z: This was a book that had been on my list for a really long time, and it was obvious to me as soon as I started reading it that I’d actually grown past this phase as a reader. I would much rather read an actual biography at this point than a fictionalized one. Perhaps for this reason, it didn’t do much for me. I didn’t find Zelda herself all that compelling, and while her actual relationship with Scott was fascinating, it flattens here into high spirited wife v. controlling alcoholic husband in a way that’s just not very interesting
Intimacies: I would describe this book as spare. Kitamura’s writing is spare, the characterization is spare, the plot is spare. I don’t necessarily mean this in a bad way. It largely works. But there were times I wanted more than mere hints at depth, so this was good rather than great for me.
Candide: Historically, satire has not worked super well for me. This was one of the more enjoyable ones for me, but that’s not saying a lot. It was fine.
Uncle Tom’s Cabin: A classic of American history, but whew. I often had to remind myself that it was less intended as a novel than as a persuasive piece to convince Christian white women of the immorality of slavery. It is often deeply patronizing and problematic, but it was seeking to portray Black people as human beings with souls in a way that was revolutionary at the time.
The Bird Artist: A book club pick that was already on my TBR, this fell flat for me. The character names are ridiculous and the dialogue is studied and stilted. Margaret is a fascinating character, but it’s hard to tell if that’s organic or because she’s the only one that resembles an actual person in the novel.
Romancing Mister Bridgerton: I just do not have the time and mental energy to really sink into a big sprawling epic while I have a small baby, so this is definitely the time for romance novels in my life. This fourth entry in the series was much much better than the third, which I hated, but never really went anywhere besides “pleasantly diverting”.
Chime: I didn’t have particularly high hopes for this, the cover was cheesy and I couldn’t remember how it had gotten on my list in the first place. But it turns out I loved it! It drops you right into the middle of its world in a way that I suspect will make it a no-go for some readers, but I absolutely loved the prose and added Fanny Billingsley’s other works to my list!

In Life…

More solo parenting: I’m getting the hang of it, I think. There were a few days in August and then almost a week in September for the Lake Tahoe convention I’ve always gone with my husband to in the past but this time stayed home during.
Fire season: We had a terrible week and a half or so of smoke coming over the mountains from a wildland fire in California, with air quality often hitting hazardous levels. Thankfully a storm system moved in that dumped a bunch of rain in the area or who knows how long this one might have lasted. I’m just glad to be able to take my baby on walks now that it’s not a million degrees outside and/or smoky!
My husband started a new job: After seven years at his former gig, my husband got a new job! It has different hours, but it was time for something new and we’re adjusting to our new normal as a family.

One Thing:

A Pure Barre opened up about a five-minute drive from my house and I think I’m a convert! It’s done a lot to help strengthen my core again post-partum and I enjoy the low-impact but high-intensity aspect. Yoga and pilates often don’t feel like enough effort to make me really feel like I’ve worked out but that isn’t a problem here! I often have to stop to rest midway through sets but I can feel myself getting stronger!

Gratuitous Pug Picture:

August 13, 2022

Two Months In The Life: June and July 2022

I’m just going to stop pretending I’m going to do these updates more often than every other month. I’m not reading enough, and I’m too busy. Hence why the actual posting is so erratic! I actually have several months worth of pre-written reviews but I just can’t get the other bits together. Turns out having a baby is time-consuming!

In Books…

The Viscount Who Loved Me: I’d heard that the second Bridgerton book was better than the first, so I went ahead with the series and it turns out I’d heard correctly. It was entertaining enough, though silly in parts, and made an easy, fun read.
Wojtek The Bear: I was interested in this book initially just because of the humor of the idea of a beer-swilling, cigarette-loving bear who goes to war in real life. But it’s actually a more sensitive story than I’d expected. The bond between the bear and his Polish comrades, the trauma that all of them experienced…it’s very moving and I’m glad to have read Wojtek’s story.
Violet & Claire: This story about an intense friendship between very different teenage girls was something I expect I would have very much enjoyed when I myself was a teenage girl and experiencing those big emotions firsthand. But as a thirtysomething it just felt very overwrought.
Dataclysm: This was a fun nonfiction read! It’s from the former data chief at OKCupid and is all about interesting trends that can be gathered from the data internet users put out there, particularly the one he used to work on. It’s entertaining but also honestly pretty light/forgettable.
Bookends: A bit of a spiritual cousin to Bridget Jones’s Diary, this is the story of Cathy, a single thirty-something Londoner who, successfully but unhappily employed, decides to open a bookshop with the wife of one of her good college friends and develops a connection with the real estate agent who helped them find the location. There are honestly too many plot threads in this book, with some of them feeling like they don’t get the weight they deserve. It’s more or less fine but it’s hard to muster any enthusiasm about it.
The Graveyard Book: I’m not usually a fan of stories told as a series of vignettes, like this one is, but Neil Gaiman can do anything. I just love his storytelling. A very small child, given the name Nobody Owens, is taken in by the ghosts of a graveyard after his family is brutally murdered, and gets into some typical childhood mischief in a very unorthodox way as he grows up. I just loved it.
An Offer From a Gentleman: The worst Bridgerton book I’ve read so far (which is just the three). Quinn goes directly for a Cinderella story, and while Sophie is a perfectly enjoyable heroine, Benedict is mostly pretty unpleasant so there’s no real enjoyment in the way the love story unfolds. Not surprised to hear they’re skipping this book for the TV adaptation.
Concussion: I quite like watching football, particularly college football, but it’s become harder in recent years to enjoy the sport in the wake of the research about the damage done to the brain by playing the game. I was really interested in reading more about how that research came to be, but this was mostly a miss for me. It’s as much an uncritical biography of Dr. Bennet Omalu, who made the discovery of the tangles in the brain that result from multiple concussions, as it is a science story. I wanted much more of the latter and less of the former.
Binti: A novella is a challenging form and hard to do right (Capote and Sparks come to mind as authors who really have a feel for what makes a good novella). This is a good story, but I wish it were a novel rather than a novella. I super enjoyed Okorafor’s world-building and wanted more! I also feel like it would have given the character of Binti herself, and the events of the story, more time to breathe and get comfortable. I’m definitely reading the sequels though!

In Life…

My husband went out of town for the first time since our son was born: It was just a few days, and I’d had a trial run of solo parenting when my husband had COVID and we were trying to isolate, but whew it’s exhausting trying to handle everything myself and so much respect to single moms who do this every day.
I’ve starting planning some trips of my own: I’ll be taking some long weekends at the end of October and the middle of December to spend time with my good friends! It’s both really hard to think about leaving my baby and really exciting to think about sleeping without a baby monitor on!

One Thing:

This story was fascinating, and also in a way mundane. I feel like every girl who ever went to high school remembers the one teacher who gave off weird vibes and seemed to get a little too close to his students.

Gratuitous Baby Picture:

June 13, 2022

Book 326: Polite Society

“As Dimple waited for Fahim, she doubted Ania’s wisdom for the first time. There was no convincing reason why Fahim would be attracted to a woman like her, obviously provincial, still at times cloddish, when he had the pick of those sophisticated gazelles at media parties. Ania had kept insisting that she could see the signs. but Dimple was worried about the dangers of being wrong. It had taken her months of discipline and training to calm the anxieties that assailed her—worries about her position as some kind of interloper—and now her equilibrium was again wrecked. Ania was too fearless and her friendship too effortless, spilling from her without consequence, leaving a trail of easy generosity and advice. For Dimple that same friendship offered elation and play, but also apprehension and uncertainty, a fear that it would all collapse and crumble to dust.”

Dates read: July 9-12, 2019

Rating: 7/10

A few years before I started this blog, I started making a concerted effort to read the much-bemoaned classics. I wasn’t an English major (Psychology for me!), so apart from the standard high school mandatories like Gatsby and Mockingbird, I had read actually quite few of them. And what a surprise it was! While some of them deserve their boring reputations, many others have survived the test of time because they’re wonderful reading experiences. Turns out I love Jane Austen! Who knew?

When she wrote Emma, Austen famously described her as a heroine that she didn’t think people would really like. A smart, pretty, rich girl isn’t exactly the most sympathetic of heroines. Clueless proved that Emma could hold up well to adaptation, so when I read that Mahesh Rao had decided to transplant the book to modern-day India in Polite Society, I was curious. Instead of Emma Woodhouse, we have Ania Khurana, beloved daughter of wealthy businessman Dileep. Ania is bored with her socialite life in the most elite circles of Delhi, and when she successfully sets up her spinster aunt Renu, she decides her next project will be her new friend Dimple, who works in PR. Dimple grew up in the country, and though she met a nice guy, Ankit, when she first moved to the city, finds it hard to resist when Ania tries to steer her towards up-and-coming reporter Fahim.

While many aspects of the original are here, Rao puts his own, darker spin on some of the side characters: both the Frank Churchill and Jane Fairfax types have very different storylines than Austen gave them, and Dileep is drawn dangerously into the thrall of a faith healer type called Mr. Nayak. The broad strokes of the story play out more or less as expected, though: Fahim does not fall for Dimple and marries impulsively shortly thereafter, Ania grows closer to her longtime family friend Dev (standing in for Mr. Knightly) even as she develops a flirtation with the Frank substitute, Dimple and Ankit come back to each other eventually. But while Austen wraps things up neatly and happily, it’s much more unsettled at the end of Polite Society.

Taking a beloved story and adapting it is a tricky thing to do…too close to the original, and it barely seems worth the effort, but too far away and you risk enraging fans. I think Rao struck a good balance, adding plot twists that gave the story new complexity. I especially liked the addition of perspectives besides that of Ania, which had the effect of giving Dimple, Dileep, and even Fahim so much more richness and interest. I appreciated the generally edgier tone and the way it undercut a story that has a lot of romantic wish fulfillment and froth built into it. The story the book tells is compelling, and I think would work even without having read Emma (though the understanding that the heroine is supposed to be kind of annoying is definitely helpful to come in with).

While I enjoyed a lot of what this book did, it was not entirely successful. Rao’s prose lacks the wit and verve that really mark Austen as a master of her craft, and is less charming as a result of the inevitable comparison. And while many of the side stories were a welcome addition, it felt like there were too many to give them all time to really develop. The generally lightweight tone of the book (even in the heavier way Rao rendered it) would be compromised by the addition of too many extra pages, but I think another 50 or so would have given it all a little more room to breathe. Overall, though, I found this book very good and would recommend it both to those who already love Emma and those who haven’t experienced it yet!

One year ago, I was reading: The Death of Vivek Oji

Two years ago, I was reading: A Perfect Explanation

Three years ago, I was reading: The Coming Plague

Four years ago, I was reading: Love Medicine

Five years ago, I was reading: The Man Without A Face

Six years ago, I was reading: Zodiac

June 7, 2022

Book 325: Washington Black

“How strange, I thought, looking upon his sad, kind face, that this man had once been my entire world, and yet we could come to no final understanding of one another. He was a man who’d done far more than most to end the suffering of a people whose toil was the very source of his power; he had risked his own good comfort, the love of his family, his name. He had saved my very flesh, taken me away from certain death. His harm, I thought, was in not understanding that he still had the ability to cause it.”

Dates read: July 5-9, 2019

Rating: 6/10

It’s been shown time and time again that dehumanization is a crucial aspect of the commission of atrocities. Calling other people animals, or insects, thinking of them that way, makes it easier to rationalize cruelties towards them. But we don’t as often consider the other side of it. To be dehumanized has recognizable effects on the perpetrator, but what about the recipient? How do people come to absorb that conception of themselves?

What would it mean to be born into a system where your humanity wasn’t recognized, to have no “before” to remember your full self existing in? Esi Edugyan’s Washington Black explores the life of the titular character, called “Wash” for short, born into slavery on a sugar plantation in Barbados owned by a cruel man called Erasmus. His life changes forever when he’s 11, when Erasmus’s brother Christopher (“Titch”) comes to visit, and Wash and his mother-figure, Big Kit, who work in the fields, are asked to help serve dinner in the house. Titch asks for the use of Wash while he’s on the plantation, to assist him in his experiments, and this leads to the first time in his life that Wash is treated at all like a person. While Titch has tasks for him to perform, he’s allowed to get regular sleep, to think about whether he likes the food in front of him, and a previously undiscovered talent for drawing is developed and acknowledged. But then there’s a death, and Wash is blamed, and he and Titch are on the run.

Once they read the United States, Wash is given the opportunity to be transported to freedom in Canada through the Underground Railroad. But he sticks with Titch, and the two of them are pursued by a slave hunter while trying to uncover what really happened when Titch and Erasmus’s father disappeared and reportedly died. Eventually, they are separated, and Wash is on his own for the first time in his life. He ends up in Nova Scotia, where he meets Tanna, the daughter of an oceanographer, and their growing bond, as well as Wash’s gift for illustration, earns him an invite to travel with them to England, where Wash plunges deeper into a search for answers about his life.

The coverage I’d heard of this book before I picked it up made it sound like an adventure story, which I was not particularly excited about. And it partly is: the portion of the book where Titch and Wash are on the run, making up much but not all of the first half, is quick-paced and the atmosphere of suspense that Edugyan creates as they try to stay ahead of their tracker was engaging. But the back half of the novel becomes much more languid, turning inward as Wash begins to really examine himself and build a self-concept. This is usually the kind of thing I eat up, I love novels rooted in psychological realism! But I think the pacing of the book was damagingly uneven. After the brisk energy of the first half, the slow-down makes the book feel like it’s dragging and it began to seem like a slog to get through.

Which is unfortunate, because Edugyan is a beautiful writer. Her prose is elegant and insightful, and she does wonderful character work with Wash, whose journey towards personal understanding is moving. I do wish she’d done more with the character of Tanna, who starts out dynamic and winds up in a role as Wash’s emotional supporter that feels cliche and reductive. Once Titch leaves the narrative, though, so does much of the tension driving the plot forward, and to have that momentum built and then lost unfortunately undermines the strength of the work as a whole. It has brilliant moments, and I’d still say it was pretty good, but the pacing issues kept it from greatness. I’d look forward to reading more work from Edugyan in the future, and this book does have merit and is worth reading if you’re interested in it, but it’s too unbalanced to really affirmatively recommend.

One year ago, I was reading: Throne of Glass

Two years ago, I was reading: The Moor’s Account

Three years ago, I was reading: There There

Four years ago, I was reading: Motherless Brooklyn

Five years ago, I was reading: In The Skin Of A Lion

Six years ago, I was reading: The Name Of The Rose

June 2, 2022

Book 324: The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

“But even so, every now and then I would feel a violent stab of loneliness. The very water I drink, the very air I breathe, would feel like long, sharp needles. The pages of a book in my hands would take on the threatening metallic gleam of razor blades. I could hear the roots of loneliness creeping through me when the world was hushed at four o’clock in the morning.”

Dates read: June 27-July 5, 2019

Rating: 7/10

Lists/awards: 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die

Sometimes I feel like living in the era of technology has robbed the world of its magic. Anyone with an internet connection can have access to what once were locals-only “secret” places. A rational explanation for something odd is almost always just a google away. You can have access to scads of information about almost anyone you meet in minutes. There’s so little room left for actual mystery.

I remember reading somewhere that Haruki Murakami’s books are among the most-stolen from bookstores. I’m not sure why that is, but there’s no denying that the Japanese author has very devoted fans. Reading The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle was my first experience with him, and left me both sort of getting it and sort of not. It’s a hard story to describe: there’s a guy, Toru Okada, who lives outside of Tokyo with his wife, Kumiko, and their cat (which they’ve named Noboru Wataya, after her disliked brother) has gone missing. Toru has recently left his longtime job in a lawyer’s office, but is unemployed while he tries to figure out what’s next. Kumiko wants him to find the cat, and his searches for it lead him to strike up an acquaintance with a strange teenage girl, May, who lives down the block. That’s when the phone calls start.

First, there’s a woman who says she knows who he is and starts talking dirty to him. But then there’s a psychic, a woman named Malta Kano, who explains that Kumiko has reached out to her to help with locating the cat. Kumiko and her family believe in things like psychics, having previously arranged for Kumiko and Toru to spend time with an old man called Mr. Honda, allegedly for spiritual consultations…but all that actually happens is that he repeatedly tells them about his experiences as a soldier in Manchuria during World War II. Toru meets with Malta Kano, and her sister, Cresta, but before long Kumiko herself disappears. She sends Toru a letter explaining that she’s left him for a coworker with whom she’s been having an affair, but he doesn’t believe this and decides to try to find her, which brings him into contact with even more strange people, including a mother and son who he calls Nutmeg and Cinnamon. And appearing throughout is the sound of a bird, that sounds like something mechanical being wound.

This is a weird book, and I’m not sure I entirely understand it. It’s one of those that you finish and almost want to flip right back to the beginning and start again, to see if it makes any more sense the second time through. I think there will be a second time through, though certainly not now. And there will definitely be more Murakami. If I had to chose a single word to describe it, it would be “dream-like”. The way Murakami uses language and builds the world of the book create a feeling of constant loose connection, almost a structured free association, in which the concept that would tie everything together is just tantalizingly out of reach. It works well, and I found myself turning the pages and getting drawn further and further into it, though I suspected (correctly) that not everything was going to be tied up in a neat bow by the end.

Honestly, though, once I finished it, though I felt like I liked it, I have had a hard time articulating exactly why. It was obtuse, the female characters were largely underdeveloped (though I did love May), and it felt like some storylines were just dropped like hot potatoes. But despite its flaws, it’s strangely compelling. There’s something magical and mysterious about the world as Murakami creates it, and it did get me thinking about some of the deeper themes that were explored, like our obligations to each other as people and the nature of power in relationships. It’s intellectually engaging despite the kind of haziness about it. If you’re ready for something non-traditional, I would recommend this book.

One year ago, I was reading: Tooth and Claw

Two years ago, I was reading: Year of Wonders

Three years ago, I was reading: Delirium

Four years ago, I was reading: Boy, Snow, Bird

Five years ago, I was reading: Mrs. Dalloway

Six years ago, I was reading: Spinster