AUG - The Revolution of Marina M

August review for Book Riot's Read Harder 2018: The Revolution of Marina M by Janet Fitch, 2017. [BRICS country category - Russia]


{note--there will be general spoilers...}

The Revolution of Marina M is one of those books whose covers I saw a lot and stuck in my head until I finally picked it out. (Can we talk about the infuriating placement of library bar codes though? Since when is finding somewhere not blocking some cover content so hard??) A straight-backed, red-haired girl in profile, arms folded confidently and fingers splayed as she grips her own arm. This book tells the story of Marina, an upper-class Russian daughter of a government official who is mixed up (as is all of Russia, really) in the 1917 Russian Revolution and the downfall of the tsar. Fitch plots the revolution through the eyes of one sixteen-year-old girl, seeing purely what she sees of the revolution, how it affects her personal bubble, rather than the large-scale international repercussions.

Marina has occasion to be so many different women throughout her own personal revolution. She starts as the socialite and slips into the revolution by supplying her radical best friend with information about her father's dealings. She is a spy and a starving poet and a factory worker and a prisoner and a wife and a con woman and a follower and a revolutionary and an individual. She says often near the end, that she is "tired of Rooms." She goes on to tell how the rooms defined her relationships to the different people, different lovers, different parts of her life. Her childhood apartments and her relationship with her parents; the Poverty Artel where she moves in with her destitute poet lover and sleeps fully clothed and louse-ridden; the room where Kolya, her childhood crush, takes her when he returns and they stay for three nights of sex and food and abandon; the apartment where she is imprisoned by a mobster; the planetarium to which she escapes and spends a summer as a mute peasant girl; the prison where she is taken when picked up by the police; her best friend's room where she gives in and sleeps with a woman to repay her for saving her life; the old country house that she escapes to only to find it has been overrun by her mother's new-age cult friends. Each room is tied to a person: both a person who controls Marina and the person Marina is in that room, and on the last page of the novel, we end on Marina leaving, walking out into the air and a new start.

I think I could talk forever about my love for Marina's poetics. She uses phrases like "loping iambs and foot-dragging dactyls" to describe the works she immerses herself in. She talks of the difference of placing "word next to word" and creating meaning versus simply stringing sounds together, how old stories make her feel and how poets make the most excellent spies. Contrary to what one might think, Marina's revolution does not come with the publication of her work: in fact, that is where she starts, with her father arranging a small collection of her work, and she has to fight to keep it burning inside her as the revolution threatens to tear it out with her heart with every new tragedy. Not to mention her fire, her sexuality, her verve--I found that I met Marina as a friend, though our stories are worlds and years apart.

Janet Fitch wrote at the end of the book, "research was the oxygen in the water of this novel," and that thrilled me. I have long harbored a desire for writing historical fiction, as it takes a story like this to really cement history for me. I like to learn history through a person's eyes who has lived it, not by memorizing dates in a textbook. Never again will I forget that the Russian Revolution took place in 1917, and I am thrilled to learn that it is only one half of a two-part tale so I can learn more! Now that I'm not in school where I have to prove my knowledge in history essay exams (which give me terrible anxiety), I think I'd like to try my hand at writing a historical fiction project of my own. Marina has inspired me.

JUL - The Neverending Story

July review for Book Riot's Read Harder 2018: The Neverending Story by Michael Ende, translated from German by Ralph Mannheim, 1979. [children's classic published before 1980 category]

The Neverending Story! I grew up on this movie. I wanted a Falkor so bad when I was little, and I used to call my old dog Luck Dragon because she looked pretty similar, if I do say so myself. As I'm sure many a reader of this book was, I was surprised to learn that the 1984 film only covered the first half of the book! Which in all honesty is totally fine with me, because second-half Bastian suuuuuucked. But we'll get to that. The Neverending Story is a book about a small boy named Bastian who is bullied and escapes his tormentors by hiding in a bookshop one day. He meets an old, cryptic man who is sort of mean but leaves a tantalizing book open, and Bastian feels called to it, so he steals it (like you do) and locks himself in the school attic to read all day. (And you wonder why this story appealed to me. Minus the bullying.)

Bastian gets caught up in the story and slowly realizes that him reading the story is part of the story (the original postmodern mindfuck), but can't bring himself to help the Childlike Empress, a fact that they wisely revised in the film. In the book, Bastian gets transported to Fantasia and meets the characters he fell in love with as he ventures. He is gifted with the Childlike Empress's amulet, but using its power comes with a price: he slowly loses the memories he had of being human on Earth. Coincidentally, with the loss of those memories, he sucks more and is ruder and ruder to the people he calls his friends and I was very upset with him. There is clearly some moral coding going on here, as he has to eventually make the decision to return home even though he more and more wants to give up the life he has forgotten and stay in Fantasia as the most powerful thing around.

One thing I loved stylistically about this book was the illuminated alphabet for the chapter titles! There were 26 chapters, and each started with the subsequent letter of the alphabet, illuminated in a full-page illustration that tied into the chapter's narrative. Some of the more difficult letters felt a little stilted, but it was helpful that in a fantasy world you can make up character names that start with X! Another was the repeated intrusion of the Real World into the book, what with phrases like "but that is a long story for another time."

I love stories about stories that take you places, and I did like this book, for the most part. It just dragged on a lot longer than I think it needed to. But who knows, maybe it was better in German!

National Coming Out Day

Feminist Apparel

Today, October 11, 2017, is National Coming Out Day. I have a lot of feelings about National Coming Out Day. I have happy feelings because I love seeing the diversity and strength of this community that I have found. I am an out queer woman who is engaged to another woman and has had past relationships with both men and women. I am proud that I can say that and not fear for my job or my personal relationships, but I know that it is not always the case.

I never really "came out" to my parents in any official way. I had broken up with my then-boyfriend of five years, and I just sort of intimated that I had a new crush, and that this one was maybe sorta on a girl. My parents took it in stride, not getting bogged down with "well, what do you call yourself now" or "what has changed to make this a thing," two of the most tired and sad questions anyone can face when they opt for such vulnerability. Because honestly, I didn't know what I was calling myself but I knew that I had always sort of been that way. I had just been conditioned to ride the hetero train and didn't necessarily question the broader implications until recently.

I am incredibly lucky to have had a mind-blowingly supportive family and friend structure who has made this shift in my life not such a big deal. The thing about that is, not everyone has that option. Some people can't come out or won't come out or do not want to come out. The thing about "coming out" is that it assumes that out is the norm, the good, the appropriate place. It reinforces the idea that there is a norm--generally cis and hetero--and if you do not fit that norm, if you are something "other," you are required to disclose that, over and over again, to the world. In Cameron Esposito's Queery podcast this week, she talked to Rebecca Sugar (creator of Steven Universe, the best queer show on TV), who is an out bisexual. Cameron makes the analogy of going to a bagel shop and ordering two bagels, to which the worker responds, heteronormatively, "Oh, takin one home for the boyfriend?" There are two options: One, you are disingenuous and play along, getting through the interaction; or two, you essentially come out to this bagel shop worker even though this information has nothing to do with the completion of your interaction. Because coming out is not just one single thing. As a friend pointed out today, you don't just automatically get a rainbow above your head from then on to denote you as LGBTQIA+ like the Sims. The choice to come out and live authentically is constant and heart-wrenching and complicated. 

I hope some day just being visible will be enough. I hope that some day there wont be an assumed normal. I hope one day that coming out won't be necessary. But for right now, I understand the celebration in those who can.

JUN - Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe

June review for Book Riot's Read Harder 2017: Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Sáenz, 2012. [YA by an LGBTQ+ author category]



First of all, let me just say how glad I am that this is a category, and in addition how glad I was that I had options for my choice. I read a few queer-adjacent texts in my youth, but nothing that really spoke to me and prodded at the little place inside me that would fire up later. I ended up choosing Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe on a close friend's recommendation; I had originally thought of choosing a lesbian or bisexual girl's story, as that is more my narrative, and I might've been able to see how I would've reacted reading it when I was YA myself, but I ultimately decided to move outside of my narrative and read about two high school boys who fall in love. 

Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe is about Ari (short for Aristotle) and Dante and the summer they meet. They are, in most every respect, total opposites, but somehow they forge a bond between them. The story is entirely from Ari's perspective and follows his life both with and without Dante, once Dante moves to Chicago for 9 months. It was a nice read, primarily internal monologue that I didn't hate from a 16 year old boy. During one of their early hangs out in the desert, Dante brings his telescope and they look at the stars, and Dante whispers, "Someday, I'm going to discover all of the secrets of the universe." The title phrase becomes a refrain in Ari's mind throughout their relationship, an idea he returns to again and again throughout his recovery and maturation. I think the most bold-strokes answer to the secrets of the universe is unequivocal love, and I am so glad that the author, Benjamin Alire Sáenz, was able to stop being afraid and share it.

There wasn't one big brilliant revelatory "I AM GAY" moment, just a collection of feelings. In fact, it is Ari's parents who gently assert that he has fallen in love with Dante at the end of the book; it is their words, not his own, that prompt him to go find his best friend and kiss him (again). This fits well with my own experience. I had always quietly considered myself a little bisexual, but I was in a committed heterosexual relationship for 5 years with a man, when a woman transferred to my derby league with whom I formed a very deep connection. We were both in relationships (hers with a woman) and I didn't think I was exactly gay, but as time moved on we both came to realize that we couldn't just be friends; there was something more. A whole lot of messiness and heartbreak came after that, things that I hope did not follow for Ari and Dante, but I found my way through and am now in a committed and loving relationship with the woman of my dreams. There was no single flashbulb moment for me when I realized I was in love WITH A WOMAN; it just sort of happened. I am glad that there exists now queer literature by queer-identifying people that can tell that story. I hope to add to that story in my own way, some day soon. 

DEC - Sweetbitter

December review for Eclectic Reader's Challenge 2016: Sweetbitter by Stephanie Danler, 2016. [Debut Author 2016 category]

Whenever I have a "best of the year" or "new this year" kind of category, I tend to leave it toward the latter half of the challenge, and this time was no exception. I waited until December for my debut author category, and as I was walking around my favorite Minneapolis bookstore when I was there for Thanksgiving, I found Sweetbitter by Stephanie Danler.

Sweetbitter is the sort of coming-of-age story for the narrator (whose name we are told is Tess but we often forget...at least I did...) as she transplants herself to New York City and ends up talking her way into a job as a backwaiter at a swanky downtown restaurant. I had a brief brush with restaurant life last summer, and although it was only as a host, I still felt a sort of kinship with Tess and the headiness of that life. (Except for the cocaine. I never did cocaine like Tess did.) The stress and quickness foster a sort of familial connection between the staff members, one I can only imagine being pivotal at 22 years old and freshly new to the city, as Tess is. Sweetbitter chronicles her traversal through the seasons of her first year in New York, a frenetic bacchanal of sorts where she soaks up her new world and relearns all her senses. 

A lot of Tess's education in the restaurant is about wine. I wish I knew more about wine, I wish I'd had the kind of tutelage she experiences under Simone's hawkish eye. I drank up every description, every phrase, and I was especially interested in the concept of "terroir." Terroir is defined as the complete natural environment in which a particular wine is produced, including factors like soil and climate. These contextual characteristics lend the wine a character of its own, past the definitions of its environment, and Sweetbitter explores the metaphorical idea of a person having their own "terroir." The contextual clues that make up a person, that shape them and define them and cage them. Sweetbitter felt like an attempt to define Tess's new terroir: she says on the second page, "Let's say I was born in late June of 2006 when I came over the George Washington Bridge at seven a.m.," focusing on a new life, a new person, a new environment. After my own year of change, thinking about my own terroir is enthralling, and Sweetbitter has helped me to do just that. 

Danler is poetic and her turn of phrase enticing, but the slightly flawed and flat characters took away slightly from my enjoyment of the language. All in all, though, a lovely florid read to end my 2016. 

SEPT - The Underground Girls of Kabul

September review for Eclectic Reader's Challenge 2016: The Underground Girls of Kabul by Jenny Nordberg, 2014. [Investigative Journalism category]

Once upon a time, investigative journalism was something that I was very interested in pursuing as a career path. The most salient definition of "investigative journalism" that I could find during my search for a book of this genre delineated it as, "a form of journalism in which reporters deeply investigate a single topic of interest to shed light on a specific issue, such as crime or social justice." For Jenny Nordberg, that specific issue is the bacha posh. Nordberg's book The Underground Girls of Kabul: In Search of a Hidden Resistance in Afghanistan examines the bacha posh, a phrase translated from Dari as "dressed up like a boy" that is used as sort of a blanket term for the phenomenon of girls being disguised as boys in Afghanistan. (I use the passive voice here because it is generally not a decision made by the girls themselves, although there are exceptions. Usually the decision is made by the parents who have not borne a male heir and desire the social stability and visibility granted by having a male child.) Nordberg paints a compelling portrait of a number of these bacha posh who have undergone--and maintained--the disguise for varied reasons, shining a light into a heretofore unexamined corner of Afghan culture. 

I was immediately intrigued by this study, but I couldn't help a niggling discomfort that underscored my intrigue: what rights does Nordberg have to tell this story? This is, ostensibly, a tender subject and practice in a society that is notably difficult for girlhood, and I was uncomfortable with the author's insertion of herself into the issue. But early on, Nordberg establishes that her primary subject, a parliamentarian named Azita who chose the bacha posh life for her daughter, has given permission to tell her story (p25), saying "It could be interesting for people. This is the reality of Afghanistan." Nordberg, a Swedish journalist, broke the story to the New York Times in 2010 and spent years developing personal accounts and researching cultural and historical aspects of this practice. Her book lays out a number of different bacha posh experiences, probing the question of whether bacha posh exists as a kind of third gender or if it challenges the idea of a gender binary altogether--personally I wish more space had been given to this particular discussion, as it stands it is only brought up toward the end of the book through Zahra, a teenage bacha posh who is resistant to returning to her "girl state," but I suppose there is only so much one can ask from a broad investigative text. 

One section that resonated me in particular was Nader's story, a bacha posh who has continued the lifestyle into adulthood, who now runs what amounts to a literal underground meeting of like-minded individuals, practicing tae kwon do and "her own brand of organized resistance" (p217). When asked about the importance of her athletic endeavor, Nader replies about subversion and controversy, but also notes the following: 

"But it is also because when we use our bodies, we do not feel weak anymore. When a girl feels the strength of her body, she knows she can do other things, too." (p217)

Realizing one's own strength is especially poignant for me as a woman who has come into her own through the discovery of roller derby and commitment to a lifting regime, a woman who has learned how to use her body, albeit in a safer space than the tumultuous social landscape that is womanhood in a Middle Eastern society.  I recognize that any attempt I make to identify with this story is paltry in terms of privilege and social histories, but it is a small thing that I can build upon, some small measure of connection that feels important in the current climate.

JUN - The Secret of Lost Things

June review for Eclectic Reader's Challenge 2016: The Secret of Lost Things by Sheridan Hay, 2007. [Book about Books category]

Picking a book about books is possibly the hardest category I've had to do. I only landed on The Secret of Lost Things really because I was down to the wire--past the wire, really--and it was on my To Be Read bookshelf and it seemed perfect. I have difficulty with decisions, ok? As has often happened with this challenge, this book found me exactly when I needed it: The Secret of Lost Things is about a girl who recently lost her mother and packs her life up to move from Tasmania to New York to try to find her way on her own and ends up employed at a strange and labyrinthine book emporium named The Arcade.

Rosemary Savage is young and naive and she makes a lot of mistakes by the end, but she is unabashedly trying to find her place in the world. She works hard for what she wants, even if those things are a little misguided, but she is pretty sublimely unapologetic for most of her decisions. She has experienced such loss, loss of her mother and her home and her country, and she cuts herself loose from the tenuous links she has after that loss to move forward. She is shoved forward by her friend and mother-surrogate Chaps, who buys her plane ticket, but once there she pushes forward on her own. Rosemary creates her own space, makes herself a new home all her own in a little run-down apartment, something that I have been working on for the past few months, making my space my home again after all the shifting I've undergone. Rosemary's description of her new apartment struck me, the timbre of it, talking about surrounding yourself with small things that make you smile to foment an aura of homeliness.

Books about books are possibly some of my favorite books to read. The Shadow of the Wind is one of my all-time favorite books and Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore rocketed to the top of the list as well when I found it a few years ago. I could list all my favorite books about books forever and still have more to talk about. The Secret of Lost Things does fall into this beloved category, and I enjoyed it, but I don't think it will be joining the ranks of my favorites. It had all the makings of a favorite, but somehow failed to deliver.  Being a coming-of-age story as well at heart, it makes sense that not everything was resolved or defined at the end (I did like that parallel), but I thought I'd signed up for a literary mystery and I was left lacking and a little disconcerted at the end. I did love learning about Melville and the possibility of a lost story, and I was excited to do a little research of my own on the matter, but I was left wanting more. I suppose that isn't the worst way to be left at the end of a book, and I am going to funnel that wanting into my To Be Read pile, and thank The Secret of Lost Things for what it gave me when I needed it.

MAY - Station Eleven

May review for Eclectic Reader's Challenge 2016: Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel, 2014. [Disaster Fiction category]

When I read Station Eleven walking home from work one day, a girl passed me running the other direction. As she came abreast of me, she called, "Is that book any good? I want to read it!" She turned her head as she ran past for my answer, and I turned to walk backwards and call back to her that I loved it so far. Station Eleven elicited many such interactions with both friends and strangers whilst I read it, and it is one that I am looking forward to discussing. It is a book that makes you think, makes you imagine, makes you connect. My derby sister, Emilie, bought it for me for my birthday, one in a kick of post-apocalypse books she's devoured lately. I figured that a freak plague-driven-apocalypse certainly counted as disaster fiction, and hungrily added it to my Eclectic Reader list. {I will note that it's possible there are spoilers in this post, but it's hard to write about it without because the book offers its own spoilers as it moves from time to time, so it's not my fault this time!}

Station Eleven is about a lot of things. It is about a lot of times. The gist is that there was an inexplicable plague that sprang up and killed a significant chunk of the population, and the book bounces around between the night it began, the years before, and Years Since. There are a number of characters who serve as constellation points whose connections slowly come into focus as the story moves--well, not forward, due to the non-linear scattered-jigsaw way it is written, and it reminded me of Jennifer Egan's masterpiece A Visit From The Goon Squad in that way. I even drew up a character connections map, like I did for Goon Squad! (Yes, I'm a nerd, we all know this already.) The first thing Emilie asked me when I told her I'd finished was who my favorite character was, a surprisingly hard question! The two frontrunners were obviously Miranda, the shipping mogul ex-wife of an actor, and Kirsten, and the traveling actor survivalist, respectively. After much consideration, I think I rank Miranda as my #1, not solely because she was the author of the titular Station Eleven comic, but also because she epitomizes getting knocked down and standing back up again stronger--even if it means eventually ending up alone on a Malaysian beach at the end of the world wondering if that is all. I do love Kirsten, of course, as she is a survivor with a Star Trek tattoo ("Survival is Insufficient") and a player in the Shakespeare traveling theater company, but there was a way that she felt too distant from me for me to really mark her as my favorite. 

I think the reason this book resonated so much with me in the same way that Goon Squad  did is that it is primarily about people. The resilience of human souls when faced with the utter unknown, and how their failings and successes are equally important. I have been thinking a lot about resilience lately, albeit on a smaller scale than fight-or-flight having to survive a world-ending flu, and it is stories like this that remind me of how simple and beautiful resilience can be. Stories like this that remind me that I'm ok, and that I too can find and share and tell stories that will make others feel that they are ok, too. 

Mental Toughness and Roller Derby

A few weeks back, I had a really terrible scrimmage night. I was trying new things every jam but none of them were working, and I felt like I was in the penalty box more than I was on the track. I couldn't shake anything off, couldn't leave any jam behind. Each trip around the ref lane piled on the next until I almost burst, snapping at the three different NSOs who told me I was soon to foul out of scrimmage. I couldn't let it go, and every time I took the track again after leaving the sin bin, I came in too hot, guns blazing, something to prove, which inevitably landed me right back where I started for another sit-down.

Everybody knows that everybody has bad days. You know it, but that doesn't always mean you can convince yourself of it in the midst of one, especially if you are prone to anxiety and overthinking like I am. It takes a certain skill set to be able to take a deep breath and evaluate what is making you feel bad in the moment, rather than later after a shower and a beer and some time apart. That skill set has often been referred to as "mental toughness," or the ability to roll with the punches when your brain gets to kicking its own ass.

Roller derby has taught me how to translate this mental toughness into the way I deal with problems or all-around just shitty days in my everyday life. Mental toughness is something athletes talk about a lot, not just in roller derby. My team has recently passed around a copy of Mind Gym to that effect, a book about inner excellence in athletics. This season, I’ve been trying to figure out what it means to be on the teams that I’m on, and how to find my next steps in my derby career. One of the ways I’ve been trying to do that is by assessing what derby has taught me so far. Roller derby has taught me that you can do anything for two minutes. And then on to the next two minutes. Roller derby has taught me that when that whistle blows, either to start or to end the jam, everything else can (and should) fall away. Roller derby has taught me how to recenter myself in the midst of the chaos, because in gameplay you can't escape for a few quiet breaths alone in the bathroom--unless, of course it is halftime, in which case you should absolutely take advantage of that opportunity.

One of the final parts of mental toughness that I've picked up through roller derby is the idea of the zen bench. In derby, it's the concept that when you're getting ready to play your next jam, you probably shouldn't watch the game or let yourself get riled up about it. Focus inward, take a deep breath, and plan some small thing that you yourself want to do in the next jam. This is much easier said than done, of course, but roller derby has taught me that it is ok for things to be hard, and for you not to be great at things that are easy to say. Because at the end of the day, mental toughness isn’t about being tough all the time. It’s about the reset. And you can do anything for two minutes, especially if you learn how to reset yourself.

Recap 2015: A Third Year of Eclectic Reading

Herein begins the ultra-tardy recap of my third year of eclectic reading, everybody! Thanks for stickin around! I've done this three times already, and it's thrilling to see that even though I'm late at times, I have finished it off every time. I have kept myself in school, so to speak, and this time I don't get docked points for papers turned in after the deadline! 2015 was a crazy year for me. I lost my job, spent a few months unemployed, found two jobs in quick succession, and spent the second half of the year settling into the one I chose, learning and growing and expanding my brain--not just because I was working for a neuroscience startup! I noticed that I read a lot of books that featured strong, real ladies this year (not much of a surprise, but always worth mentioning), as well as a number of books dealing with personal growth and change and what you wanted to be when you grew up (so to speak). Again, I warn of spoilers, because one cannot have adequate recaps or discussions without spoilers, so tread carefully, my friends!

Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd
January - diversity
The first book I chose for 2015 was one featuring diversity, The Secret Life of Bees, about a little white girl who runs away with her nanny and finds a home with three black sisters who have a secret connection to her late mother. I've always thought of diversity as an interesting concept in reading, being that it is so based in the reader's perception, so diversity has to be explicit or else readers will most likely fill in their own backgrounds for un-filled-in characters. This book was the first in the trend of strong, real ladies, not only myriad different female roles, but the ways in which they can shift and change as you age.

Let The Right One In by John Ajvide Lundqvist
February - set in a country starting with S, Sweden
Finally, I found a good creepy vampire story, one that I was actually loath to turn the light off on when I was done reading for the night! Let The Right One In played with the lore in ways that I hadn't seen before, and it was a genuinely creep-tastic read, which was thoroughly thrilling. This was a stark contrast to Bees, which showed you the hope and light within everyone, where Let The Right One In showcased the grimness and dankness inherent in much of human nature. An interesting juxtaposition, to say the least, but one that I very much enjoyed. Because after all, what is the light without its contrasting darkness?

Graceling by Kristin Cashore
March - YA Adventure
Graceling was a very easy read, complete with fabulous world-building and ridiculous naming mechanics, but it was overall a good strong girl exposure book. This book combined the threads I mentioned in my intro of strong ladies and what do you want to be when you grow up, being an incredibly heavy-handed coming-of-age story for Katsa, who is Graced (ostensibly) with killing, turned into a monster by a man who once claimed to be her family. She learns through her relationship with Po that her Grace may not actually be killing after all, that she's been looking at herself skewed for so long that that was just how it seemed. The possibility for good and change within her took some time and care to find, but she did, and she was able to save a little girl's life because of it.

The Professor and the Madman by Simon Winchester 
April - microhistory
Nerd heaven! This is a microhistory of the Oxford English Dictionary, lovingly and colloquially referred to as the OED, and it describes the efforts of the men who created it many decades ago. As a word nerd, I harbor an undying love for the OED, and though it is technically nonfiction, I loved this book as a "profile" of it. It gives the reader a chance to see the OED almost as a character in and of itself, learning as you progress its history, its birth, its secrets.

Veronica Mars: Mr. Kiss and Tell by Rob Thomas and Jennifer Graham
May - PI fiction
VMars! This is the second of the novelizations of Veronica Mars's life adventures upon her return to Neptune after the events of the Veronica Mars movie. The strongest of the strong ladies, one of my favorite role models, and although I read this one as a book and not an audiobook narrated by VMars herself (Kristen Bell) like the first, I could still feel her seeping through every word. Mr. Kiss and Tell dealt with heavy issues like the rape and murder of a call girl, and the intricacies of it made it one of my longest and most involved reviews of the year, one that I forced myself to cut short before I rewrote the whole book. Veronica Mars has always helped me to think about and champion the hard things, bringing the grit of life out into the open.

The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion
June - contemporary romance
The Rosie Project was a different kind of story/character than I'm used to. I wasn't sure at first, but the pages kept turning! Simsion did a great job of making a character that I wasn't sure would be palatable hold my attention simply because the entire framework of his highly logical mind was laid out for me to follow like a roadmap, and I was fascinated. The biggest question I had reading this book, especially the end of it, was the idea of changing oneself and the difference between making a change for yourself or for someone else, and whether the latter was ever okay if it led to something that made you happier in yourself. Again, 2015 was a year of transition for me, and thoughts of personal growth/working on myself were never far away, and this book helped me see it from maybe a different point of view than I ever would've considered before, namely that of a borderline autistic middle class white Australian man.

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
July - epistolary fiction (sort of)
This was sort of my cheat book for the year, only sort of epistolary; it was more like I wanted the book I was reading to work because it was the end of the month and I didn't have time to read another whole book, so I made it work. But it brought up some interesting questions because it didn't quite fit. Gone Girl is about a husband whose wife disappears with barely a trace on the morning of their wedding anniversary, and the first part of the book switches between his present and her diary recounting when they met. Now, SPOILERS--it is later found out that this diary, and really the whole disappearance, was a fabrication on the part of Amy, the wife. This brought up the incredibly interesting idea of the journal as reality but also as a constructed version of events. What is reality, really?

Mind Gym by Gary Mack with David Casstevens
August - sports
I read this for roller derby. Around this time, I was considering trying out for full B-team status, and I was having a lot of feelings about that. Leaving the team I'd started with after barely a whole season, possibly missing out on some opportunities with that team later in the season, but open to the possibilities that being a full member of the B-team would allow me, all these thoughts were spinning me around so much that I was changing my mind hourly about tryouts. I was recommended this book as a perspective on how to keep my head on straight through all of it, how to allow myself to improve and learn without berating myself for failures or perceived shortcomings, and while much of it was anecdotal, there were many portions that I still refer back to in my derby career. This book focused a lot on what is it that you want, and how are you going to help yourself go out and get it.

Eve by Elissa Elliott
September - retelling of a fairytale or myth
Eve: A Novel of the First Woman is just that, a book about the biblical Eve, told from her perspective as well as that of her (imaginary?) children. I love "historical fiction" like this--I use quotes because of the contentious nature of Eve as a historical character. It is a re-telling of the archetypical female character, the first female character, and I loved it because it allowed her to be flawed, to be fucked up and imperfect without taking all the blame for everything women have done ever, which she is so often forced to do.

The Martian by Andy Weir
October - SciFi in space
Funny! This book was very funny. Which was great, because I find space to be slightly terrifying, especially the concept of being trapped in space with no recourse or exit. Weir was knowledgeable enough and prepared enough that his tale was plausible, and only sort of terrifying, and the fact that so much shit went wrong over and over again and Mark Watney, the astronaut, still survived still made sense because space is hard.

Five Quarters of the Orange by Joanne Harris
November - fiction for foodies
Fiction for foodies was such an overwhelming category, and there were actually a number of attractive books that I had already read, so I chose one that was on my to-read shelf. Framboise Simon is the narrator, and both her young self and her old self share the narration. It was another multi-faceted portrait of ladyhood, one that toyed with young and old, mother and daughter, and everything that goes along with.

Magic Kingdom for Sale--SOLD! by Terry Brooks 
December - published before 1991
Magic Kingdom was Terry Brooks's first book that wasn't set in the Shannara universe. It was easy/low fantasy read, about a man who bought a magic kingdom out of a catalog and realized he had to save it from ruin once he got there. It was a clever stab at a mid-life crisis, an overwrought lawyer being asked by the universe, What do you want out of life, how are you gonna find it/go get it? December always seems to be a time of transition, and it seemed fitting that I read this book when my job got pretty stressful and I started thinking about looking for another one. Sure, I probably won't be able to buy a magic kingdom to go and save (God knows I don't have a million bucks cash lying around to pay for it), but it begs the question, what exactly is it that I want moving forward? I'm about to hit my mid-twenties, the millenial quarter-life crisis looming, and I still haven't found my dream job. And I might not, but I should get myself out of the comfort rut and keep looking. Maybe there is a magic kingdom out there somewhere for me.

Time for final thoughts. I began my writing year with a promise to dedicating myself more to my writing, being on time with my posts, and here I am two months late with my recap. But I can't fault myself too much, because I am still writing, but I am also living, moreso than I think I ever have before, and once this headiness passes, I may be able to get my schedule under control once again. But for now, I'm going to keep reading, keep living, and hope I can get my things published in a sort of timely fashion. Stay tuned!

{Link to my 2014 recap  ~  Link to my 2013 recap }

NOV - Five Quarters of the Orange

November review for Eclectic Reader's Challenge 2015: Five Quarters of the Orange by Joanne Harris, 2001. [Fiction for Foodies category]

I love Joanne Harris, and Chocolat has long been one of my favorite food books, so it made sense to return to her for this category, fiction for foodies. Five Quarters of the Orange is at its heart a story of mothers and daughters, with Framboise Simon representing both aspects at turns throughout her narrative. Framboise is the young girl bristling against her hard mother in German-occupied France, as well as the weathered old woman who desperately tries to be a different kind of mother for her own daughters. Like her mother, she harbors a secret, but she ultimately has to decide whether she will let it hold her back or if it will define her in its keeping. Though we are her readers, her assumed confidantes, we are as much held at arm's length as the rest of the world is, in terms of knowing the secrets inside of Framboise's guarded heart. The tale Harris weaves is an intricate attempt to know those secrets, all the while understanding the woman and the mother who made her that way.

As a novel in the "fiction for foodies" vein, Five Quarters performs admirably, as anything by Joanne Harris is wont to do. There is an undercurrent of food running throughout the story, from the recipe book Framboise inherits that contains her mother's secrets and her recipes to the little cafe Framboise opens upon her return to Las Laveuses as a different woman. She writes of her mother's book, "My mother marked the events of her life with recipes, dishes of her own invention or interpretations of old favorites. Food was her nostalgia, her celebration, its nurture and preparation the sole outlet for her creativity" (pg 4). There is a sensuality to all her prose about food, a way the dishes seem like a part of the family, and this even extends to Mirabelle (Framboise's mother)'s naming choices. She describes her own name and that of her siblings, the older sister Reine-Claude and the older brother Cassis:

"My mother had a passion for all fruit except oranges, which she refused to allow in the house. She named each one of us, on a seeming whim, after a fruit and a recipe--Cassis, for her thick black-currant cake, Framboise, her raspberry liqueur, and Reinette after the reine-claude greengages that grew against the south wall of the house, thick as grapes, syrupy with wasps in midsummer." (p8)

It is never made clear, because we do not receive much insight from Mirabelle herself, what exactly her feelings behind her children's names are, nor what exactly stimulated the seemingly baseless hatred for oranges that Framboise uses so slyly in that summer of her ninth year. The simplest line to draw would be that they were Mirabelle's favorite fruits, and she bestowed their names upon the fruits of her own labor so that they may share her love. But Mirabelle is a cryptic woman, even when we are allowed access to her thoughts, via her recipe book. The naming is simply one of the many intricacies of a mother that is left to the imagination throughout the text, as many facets of motherhood are. Another facet is interestingly played with in the nigh-mythic fish nine-year-old Framboise is obsessed with catching, called Old Mother by pretty much everyone, it seems. While it may mean nothing, there are parallels drawn between Framboise's pursuit of Old Mother and her fight against her own, human mother, both in her youth and long after her mother's passing. These two figures represent a sort of test of mettle for Framboise, something to be overcome (if not understood) in the end. (No spoilers, you'll have to read for yourself to see whether she passes either of those tests!)

AUG - The Mind Gym

August review for Eclectic Reader's Challenge 2015: The Mind Gym by Gary Mack with David Casstevens, 2001. [Sports category]

Mind Gym and my derby quad skates

The Mind Gym: An Athlete's Guide to Inner Excellence was recommended to a friend of mine who expressed fears that she was experiencing a plateau in her derby career. This skater had shown a meteoric rise from newly-passed skills to A-team starting jammer, but she has recently been feeling like she isn't going any farther. I don't know if I would describe what I'm feeling as a plateau in the way that she does, but I decided picking up this book would be worthwhile for my athletic career, especially with B-team tryouts coming up. I had straddled the line between C and B teams since last November, skating as an alternate for the B team, and now I was considering trying out for a full spot on the roster, and I was nervous. I was nervous to embrace my progress, nervous to leave my comfort zone and the team that I felt had made me a lot of what I was. I angsted about tryouts and talked to a lot of my friends who had been skating at a higher level than I for longer, and they all told me pretty much the same thing: that I had to examine what I wanted for myself, what my personal goals were, and understand the headspace I was in before I made my decision. This was not news to me.

Ever since I became an athlete in high school, I have struggled with the mental game and its serious applicability to the course or the track or whatever situation I found myself in. I ran cross country and threw shotput and discus in high school, rode horses when I was younger, and most recently joined roller derby, most of which are particularly individual-focused. Derby was the first thing I'd done--pretty much ever--where I had a team and a tryout and a roster, and it didn't scare me or discourage me as much as I thought it might. I have never been particularly thin or fast and I didn't realize how much I'd built those attributes up as indicators of worth--attributes which I did not possess and therefore subconsciously found myself less-than, a mindset I have worked extremely hard to eradicate in recent years. While I have not been particularly thin or fast, I have always been strong, and derby has given me a space to aggrandize and celebrate that strength and to slightly make up for some of the self-denigration I've experienced (at my own hands) in the past. Derby has allowed me a space to celebrate my body and my strength, as well as realize that the attributes I do not possess do not make me any lesser of an athlete. They just make me a different kind of an athlete, and I would not trade the body I have now for anything. I have become more healthy, both physically and mentally, since the first time I laced up quads over a year and a half ago, and I could not be happier with the community and worldview it has brought me.

Me skating against the Lansing Mitten Mavens this past month
Photo courtesy of David Lewis

As I mentioned, a lot of the content of this book was information I had heard before, in some form or another, particularly the points about positive thinking and visualization. As a team, we have recently started to incorporate visualization practices into our bout-day warm-up ritual, and I admit that allowing myself that time to become centered has helped immensely. In terms of the actual text itself, its anectodal sentence structure left me a little less-than engaged, as Mack would move from one athlete's story to another within a few lines, and I wouldn't really connect with many of them because they were blown through so fast. However, Mack's book has been very beneficial to me as a reminder to practice these things that I have known as well as the new things I have learned, to implement them in my own mind gym where I hold all the power over my own progress. One small thing that I will take away from this text is the idea of kaizen, a term utilized in Japanese culture meaning constant daily learning and improvement, as recounted by Mack (p47). I thoroughly believe that learning is an everyday process, one that each conscious choice should point towards, no matter what the subject of those choices are. I try to take the time after each day's practice to reflect on things I did well and things I would like to continue to work on, in order to be the best skater I can be. So while this book wasn't revolutionary to me, the concept of the mind gym and of kaizen are invaluable tools that Mack has brought to the forefront of my training mind, and I hope to implement them through the rest of this season. 

JUN - The Rosie Project

June review for Eclectic Reader's Challenge 2015: The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion, 2013. [Contemporary Romance category]

I picked this book up on a whim from the Little Free Library I found recently near my new house. Originally I had been reading On The Verge, a book about a twenty-something writer (like me) set in 2002-era NYC where meeting a guy at a bar meant he gave you his pager number too, and while I found it interesting, it was not wholly arresting. Alternatively, when I began The Rosie Project, I read the first few pages with a bit of skepticism, unsure if I could get behind Don's tone or his character. But somehow, the pages kept turning, like my hands didn't listen to my mind's uncertainty. The Rosie Project indeed captured me, and I decided to see where it took me.

Don Tillman is a genetics professor who has a "number of unconventional mannerisms" to his name, including a recently-begun endeavor called The Wife Project, in which he creates a comprehensive questionnaire for potential partners to fill out in order to determine overall suitability. With the help of his Don Juan supervisor, Gene, who is attempting to sleep with a woman from every country (don't worry, he's in an open marriage), Don hones his questionnaire until the arrival of Rosie. Rosie was sent to Don by Gene under the pretense of being a WP applicant, but she is everything that the WP not: dyed hair, messy clothes, and a smoker, to name a few. But somehow they're drawn together and Don begins to learn things about himself and his worldview that never before occurred to him. One of the things I was unsure of when I began this book is the fact of Don as narrator and the Wife Project as plot. I feel my uncertainty was merited, but that Rosie mitigated every misgiving by her sheer character. Hell, I think I fell in love with her by the end. (Spoiler alert: he falls in love with her at the end).

There were a number of discussion questions in the back of the book, one in particular that I ruminated on during my read, which I'd like to touch on here. I love when books have reading questions nestled away in the back, it makes me feel like I'm back in my favorite classes in college once again, where we just talked about books every day and everyone had something insightful or revelatory to say. I especially enjoy discussion questions that hit upon feelings I had during my own reading of the text, as with the following question:

13) Do you feel happy for Don when he eliminates a "number of unconventional mannerisms" in order to win Rosie, or has he lost something?

 Toward the end, after Rosie denies his advances, Don goes about redefining his life, changing some of the core ideologies and patterns that make him who he is. The Reform Don Project, he calls it.  It could be called adaptive, that he is attempting to "better himself" for the sake of the relationship, but it worried me that it did not seem to be predicated on any sort of "I want to change these things for me," but instead "I want to change these things about myself because I know these things are how Rosie likes things to be done." It is a very fine line, but one that I think is highly important for any relationship to be successful. It is also an interesting corollary to the idea of the Wife Project in general: Don has a very rigid list of attributes, and he views it as the most logical method to find the most appropriate partner, and he does not allow himself to deviate at the inception of the project. After a number of trials, Gene helps Don realize that compromise can be appropriate, and he relaxes his guidelines a fraction. I think it would be safe to say that The Rosie Project is about Don learning about relationships and ultimately that compromise is the best way to care for the people that you love. I should note that (SPOILERS!) Rosie at first rejects Don's redefinition, shattering his worldview, but he returns with a new sense of purpose and realization and regales her (and Gene and Claudia and the entirety of the University Club) with the following speech:

"I haven't changed my mind. That's the point! I want to spend my life with you even though it's totally irrational. And you have short earlobes. Socially and genetically there's no reason for me to be attracted to you. The only logical conclusion is that I must be in love with you." (p283)

Don realizes that there are things that Rosie loves about him and things that are serving no purpose for the furthering of his social relationships, and he decides to make choices and sacrifices and learn to adapt to this new convention of sharing everything with one person. I have been learning the same skills in my own life, and I don't think I've ever been happier. I think it is a beautiful ending to the story, and a message every human could stand to pay attention to.  

MAR - Graceling

March review for Eclectic Reader's Challenge 2015: Graceling by Kristin Cashore, 2008. [YA Adventure category]

Graceling by Kristin Cashore was recommended to me by my brother years ago, as I recall. Because my bookshelves are getting very full and my pockets a little emptier, I have made it a goal to endeavor to use only books that I've purchased already for this challenge in an attempt to read through my eternally growing To Be Read list. Graceling is my YA adventure book for the year, beating out others like Insurgent because I thought it was standalone, but upon further inspection I have found that it is not. (Discussion of why many genres are chock full of series stretched to the bone is for another time and place, however.) This book follows Katsa of the Middluns, Graced with killing and forced to be a thug for her uncle the king. It describes Katsa's subversive endeavor, known as The Council, that is slowly spreading across the Seven Kingdoms in opposition to some of the mercilessness and horror enacted by the kings across the land. We follow Katsa as she rescues a member of Lienid royalty and later befriends the Lienid's grandson, who is also Graced and understands (to a degree) what it is like to see the world differently and be seen differently by the world. Friendship like this is something Katsa never considered for her life, so total is her self deprecation and loathing, and through her relationship with Po (whose real name is Greening Grandemalion, but we'll get to that weirdness later), she learns more about herself, her powers, and her world than she ever thought possible.

Without going into too much detail, the inciting action of the story is when Katsa realizes she has more control over her destiny than she thought, and she separates herself from her king uncle, setting off on a quest with Po to find a truth hidden far away. This truth turns out to be something that Katsa cannot defend herself from, an entirely novel concept to her as she is wholly used to being invincible and in total control of her faculties, due to her Grace, and it is possibly this realization of human weakness that opens her up to the humanity she thought was quashed by her Grace, by the monster she thought her grace had made her into. By admitting that she was not capable of protecting herself under the influence of this truth, Katsa learns to allow herself to rely on other people, and even open herself up to maybe loving someone. This story is one of capability and how one copes with something (or someone) that robs one of their capability, and how to deal with it, grow, and move on. It is a story that grows to understand happiness not as something alien and unreachable and strictly qualified, but something that is amorphous and moldable to each individual's worldview, something that each individual deserves a chance at. Katsa comes into her own over the course of this book, and the text itself often attempts to address larger issues through the foil of its fantasy framework, which I will discuss further.

A number of reviews I glanced at of this book condemned it as a vapid, bullheaded attempt to capitalized on YA adventure and coming of age novels, and while some of the reviews made some salient points, I would not go so far as to condemn this book entirely. Sure, Graceling is a simplistic book, almost fluff in its readability, one that has jarring naming conventions and less-than-realistic portrayals of 10-year-old dialogue, but as I mentioned, it does attempt to address some bigger issues, which is impressive for an author's debut in such a fraught genre. Cashore attempts to bring up prejudice, gossip, societal conventions, femininity, and numerous other themes in terms of the world she has built here, and many of them are well-thought out and intentioned, if not entirely mature or high-flown in their execution. For example (IMPORTANT NOTE: SPOILERS FOLLOW), toward the middle of the novel it is revealed that King Leck of Monsea may in fact be Graced himself, with what amounts to a gossip Grace, or the ability to control what people think of him and how they act toward him simply through the power of his own words. The interesting thing about this, I thought, is that the Grace retains its strength once the words leave Leck's immediate conversational purview: things that are said about him, however far away, carry this heady manipulation, as long as it is an idea or a story that he originally spread. This differs from many mind-control powers that I have come across throughout my reading in this way, and I was heavily intrigued by the direct parallel I saw with the idea of influential but misinformed gossip. Something as intangible as a person's words and influence completely decimate the unilateral capability that Katsa is built upon, reinforcing the idea that words have a weight that can disarm as well as any fighting move, and many cannot be countered once given their own life.

Such discussion of words brings me to my next point of interest for Graceling. I mentioned the naming conventions earlier, particularly in reference to the Prince Po, or Greening Grandemalion, because that is one of the most ridiculous names I've ever come across and I've read A LOT of YA fantasy. There is a king named Thigpen, reading which I can only ever picture Pig Pen from the movie Out Cold, so that's sort of ridiculous too. But not all the naming conventions I noted were ridiculous. King Ror of Lienid is loud. The names of the Seven Kingdoms are interesting in that they are very directionally-based (Nander is the northernmost, Estill is to the East, Wester is to the west, Sunder is south, Middluns is in the middle), except for the two outlying ones that care little for the drama of the other five and which play more of a role in the story (Lienid, which is an island to the southwest of the mainland, and Monsea which is attached to the mainland on the southeast border of Sunder and Estill). A huge part of world building for tales such as these relies on organic naming conventions, and I believe Cashore stumbles a little with this, as many times the evocations brought about by a name for me weren't necessarily connotations or other bits that would fill out and develop the word and its place in the world, but rather arrest my disbelief and take me away from the story Cashore is so earnestly trying to weave.

Finally, I'd like to touch on the feminism of the book. Most obviously, this book is an adventure with a Strong Female Character (and a physically strong one at that), but it also allows her to be strong in her imperfections. Katsa is constantly re-discovering and re-analyzing things she thought she knew, about herself and about the world, particularly in her attempt to reconcile her love for Po and her abhorrence of marriage, of her discovery of a possible gray area in which she could find an answer to the question "Could she be his lover and still belong to herself?" (page 234). Not that I'm saying that a SFC must be a rebel or unconventional in order to fit the bill, but rather that she must be allowed to think about these things for herself without judgement from author or story. I have read countless essays picking apart these ideas, from an essay on Trinity Syndrome by Tasha Robinson to an essay on the conflation of "strong" and "perfect" characters by Tom Gauld, and I'm currently reading a book called "How To Be A Heroine" by Samantha Ellis that actually discusses these ideas in terms of the literary heroines the author had growing up. As a woman writer, I feel that these are subjects that I am constantly re-evaluating in my head both as a consumer and as a producer of content, and I appreciate the way that Graceling has contributed to the dialogue.

FEB - Let The Right One In

February review for Eclectic Reader's Challenge 2015: Let The Right One In by John Ajvide Lindqvist, 2004. [set in a country starting with S category - Sweden]

This month's category is "set in a country starting with S," appearing easy enough, and right off the bat I probably would've picked Spain because I'm obsessed with Spain, but I picked this book up shortly after seeing the film and it's been on my vampire shelf (yes, I have a section of a shelf for vampire stuff, and no Twilight is not on it) taunting me. And conveniently, the fact that it was set in Sweden caused this book to be a perfect fit for this month. I haven't read many books about Sweden, save the Stieg Larsson books, and I thoroughly enjoyed venturing into a country I didn't know much about. The streets and towns and shorthands were unknown to me, allowing me to immerse myself a little more fully in the story. The prologue began after the events of the story took place, and they whisked you back effectively enough to merit the hungry turning of every page.

The book is divided up in days, stretching from October 21 to November 13, detailing events taking place in Blackeberg, a suburb of Stockholm, in Sweden. The point of view is omniscient, moving from different characters, their stories slowly seeping together over the course of nearly a month of interactions in a small town. Lindqvist is excellent at character development, allowing us at least a sliver of each one's interior monologue, enough to get us to remember them as the tale weaves on. The main plotline follows Oskar, a pre-teen boy growing up with his divorced mother in a small Swedish town, a boy who is bullied constantly and viciously every day by kids at school. He meets a mysterious girl next door, Eli, who is barefoot and seems entirely nocturnal, and they strike up an unlikely friendship. Eli's counterpart is a pedophiliac (human) father-figure named Håkan, who serves her in terms of acquiring sustenance and maintaining their house. With Håkan we come across a number of topics that were excised almost completely from the film adaptations like pedophilia, child rape, and child prostitution. Such themes are only a few of the uncomfortable topics that Lindqvist deals with in the text, perhaps in an effort to never allow any reprieve from the discomfort associated with his story.

One review I read of the book called it "unrelentingly grim," which I completely agree with. There are some moments where the unrelenting grimness sort of falls away, but these are few and far between. The beauty of this book is that it spans terrors from the supernatural (vampires) to the everyday (bullying), and it treats them with equal weight. For example, Lindqvist describes Oskar's rage at being bullied and his thoughts of vengeance and violence, sometimes tending even toward murderous thoughts, and he allows Oskar to feel these things and describe them to us without demonizing him. In the same way, he describes Eli and her situation with a vagueness that belies the secrecy of their person, but also does not make many judgments on them, beyond those that are put forth by Oskar himself. All in all, Oskar and Eli each represent a sort of childhood neglect and outsider status that transcends their differing situations. Oskar is living with his divorced mother, his father having left earlier in his life, taking with him the only sort of male role model he can turn to--and even this role model disintegrates throughout the story. Oskar is overweight, odd, and easy to pick on, and the boys at his school do so relentlessly. Oskar is aware of the game he is embroiled in, the role he must play, and his only solace is clipping violent news articles and pasting them into his scrapbook, imagining himself as the perpetrator of these crimes. Eli, in their own way, has been forced into outsider status by their very nature, the history of which is slowly revealed to us as it is to Oskar. There are physical signs of Eli's neglect, from their ratty pink sweater to their bare feet and strange smell.

I don't think the word "vampire" is used to describe what Eli is until very very late in the book, but it is pretty clear from the beginning what the pieces are adding up to. I may say that because I've seen both movie versions, and that might have colored my reading of the story to some extent, and also my vampire radar is pretty great. If only they were real....*sigh*. In any case, the vampiric aspect of this tale is one I particularly enjoyed. There are a number of vampire lore tropes that were played with here. Needing permission to enter, tears of blood, pain when exposed to sunlight, the list goes on. One that I was particularly interested in is one that Eli uses a number of times to share her past with Oskar: they share a kiss, and Oskar can immediately see through eyes that are not his, experience things that have not happened to him, things that took place many years before.

The book ends with the same detached tone as it began, an epilogue describing the situation from the outside once again. There is still a sense of ominous foreboding that wafts around Eli's other-ness. I find it interesting that the text ends with an actual outsider to the story, as most of the characters have been societal outsiders in their own way, in addition to Oskar and Eli. There are the drunks who frequent the Chinese restaurant. Håkan as a pedophile. Tommy as an addict. Everyone we are introduced to has a darkness within them, and other reviewers have argued that this makes it difficult for the reader to remain engaged as there is no sympathetic outlet, but I enjoyed it. Not in a sadistic way, just in terms of the overarching feel of the story. Let The Right One In is most certainly a depressing and uncomfortable story, but the eloquence of the writer and characters are more than worth the skin-prickling that accompanies it.

JAN - The Secret Life of Bees

January review for Eclectic Reader's Challenge 2015: The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd, 2002. [Diversity category]

The Secret Life of Bees has been on my bookshelf for some time now. The title had always intrigued me, as had the cover art (two things that I am known to succumb to when making decisions, never mind the old adage), but I'd never quite gotten around to reading it. I read a memoir of Kidd's, Traveling With Pomegranates, in which she described her quest to write this book as well as the way thinking and writing about the Black Madonna had changed her. So when the Diversity category came around, I figured this was as good a time as any to read it. The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd details the story of Lily Owens, a fourteen-year-old white girl in South Carolina who breaks her black "stand-in-mother," Rosaleen, out of jail after witnessing some of the most raw prejudice in her short life. The two go on the run, fleeing from Lily's abusive father and the racist town that put Rosaleen in jail and then let the men who attacked her come into her jail cell after hours to try to finish the job. All they have to go on is a cardboard cutout of the Black Madonna that once belonged to Lily's mother, with the words "Tiburon, S.C." scrawled on the back. When they reach Tiburon, Lily catches sight of a honey jar bearing the very same Black Madonna that she carries with her, and inquiries lead her to August Boatwright, owner and beekeeper of Black Madonna Honey, and also the keeper of a number of secrets that could help Lily figure out her past and the mother she barely remembers. Rosaleen and Lily are invited to stay with the Boatwright sisters--there are three, August, June and May--and thus begins each woman's journey to reestablish herself, and heal the scars of her past.

Sometimes it was a little difficult for me to remember that Lily was supposed to be fourteen; her tone was very simplistic, and seemed like someone much younger at times, especially when talking about her mother. She lived in such a black-and-white space when it came to the woman who had died when she was very young, a space that pitted her against her abusive father (who albeit was pretty terrible, but got a little bit of growth in the end) and would not hear anything against her mother. Lily has a vague memory of the day her mother died, of her parents yelling and a gun falling to the ground, her touching it and then a sudden bang. The circumstances of this day are hazy to Lily an she never questions the reasons behind the scene until she has been at the Boatwrights' (also called "the pink house" because of its garish coloring) for a few months. In a lot of ways, this book is about Lily's journey into her own past, her connection with her mother, but I also believe that it is about Lily's journey into herself and her manner of thinking. She is forced to come to terms with a great many ugly truths throughout the course of the novel, from Rosaleen's arrest to Lily's inability to touch the boy that she is falling in love with in public because of the contrasts in their skin tone, from her mother's death to her father's pain and the fact that he was the one who stayed. Lily deals with a lot during her summer in the honey house, the house across the yard from the pink house where the honey is packaged and where she sleeps in a room of her own. This is very much a coming-of-age tale for Lily, from her departure from her hometown and T.Ray and peaches and kneeling on grits to her stubbornness in not leaving Tiburon at the end of the novel. Not only does she find herself, but she also finds a place to be herself, a circle of women who help nurture her and help her grow into the woman she is meant to be.

One of the discussion questions in the back of my copy of Secret Life asks if the reader thinks that there is a "queen bee" in the novel, and if so, who is it? There are a number of options, but I'm not entirely convinced that there is only one answer. August Boatwright is an obvious choice: she is the leader of the sisterhood in Tiburon that worships the Black Madonna, she is the eldest of the sisters, the owner of the honey company and the overseer of the house. The less obvious choice, and one that I believe holds a lot of weight, is that the Black Madonna is the queen bee of the story. It is difficult to put into words what she did for me over the course of my reading, but she surely had an impact, a strength that came through Kidd's words and Lily's descriptions that resonated with me in a way that I was not entirely familiar with. But for Lily, the Black Madonna brings her to Tiburon, introduces her to August, shows her an entire new circle of mothers in the Daughters of Mary. She helps her to find herself, helps each woman in the honey house in her own way. She is unassuming, but at the same time commanding, her outstretched fist a testament to hard work and standing upright. She is most certainly the queen bee of this story. And in her own way, she inspires the women who worship her, the women who tell the story of Our Lady of Chains, to become her own queen bee, to find a little bit of her in every aspect of themselves and the world around them. As August tells Lily, "Our Lady is not some magical being out there somewhere, like a fairy godmother. She's not the statue in the parlor. She's something inside of you. [...] You have to find a mother inside yourself. We all do. Even if we already have a mother, we still have to find this part of ourselves inside." Part of coming-of-age is finding strength inside of yourself, and relying on your self, and I think Sue Monk Kidd does an incredible job of translating that to the page here.

Finally, another part of this book that spoke to me was Lily's discovery of writing. Zach gives her a notebook and encourages her to just write. She starts to set down everything that happens to her, and says, "Words streamed out of me so fast I couldn't keep up with them, and that's all I was thinking about." (p289) My goal for this year is to not let my writing fall by the wayside with everything else I am doing, as it has the past few months. I am aiming to make time for myself consistently for writing, and I'm aiming to get my reviews done on time! (Starting next month, I promise!)

DEC - Seconds

December review for Eclectic Reader's Challenge 2014: Seconds by Bryan Lee O'Malley, 2014. [Graphic Novel category]

I devoured Scott Pilgrim when the graphic novels came out. I inhaled them. I loved them and read them multiple times, and then fell madly in love with the movie when Edgar Wright released it unto the world in 2010. I've been Ramona Flowers for Halloween multiple years in a row--you don't spend that many hours making a duct tape subspace purse not to use it at every opportunity, amirite?? Needless to say, Brian Lee O'Malley's head has always been a great place for me to be, and I was beyond pumped when I read that his newest (standalone) graphic novel would be coming out this year. Still in the graphic style we all know and love, Seconds is a new kind of story about young adult angst and getting your shit together. There's a quote from Guillermo del Toro on the back of the dust cover of my edition that reads, "In Seconds, Bryan Lee O'Malley plays the angst of youth against the fabric of a larger epic. In doing so, he enriches both." I agree wholeheartedly with this statement. The story is about Katie, a chef currently living above the first restaurant she started while she's waiting for her new restaurant to be finished. It's about a girl who pretty much has things together, but her obsession with these mushrooms that allow you essentially a "do-over" causes her to attempt to change every little thing, each time waking up in a slightly new version of her world. As she attempts to adapt, things get stranger and stranger and the house spirit whose mushrooms they are gets angrier and angrier. Katie doesn't understand why, and she continues on, bull-headedly, making things that she doesn't understand worse.
When writing reviews, I learned that it's always best to talk about the setpieces in movies, which are storylines or thinks that are integral to the storyline, without which the story built around them would fall apart. The setpieces in Seconds are the restaurant(s), the dresser on which Lis first appears to Katie, the mushrooms themselves. Whatever else changes in the storylines, these things always exist. Katie moves through her revisions, as she tries to make her errors right, fixing small things that have larger repercussions, trying to get her life and her restaurants and her relationship *just* right. And it all goes to hell. There is an element of the fabulous in this tale, and its casualness makes it all the more entertaining for it. O'Malley has certainly retained the glory that made Scott Pilgrim into the cult classic it was; his talent hasn't diminished with time. His witticisms (some even breaking the fourth wall), his careful scene construction with multiple panels in a row that may not contain any text whatsoever but simply emotion, his imaginative plot impetus--these are all things that work well for this story and that cement my reaction to it.
And of course, good ol' Brian Lee O'Malley, paying homage to everyone's beloved Scott Pilgrim in my favorite part of the entire book:

It is clearly a favorite joke, executed brilliantly by Michael Cera in the film, and I was more than a little amused to have it snuck into this new endeavor. And somehow, it still works here. In all actuality, I feel like that's sort of what Katie's story is about: taking her old life and trying to make it fit with this new one she's creating or forging. Her speech at the end to the demon-y house spirit rings true for someone unsure how to move forward without making innumerable mistakes, and ultimately the endgame message is that those mistakes are inevitable, innumerable, unavoidable, and meant to be cherished. Lived through and learned from. A message that, while a tad heavy, is something we could all stand to remember from time to time, especially at the junctures in our lives where a choice could send us down one of any number of branches, just like in the story. (Also, if anyone is interested, I really enjoyed reading this review of Seconds, by Douglas Wolk from Comics Alliance.)