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The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck

“Our people are good people; our people are kind people. Pray God some day kind people won’t all be poor.”

John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath

I have the goal of reading one major work of literature every year, preferably one that I’ve missed out on in the past. A few years ago I read War and Peace. Don’t worry, I’ll do a whole post about that one sometime. This year’s book was The Grapes of Wrath. It’s a book that seemingly everyone reads in high school, but somehow it never came up on a reading list for me. This year I decided I’d finally tackle it.

The Grapes of Wrath is the story of a family, the Joads, who are kicked off of their tenant farm in Oklahoma and head west to California in hopes of a better life. They see a handbill advertising good wages, and they develop the somewhat quixotic idea that they’re going to be able to get work, save up, and buy a cute little house. Instead, they find that they’re forced to live in squalid conditions among thousands of other migrant workers. They’re treated with suspicion and dislike by the people of California, and they get zero respect from the people who hire them.

I kept having the same thought over and over as I read this book: “Nothing ever changes.” Some of the struggles that were discussed in The Grapes of Wrath are the things people are still grappling with today—police brutality, unfair labor practices, corporate greed, and lack of a safety net. I was also struck by the hatred with which the migrant workers were treated. A lot of the same things that were said about the Joads and their ilk can be heard today. Only the targeted group has changed. “They’re thieves and criminals.” “They aren’t like us. They’re not like regular people.” “Look at how they live. Why would we allow people who choose to live that way to stay here?” “I don’t want my children going to school with them.” Does that ring any bells?

Seriously, how have we not come further in the past 90 years? How are we still having these conversations? And why do we feel the need to demonize people who may be different from us? The Grapes of Wrath just proved to me that we haven’t learned much at all in the last century.

Something that I really loved about Steinbeck’s writing was that this book was about the Joads, but in reality it was about every family that migrated west during the Great Depression. Every other chapter, the focus shifted away from the Joads and talked about things more generally. When Steinbeck writes the conversation between a family being kicked off their farm and the man who’s being paid to run a tractor through their home, it’s a conversation between unnamed characters. They don’t need names, because that same conversation happened in thousands of households all across the U.S. These sort of everyman chapters were really touching to me. They made everything seem bigger. The Joads were the stars of the story, but they weren’t anything special. Steinbeck highlights the fact that what happened to them was simultaneously happening to so many others. The Joads weren’t the exception. They were the rule.

I wasn’t a huge fan of most the characters themselves. Tom was okay, and his mother was a good woman, but everyone else just seemed to be making life harder for themselves. I guess that reflects real human experience. We’re not often saints who silently suffer our fates. We’re more often than not a bunch of idiots just trying to get by. But much as I have decided to unabashedly hate Soo-Lin Lee-Segal from Where’d You Go, Bernadette?, I want to inform you that the Joad’s youngest daughter, Ruthie, is the literal worst. I hate her character so much. I was an obnoxious twelve year old, but no child will ever be as awful as Ruthie Joad. That’s a hill I’m willing to die on.

Steinbeck really allows the women in this novel to shine. (Except for Ruthie. Ruthie’s awful.) As the men start to falter and lose their way, it’s the women who step up and get things done. Mother Joad, specifically, takes over as head of the family and makes sure that everyone is taken care of. The men grumble about it, but she stands up for herself and tells them that they’re more than welcome to lead the family, but someone’s got to if they won’t. I loved watching Mother Joad’s confidence grow throughout the novel. She was truly a force of nature. I wonder how many Mother Joads there were during that time period. I wonder how many Mother Joads there still are today.

Anyway, The Grapes of Wrath was for sure not an uplifting book, but I’m glad I read it. It put a lot of things in perspective and reminded me of the importance of treating all people with respect.

Happy Reading!

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Fairy Tale Retellings

“Someday you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.”

C.S. Lewis, The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe

I’ve been wanting to write a post about fairy tale retellings for a while now, and given the topic of last week’s post, I thought now was a good time to do it. First of all, if your only exposure to fairy tales is Disney, you’re not alone, but you’re missing out. Go ahead and read the fairy tales as written by The Brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Andersen, and Charles Perrault. Some of the stories will be mostly the way you remember them from the Disney movies, but you’ll find that some of them are very different. I remember the first time I read Hans Christian Andersen’s The Little Mermaid. I. Was. Shook.

Once you’ve done that, if you’re up for it, take a look at some fairy tale retellings. What I love about this particular genre is the fact that it’s simultaneously familiar and unique. It’s amazing how many interesting ways someone can tell the same story. The authors who write fairy tales are able to take a formula that everyone knows—Cinderella, for example—and make it new again. Interesting. Fresh. If that sounds fun to you, here are a few you could start with.

Beauty by Robin McKinley

Ever since I saw Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, this has been my favorite fairy tale, but it wasn’t until college that I read Robin McKinley’s version. I picked it up at the insistence of my roommate. It’s her favorite book, and she rereads it every year. She demanded that I read it, even loaning me her own dog-eared copy. I admit that I haven’t read it every year since then, but I went out of my way to buy a copy of my own. If you like this fairy tale, this is a version you should really pick up. It’s very sweet and extremely well-written.

Entwined by Heather Dixon

How is it that Disney hasn’t done a Twelve Dancing Princesses movie? This seems like a no-brainer. Anyway, if you’re a fan of the TDP, you should go ahead and read Entwined. It’s one of the most interesting takes on this fairy tale that I’ve ever read, with well-rounded characters, high stakes, and a super creepy villain. I loved this one.

The Princesses of Westfalin Trilogy by Jessica Day George

Jessica Day George is one of my favorite fairy tale authors. She writes some books that are for children, but these are more Young Adult and they’re super fun. Princess of the Midnight Ball is another Twelve Dancing Princesses retelling, Princess of Glass is, of course, Cinderella, and Princess of the Silver Woods is Little Red Riding Hood meets Robin Hood. They’re all just delightful.

PSA – Jessica Day George also wrote a retelling of East of the Sun, West of the Moon, a Norwegian fairy tale that’s kind of like Beauty and the Beast and kind of like the Cupid and Psyche myth. Her book is called Sun and Moon, Ice and Snow, and it’s excellent.

Just Ella by Margaret Peterson Haddix

I discovered this book in middle school. Maybe it’s the power of nostalgia, but I feel like it still holds up. This retelling of Cinderella asks the question, “What would happen if Cinderella found out that the prince was kind of an idiot and royal life was terrible?” It’s such an interesting take on the original tale with a heroine who exercises a tremendous amount of agency throughout the book. I just can’t sing the praises of this one enough. I actually just found out there’s a sequel, and you know it’s on my to-read list!

Stepsister by Jennifer Donnelly

I picked this one up kind of on a whim. I didn’t have super high expectations. I was mostly just hoping it would be an entertaining take on Cinderella. I didn’t expect moments of exquisite prose or brilliant flashes of insight. This book, written from the perspective of one of Cinderella’s stepsisters, allows anyone who has ever felt less than, or not enough, to feel seen. It’s one of the darker books on this list, but it’s well worth the read.

These are just some of my favorite fairy tale retellings, but they’re certainly not the only good ones I’ve read. My list is long. If you’ve read widely in this genre, what are some of your favorites? Let me know!

Happy Reading!

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Daughters of Eville Series, Chanda Hahn

“What is broken can be fixed.”

Chanda Hahn, Of Thorn and Thread

Because my last few reads have been quite heavy and intense, I decided I needed something lighter this week. I was also feeling under the weather. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to think too hard when I’m sick. So I was looking for something easy and fun when I stumbled across the Daughters of Eville series by Chanda Hahn.

I’m going to level with you. This series isn’t brilliant, but it’s cute. Perfect for reading when you’re sick. The premise is that there’s a woman, Lorelai Eville, who is wronged by the rulers of seven fantasy kingdoms. She vows revenge and raises a group of adopted daughters to be instruments of her vengeance. As you may have gathered from the titles, each book is a fairy tale retelling that highlights a different daughter. It’s an interesting concept, which is sometimes more compelling in theory than in actual execution. That said, it’s fun and entertaining, which is all that I was looking for this week!

Of Beast and Beauty centers on Rosalie, the eldest adopted daughter of Mother Eville. She’s taken to the kingdom of Baist to be wed to their prince, sight unseen. The prince is upset that he wasn’t able to wed the woman of his choice. He’s also heard rumors that Rosalie is a witch who will bewitch him if he looks upon her, so he insists that she wear a veil wherever she goes. Meanwhile, a murderous beast haunts the kingdom. This was honestly the strongest of the series, in my opinion. I felt like the themes of of prejudice and overcoming obstacles were well done. I also enjoyed Rosalie as a character. She took crap from no one.

Sadly, Of Glass and Glamour strikes me as the weakest of this series. It’s a Cinderella retelling with Eden Eville sometimes acting as Cinderella and sometimes as the fairy godmother. It has its moments, and I liked seeing Eden portrayed with having a lot of insecurities because I think that will resonate with people. While Rosalie is kicking butt and taking names, Eden is good at only one thing—magically changing her appearance. She grows throughout the book, but honestly, this one fell sort of flat for me.

Of Sea and Song was pretty fun. If you haven’t guessed it, it’s the Little Mermaid. Merisol goes on the run after she accidentally kills someone while trying to protect one of her sisters. She pretends to be a boy and joins the crew of a ship called the Bella Donna. When the Bella Donna anchors at a mysterious island, Meri finds herself making a deal with a sea witch in order to save the crew. This, of course, does not go well. It was a fun take on the classic story.

In Of Thorn and Thread, Aura Eville is an empath who is constantly bombarded by the thoughts and emotions of everyone around her. She joins with a knight from the kingdom of Rya to save his people from a mysterious blight that’s covered the land in fog and poisonous thorns. This book has some heavier topics, such as mental illness, human trafficking, and abuse. In some ways, this made for a nice change, but sometimes the way Chanda Hahn included these issues was a little clumsy. Still, a perfectly enjoyable Sleeping Beauty retelling.

These books turn a lot of the fairy tales on their heads. They’re not too faithful to the originals, so Hahn gave herself a lot of space to play around and make the stories more character driven. I was pleased that the overarching theme of the books is that sometimes what you think is evil is just misunderstood. As we get to know the daughters of Eville, feared throughout the seven kingdoms as evil witches, what we learn is that more often than not they’re trying to right wrongs and see justice done. They’re not simply seeking vengeance; they’re actively trying to make their world better.

That said, these books all suffer from massive instalove. In pretty much every book, the hero and the heroine hate each other until they’re suddenly violently in love and pledging eternal devotion. I rolled my eyes hard several times. In my opinion, Hahn missed the opportunity to develop those relationships in a more meaningful way. It’s not ideal, but it’s forgivable if you’re just looking for a fun read.

There should be three more books in the series focusing on the three remaining daughters: Maeve, Rhea, and Honor. The next book, Of Mist and Murder, is scheduled to be published on June 22, 2021. I’m planning on checking it out when it’s released.

Happy Reading!

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The Water Dancer, Ta-Nehisi Coates

“The tree of our family was parted – branches here, roots there – parted for their lumber.”

Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Water Dancer

Every once in a while, a writer comes along who can tell a good story in prose so exquisite that it makes you want to weep. It’s not purple prose. It’s not inflated and self-important. It’s just beautiful. Ta-Nehisi Coates is one of those authors. He has a true gift, and I’ve been privileged to read two of his books so far. I look forward to lots more.

The Water Dancer tells the story of Hiram Walker, the son of an enslaved woman and a plantation owner. He has what we’d probably call a photographic memory, but he can’t remember his mother. All he knows is that she was sold away when he was nine. Tied up with his lost memories is a mysterious power which saved him in the past, but which he struggles to understand and control. He will find that the bonds he forms, his love, his relationships, his memories, his past, all allow him to unlock the potential within himself.

What I loved about this book is how family-centered it is. Many of the historical novels I’ve read that deal with slavery focus on the cost of slavery to the individual. We read of cruel punishments, hard labor, rape, torture, and death. What I feel is missing in some of these novels, and what The Water Dancer illustrates so beautifully, is the cost of slavery to the enslaved family. The children ripped from parents. The parents torn from children. The spouses who never saw one another again. The people who spent the rest of their lives wondering where their brother or sister was, whether they were still alive.

What Ta-Nehisi Coates taught us in this book is that slavery didn’t just destroy individuals. It severed bonds. And even when the enslaved enjoyed times of relative peace, they knew that it couldn’t last. Every moment was poisoned by the thought that their children were not their own to keep. They could not protect them from the block, just as they couldn’t protect their husbands from the lash or their wives from the lusts of their enslavers. Coates paints the psychological pain of these atrocities in painstaking detail. Sometimes it’s difficult to read, but Coates demands that we do not look away.

The whole injunction of The Water Dancer is to remember. We, as individuals, as a nation, must remember. We must remember the people who were lost, the lives that were destroyed, the sins that were committed. I read an article recently that listed some of the major U.S. buildings that were built by the labor of enslaved people: Mount Vernon, Wall Street, the White House, the Capitol Building, the Smithsonian, Trinity Church, Harvard Law School. There are more. We live in a society that was literally built on the backs of people, men, women, and children, who had their lives and their families stolen from them. We forget this at our peril.

I’m not sure why I’ve been reading such heavy stuff lately, but it all seems important and it all seems incredibly urgent. I knew The Water Dancer couldn’t wait any longer. You’ve got to read this one. I know it’s hard, but we can’t look away. We’ve got to remember.

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Know My Name, Chanel Miller

“The judge had given Brock something that would never be extended to me: empathy. My pain was never more valuable than his potential.”

Chanel Miller, Know My Name

Let me tell you a story before I get into this review, and please be aware that this may be triggering if you’ve been the victim of a sexual assault. Honestly, this whole review may be triggering, so it may be better to skip this one if that’s something you’re sensitive about.

I had been married for a year, maybe two, when the women at my university started to be terrorized by a man we all called “The Groper.” It was a male student who would walk by, seemingly innocently, but then grab the body of a nearby woman, then take off running. We went to a pretty “safe” university, but there was a hill on the south of campus we all called “rape hill” because there had been a few assaults at night, and students were cautioned to avoid the area if they were walking alone. There were little signs and emergency telephones and everything. Even so, we felt pretty safe there. I’d never heard of anyone actually getting attacked until “The Groper” came on the scene. His assaults got bolder until he finally broke into some girls’ apartment. As far as I know, he didn’t harm them physically, but he robbed them of their feeling of safety.

At this time, my husband and I lived in a crappy little apartment near campus with a creepy parking garage, terrible lighting, and a few seedy neighbors. I was getting ready for work one morning and I asked my husband if he would walk me to my car since I was nervous about the parking garage with “The Groper” on the loose. He assured me that I’d be fine. He wasn’t dressed yet, it would be inconvenient, and there was really nothing to worry about after all. Now I don’t want you to hate on my husband, because he’s truly a caring and thoughtful partner, but in this situation he just didn’t understand how scary the situation was for me. I went to my car by myself clutching my keys between my fingers. I was fine. Nothing happened.

But that was the day that I realized just how different my experience of the world was from my husband’s. I lived in a world in which women carry pepper spray and hold their keys between their fingers like Wolverine. We avoid certain areas, especially at night, and try to never walk alone if we can avoid it. Meanwhile, my husband lived in a world in which he could pretty much go where he wanted without ever thinking about it. He’d never bought pepper spray. He’d never checked the backseat of his car for lurking danger. He could walk through a creepy parking garage and not give it a second thought. Since then, he’s learned about the sort of vigilance expected of women and why I act the way I do sometimes.

This sort of blindness is endemic to men in our society, I think. They tend not to see the ways in which women mold their lives around the possibility of sexual assault, and when they do see our precautions they mock us as being paranoid. That is, until a woman is assaulted, and then she was stupid for [fill in the blank.] She should have known better than to get drunk. She should have dressed more modestly. What was she doing walking alone at night? Why was she in such a rough part of town? What did she think was going to happen?

Chanel Miller’s incredible memoir, Know My Name, shines a glaring light on this type of attitude and shows us just how damaging it can be. For many years, I didn’t know Chanel’s name. I knew her as Emily Doe, Brock Turner’s victim. In this book, she courageously steps out, tells her story, and challenges the world to be better.

I can’t tell you how much I loved and hated this book. I hated the things that happened to her. I hated having to read about her assault and how the court system continually revictimized her over the course of years while Brock Turner fought his felony charges. I hated Chanel’s sleepless nights, her isolation, her pain. How her very hometown had been poisoned for her by Turner’s actions. I hated that the trial kept getting postponed, causing Chanel and her family to have to rearrange their schedules time and again to accommodate other people. I hated Stanford’s patronization of her, their too-late attempts to help her.

But I loved Chanel’s fighting spirit, how she was drowning but kept swimming toward the surface anyway. I loved her refusal to be silenced. How, when Stanford insisted she put a “hopeful, affirming” quote on the plaque in the memorial garden, she told them to just forget it. She’d rather say nothing at all than empty platitudes. I loved reading about the love of her family, the support of her friends, the steadiness of her boyfriend. There was beauty in the ugliness, and we’re privileged that she let us see it.

Chanel Miller is a talented writer. Period. She’s not a talented writer “for a rape victim,” or a talented writer “for someone so young.” She’s just good. Her voice is fresh and powerful, her words impactful. I listened to this on audiobook (which she narrated herself! Seriously, I don’t know how she got through it.) and I found myself whispering her words to myself to try to remember them.

Can I share some of my favorite quotes with you? I know I’m gushing, but I just want everyone to read at least some of her words.

“When a woman is assaulted, one of the first questions people ask is, Did you say no? This question assumes that the answer was always yes, and that it is her job to revoke the agreement. To defuse the bomb she was given. But why are they allowed to touch us until we physically fight them off? Why is the door open until we have to slam it shut?”

“I did not come into existence when he harmed me. She found her voice! I had a voice, he stripped it, left me groping around blind for a bit, but I always had it. I just used it like I never had to use it before. I do not owe him my success, becoming, he did not create me. The only credit Brock can take is for assaulting me, and he could never even admit to that.”

“What we needed to raise in others was this instinct. The ability to recognize, in an instant, right from wrong. The clarity of mind to face it rather than ignore it. I learned that before they had chased Brock, they had checked on me. Masculinity is often defined by physicality, but that initial kneeling is as powerful as the leg sweep, the tackling. Masculinity is found in the vulnerability, the crying.”

This book isn’t an easy read. If you don’t have the mental or emotional space to read it right now, that’s okay. But someday, if you’re feeling up to it, I really want you to pick this one up. Especially if you’re a man. Not so you can feel guilty, but so you can understand. So you can see the importance of being one of the Swedish bicyclists who saved Chanel, not the gross Freshman taking advantage of her behind a dumpster. So you can be the elderly man manning the booth to get signatures for the judge’s recall, not the judge who gave a young man six months (actually three, because of good behavior) for sexually assaulting a woman because he was more worried about the cost of accountability for the rapist than about the damage to the victim.

Be better.

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A Study in Scarlet Women, Sherry Thomas

“Please don’t think that my circumstances stand between me and a full stomach.” At least not until lately. “It has been all for vanity, of course. I can sustain somewhere between one point five and one point six chins. But the moment I have more than that, my looks suffer catastrophically.”

Mrs. Jebediah laughed, startled. “But surely you exaggerate, my dear.”

“I assure you I do not. Via scientific trials, I have determined the precise weight, to the ounce, at which the shape of my face changes to my detriment.”

Sherry Thomas, A Study in Scarlet Women

I think my love of the Sherlock Holmes type started when I watched The Great Mouse Detective as a child. If you haven’t watched it, you must. Now. That was my first exposure to the concept of a brilliant, slightly mad detective and his stalwart doctor friend. As an adult, I discovered Benedict Cumberbatch’s Sherlock and Martin Freeman’s Watson. They remain my absolute favorite incarnation of the duo. But never before have I encountered a female Sherlock and a female Watson. I never knew what I was missing until Sherry Thomas’s A Study in Scarlet Women.

The thing I really enjoyed about this book was the fact that, when Thomas reinvented Sherlock Holmes as a woman, she didn’t just slap a dress on Arthur Conan Doyle’s hero. Instead, she made thoughtful and relevant changes to the character, transitioning Sherlock to Charlotte in a way that makes sense. Charlotte Holmes (alias Sherlock, when assisting Scotland Yard) has all of the original’s brilliance, but with a femininity that is neither forced nor false. And Thomas doesn’t ignore the fact that Sherlock Holmes would have a much more difficult time operating as a woman in Victorian England. She acknowledges the obstacles that could stop Charlotte from reaching her full potential and gives her the tools she needs to overcome those obstacles. All together, it makes for a very believable female Sherlock.

I also loved female Watson. In this case, Watson isn’t a retired army doctor, but a retired stage performer. It works very well for the character, and I loved Thomas’s take on Sherlock’s sidekick. What really worked about Watson in this capacity is that she’s able to take on the role of surrogate mother, business partner, and cheerleader for Charlotte. Whereas the original Doctor Watson, while useful, is mostly just there to be in awe of Sherlock, Thomas’s Mrs. Watson helps Charlotte realize the worth of her gifts. She helps Charlotte see what’s possible. It makes the relationship seem more even, gives it a feeling of give-and-take that’s missing in the original.

The plot, while good, was secondary to the character development here. You get a good mystery. I hadn’t a clue who the killer was until it was revealed at the end. It’s a satisfying read. But what I cared about most was Charlotte, Mrs. Watson, and Livia (Charlotte’s beloved sister). I cared about how Charlotte and Mrs. Watson were going to keep pulling off their charade. I cared about how Charlotte was going to help Livia escape the confines of her life with their parents. I cared about whether Charlotte was going to be able to remain free of male influence, living her life as she saw fit.

Really, I just loved this book. It kept me hooked from beginning to end. If you’re in the mood for a feminist, feminine, female Sherlock Holmes (no, those aren’t synonyms), pick this one up. I’m so excited to get my hands on the next one.

Happy Reading!

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The Mother-in-Law, Sally Hepworth

Who are we after we’re gone? I wonder. It’s a good question to ponder. Most people can’t come up with an answer right away. They frown, consider it for a minute. Maybe even sleep on it. Then the answers start to come. We’re our children. Our grandchildren. Our great-grandchildren. We’re all the people who will go on to live, because we lived. We are our wisdom, our intellect, our beauty, filtered through generations, continuing to spill into the world and make a difference.

Sally Hepworth, The Mother-in-Law

While men and women the world over bemoan their fate when they think of their mother-in-law, I have to say that I can’t join them. I’m being honest when I say that my mother-in-law is wonderful. Of course, she’s human and therefore imperfect, but she’s a lovely person who welcomed me into her family and her heart, no questions asked. (Well, a few questions asked. I was about to marry her son, after all.)

That said, I know that I’m one of the lucky ones and that not everyone has a warm—or even cordial—relationship with their mother-in-law. The Mother-in-Law by Sally Hepworth tells the story of one such individual, Lucy, whose mother-in-law Diana is a pillar of the community but quite cold towards her daughter-in-law. This all becomes very relevant when Diana winds up dead of an apparent suicide, but inconsistencies at the scene make investigators suspicious that she may have actually been murdered. Who would want to kill Diana? Maybe the daughter-in-law who’d been butting heads with her for years.

This is a murder mystery, and it’s a pretty good one at that. I certainly didn’t see the ending coming, although in retrospect it all became very clear. But I didn’t like this book only because of a decent mystery. I enjoyed it most because at its core it’s the story of two women who just don’t understand one another. If you read this, you’ll find that neither Lucy nor Diana has bad intentions when it comes to their relationship. Sure, they both do stupid things, but neither one of them is malicious about it. They’re just two very different people bound by marriage who have to rub along together and figure it out. I think that that scenario is true to life for many in-law relationships.

“Someone once told me that you have two families in your life—the one you are born into and the one you choose. But that’s not entirely true, is it? Yes, you may get to choose your partner, but you don’t, for instance, choose your children. You don’t choose your brothers- or sisters-in-law, you don’t choose your partner’s spinster aunt with the drinking problem or cousin with the revolving door of girlfriends who don’t speak English. More importantly, you don’t choose your mother-in-law. The cackling mercenaries of fate determine it all.”

Sally Hepworth, The Mother-in-Law

When I was first starting to seriously look for a life partner, my mom warned me to pay attention to the man’s family. “You don’t just marry the man,” she told me. “You marry the family, too.” It’s true, and for every daughter- or son-in-law who loves their spouse’s parents, there’s another who can barely stand their presence long enough to white-knuckle it through a holiday meal. I feel like The Mother-in-Law speaks to how hard those relationships can be while also giving hope that even ties that you think may be permanently broken can be fixed.

I can’t say that I’ve ever cried at a murder mystery before, but I cried hard toward the end of The Mother-in-Law. If you’re in the mood for a mystery with a heavy dose of family drama, give this one a try. I think you’ll like it.

Happy Reading!

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Reading Goals for the New Year

“He loved books, those undemanding but faithful friends.”

Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

Every year, Goodreads (which is by far my favorite social media) invites its users to set a reading goal. It’s a fun way to keep yourself accountable, to push yourself to pick up a new book, and to give yourself a feeling of accomplishment at the end of each year.

I’ve participated since 2013, and I usually meet my goal. One year in particular, I was a recently married college student taking several challenging courses and working two internships. Because of my Goodreads reading goal, I was spending most of my free time reading. I was behind on my goal, but I was determined to meet it. I would come home from work, make dinner, finish my schoolwork, and immediately retreat into a book.

My husband never once complained, but I know that he often wanted to spend time with me and was rejected in favor of a book. One day I was holed up in our bedroom reading when I suddenly wondered what it was all for. Why was I, a new wife very much in love with her husband, spending all of my time reading instead of being with the person I’d chosen to spend my life with? What was I gaining?

Reading had come to feel like another assignment instead of a happy pastime. I was certainly enjoying the books I read, but there was an element of obligation to it that I didn’t like. I asked myself why the reading goal was so important. What would happen if I didn’t meet my goal? The answer was nothing. I’d still read a substantial number of books that year. I’d broadened my horizons and gone on some amazing literary adventures. I decided then and there that enough was enough.

I didn’t make my goal that year, and honestly it was fine. I’ve continued to participate in Goodreads’ reading challenge. Sometimes I make it. Sometimes I don’t. I’ve decided that the goal is just that—a goal. It’s not mandatory. It’s not even that important. It’s just something to shoot for. That decision has allowed me the flexibility to spend time doing the things that are important to me. Sometimes that’s reading and sometimes it’s not. Does that mean I love books any less? I don’t think so.

Happy reading and Happy New Year!

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The Nickel Boys, Colson Whitehead

“To forbid the thought of escape, even that slightest butterfly thought of escape, was to murder one’s humanity.”

Colson Whitehead, The Nickel Boys

A few years ago, I was driving through Marianna, Florida when we passed by a piece of property that felt wrong. That’s the only way I can describe it. It just felt wrong. I asked my husband what it was, and he shrugged. Neither of us are from Marianna. We didn’t know. I found out later that it was the Dozier School for Boys, the reform school that Colson Whitehead’s The Nickel Boys is based on.

The Nickel Boys is not a happy book. It follows Elwood Curtis, a bright, idealistic Black boy from Tallahassee. Elwood is on track to go to college and make his grandma proud, but being in the wrong place at the wrong time lands him instead at the Nickel Academy. It’s supposed to be a place to mold troubled boys into productive young men. Instead, it’s a living hell in which the boys are ground down, twisted and bent in ways that they’ll never escape even long after they’ve left Nickel behind.

Elwood and his friend Turner are both fictional characters, but Colson Whitehead borrowed heavily from the experiences of men who had attended the real-life Dozier School. Knowing that gives this book a real/not real feeling. On the one hand, there was no Elwood Curtis, but on the other hand, there were hundreds of Elwood Curtises. Hundreds and thousands of boys, black and white, who were beaten, raped, humiliated, tortured, and even killed at the very institution that was supposed to help them find their way in life. All while the surrounding community looked the other way.

What struck me the most was the thought, “What are today’s Nickel Academies. Where are the Dozier Schools of my time? What modern atrocities do I turn a blind eye to?” We like to think about stuff like this—people being mistreated and beaten by government officials—as something that happened in the distant past. That that sort of thing happened in the ’40s during the Holocaust, or during the ’60s in the Jim Crow South, but not today. All of the pictures of Martin Luther King Jr. are in black and white, after all. But the hard truth is that these things weren’t all that long ago, and they’re still happening today. We need look no further than the U.S. border with Mexico to see examples of children being mistreated. We can walk the streets of any city in America and see examples of Black men and women being dehumanized by those who are supposed to serve and protect. These things still happen. I guess it’s up to us to decide whether we, like the fictional citizens of Eleanor, Florida (or the real citizens of Marianna), are going to look the other way.

The Nickel Boys is intense—lots of violence, lots of swearing—but its a story that needs to be told. I hope you’ll pick it up when you’ve got the mental space to deal with a really heavy topic. In the meantime, take a look at The Official White House Boys to learn more. This is the website put together by the real survivors of the Dozier School.

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Where’d You Go, Bernadette?

“This is why you must love life: one day you’re offering up your social security number to the Russian Mafia; two weeks later you’re using the word calve as a verb.”

Maria Semple, Where’d You Go, Bernadette?

A couple of years ago, I saw a trailer for a new Cate Blanchett movie titled Where’d You Go, Bernadette? It looked mildly interesting, so I looked up more about it and discovered that it was based off of a book of the same name by Maria Semple. I shelved it on Goodreads and went on my way. It was only this past week that I finally got around to reading it, and I’m so glad I did.

Bernadette Fox is a creative genius living a humdrum suburban existence in Seattle complete with all of the irritating minutiae that comes with it. Her neighbors hate her, her house is crumbling, and her husband is concerned that she’s losing her mind. One day, she disappears, and her daughter sets out on a journey to find her. If that makes it sound like a run-of-the-mill quest plot, let me assure you that it’s not. In fact, the search only takes up the last little bit of the book. Most of the book is spent showing us how Bernadette got to this point.

The story is told mostly through letters and emails, which I usually hate. I just don’t like epistolary novels, but the format worked for this particular plot.

This book has several wonderful things going for it. First, it addresses the issue of mental illness in a way that shines light on it without making fun of it, downplaying it, or romanticizing it. It also shows how mental health isn’t an exact science. Throughout the book, I vacillated between being convinced that Bernadette was having a major breakdown to being sure that everyone was exaggerating that there was nothing wrong with her. Maria Semple did a great job of showing situations from various perspectives while maintaining that air of mystery around Bernadette. Even when you see what happened clearly, you’re never sure that you are seeing it clearly. It was fascinating and very well done.

I also liked the fact that, for once, a woman has a problem that has nothing at all to do with her body. In fact, I don’t remember female bodies being discussed much at all in this book. There is some talk of miscarriage and the resultant feelings of loss and depression, but I can’t think of a single instance of a woman in this book talking about her weight or her looks. Even the teenage girls talk about other things. There was also zero discussion about sexual assault. I’ve often remarked that it seems like rape sells in literature. If something bad happened in a woman’s past, it almost always seems like it ends up being rape. I was almost certain that that’s where this was heading, and I was delighted to find that that wasn’t the case. The fact that the focus of Bernadette’s discontent was her career instead of her body was simply a breath of fresh air.

The characters in this book almost universally behave badly; no one comes off looking all that great. That said, Where’d You Go, Bernadette? has a theme of second chances. People who you thought were beyond redemption turn around and surprise you. Everyone gets a shot to make things right, and they mostly take it. It made for an uplifting read.

However, there was one character who I can’t get behind. Soo-Lin Lee-Segal. I hated Soo-Lin. She was just the worst. A deluded, conniving, myopic, opportunistic little tramp. You could argue that she gets her redemption, too, but I didn’t accept it. If she were a real person I’d have to allow for the fact that everyone should get a second chance, but as a character in a book I’m free to hate her.

Anyway, you should give Where’d You Go, Bernadette? a shot. I think you’ll like it.

Happy Reading!