Nonfiction | Musings of a Hollywood Mom

For my first Read Harder Challenge category, I chose the celebrity memoir because after reading some really dense Gore Vidal (more on that later), I needed something light. In selecting a book for this category, I figured there were a few ways I could go: pick a person I knew and liked, thus mostly guaranteeing enjoyment; pick someone deep, complicated, and interesting that would be impressive in dinner conversation; or pick some total fluff, like a reality star, that I cared nothing about but forced me to really branch out from what I'd normally choose.

While I toyed with the idea of selecting the fine writing of some Real Housewife of the Jersey Shore, I preserved my sanity and chose a celebrity with a slightly deeper story: Drew Barrymore.

Barrymore's Wildflower follows in the same vein as most celebrity "memoirs" these days, in that it's more a collection of essays or anecdotes—"meaningful life moments"—than a real reflection of one's life. (I mean, how much life reflection can you share when you're only 42?) In Wildflower, the actress recollects her first experience of doing laundry, living on her own at age 14. She writes odes to the people she loves—friends, husband, in-laws, children, Adam Sandler—and how their stories began. She chronicles a multi-day outward bound trek taken with her Charlie's Angels co-stars after filming wrapped, and how nature nearly got the best of her. She writes about how her three rescue dogs ushered her into a responsible adulthood and how Steven Spielberg has been an unwavering source of support since her days on the set of E.T. And of course, no celebrity "memoir" would be complete without the reflection on the life-changing do-good trip to some third-world country. (I remember Amy Poehler's feeling so forced that I nearly quit reading.)

I chose this memoir because I thought that, in the game of celebrity memoirs where every witty or popular young-ish female seems to have been given a book deal, Drew Barrymore may have something more substantial to say. Less self-indulgent. More introspective, reflective, or thought-provoking. I mean, girl's been through some stuff.

That wasn't the case. I mean, I understand not wanting to dwell on one's past, especially one so colorful that has probably been rehashed often enough when you've personally moved on. But for someone with those experiences who has so clearly learned from them and made thoughtful decisions to build a very purposeful life since, completely avoiding those topics seems like such an omission, making these words she does share seem more trivial. It seems she wants to be open, sharing the importance of some of her life's little moments. But without facing the tough moments that brought her to this current level of peace and introspection, the stories she shares end up feeling like they just skim the surface.

Ultimately, most of her recollections felt so generic, they could've been written by and about anyone. Meeting in-laws and birthing children can be monumental milestones, but I'm not reading Drew Barrymore's story for the universal experience of how having a kid changes a person; I want to read the unique stories that have built her life and made her a person worth getting this book deal. Instead, I felt like an English teacher filling the margins of a student essay with red pen critique to "dig deeper."

Book Riot's 2018 Read Harder Challenge

It's a new year and time to start a new reading challenge! (Remember when I started the 2017 Read Diverse Challenge? Yeah, that one failed; I guess I needed the extra structure.)

Back at the start of 2015, I stumbled upon and began Book Riot's annual reading challenge. Though it ended up taking me more than a year to complete (errr...try two whole years...), I absolutely loved hunting down purposeful titles for each category that often took my outside my reading comfort zone. In fact, I've designed my staple school library reading program around the same categorical reading challenge, which gives students the choice to pick the titles they want.

Categories for the Book Riot 2018 Read Harder Challenge:

1. A book published posthumously
2. A book of true crime
3. A classic of genre fiction
4. A comic written and illustrated by the same person
5. A book set in or about one of the five BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China, or South Africa)
6. A book about nature
7. A western
8. A comic written or illustrated by a person of color
9. A book of colonial or postcolonial literature
10. A romance novel by or about a person of color
11. A children's classic published before 1980
12. A celebrity memoir
13. An Oprah Book Club selection
14. A book of social science
15. A one-sitting book
16. The first book in a new-to-you YA or middle grade series
17. A sci fi novel with a female protagonist by a female author
18. A comic that isn't published by Marvel, DC, or Image
19. A book of genre fiction in translation
20. A book with a cover you hate
21. A mystery by a person of color or LGBTQ+ author
22. An essay anthology
23. A book with a female protagonist over the age of 60
24. An assigned book you hated (or never finished)

This time, my goal is to actually finish it within the year!

2017: Year in Review

2017 has been a year in flux! The 2016-2017 school year was pretty crappy, so January to May were spent surviving more than anything else. In March, I found out I was pregnant, so add 1st-trimester severe exhaustion to the end of that less-than-stellar school year. Summer vacation took us to Japan for our last big travel venture pre-baby; a new school year started in August, and my attention span began decreasing at a rapid rate with little one's impending arrival. We welcomed our little Luna into the world just a month ago, and the biggest surprise is how much I just want to stare at her! Everything I usually do to unwind—reading, writing, Netflix-watching—has become exponentially harder with this cute little bug around!

Somehow, I've still managed to turn some pages, though with a few changes. One, print books have taken a backseat, for the first time ever, to my Kindle. My main reading time is while nursing Luna, and I quickly discovered it's super difficult to keep a book open and turn pages with limited hand use. My Kindle's back-light is also proving invaluable during those late night sessions! Secondly, I'm suddenly okay with reading multiple books at once! I've gone through short story collections, memoirs, easier pleasure reading, and in-depth novels. You'd think my brain would have less mental capacity to keep multiple stories straight, but I think maybe it actually needs the variety!

Anyway, since I have so rarely used this space to record my reading encounters [I have, however, taken to posting shorter thoughts and summaries in Goodreads], I thought I'd do my year-end summary with a write-up on some of my more memorable reading experiences of the year.

All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr  ||  I read this in April for the library book club that I (regrettably) have not attended since the summer. It's the story of a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths eventually cross during the chaos and destruction of World War II. For a book that was initially incredibly daunting to me (520+ pages, oof; WW II history, yawn), I ended up breezing through it, fully engrossed. I believe that's thanks to its multiple storylines and especially its quick chapters of alternating stories; we are able to follow each's story of survival in great detail. If the author had told this story chronologically, or shared only one piece or perspective, it would have made for a very monotonous novel. Instead, we are graced with a beautifully detailed piece on humanity that is never bogged down by either detail or gravitas. What the author does, HOW he tells this story, is actually a bit magical when you consider how terribly wrong it could have been done. The characters are all full, all entirely human, all just small pieces to this big puzzle of the war. Very, very well done.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky  ||  This is not the first time I've read this novel; I read it twice back in high school/college and, like most emo teens, I adored it. This was my first time reading it, though, as a bona fide a d u l t. It was also my first time reading it with a group of middle schoolers, and that experience is the reason it's on my most memorable list! For some backstory: I've had a group of now-8th graders that joined my library-sponsored book club when they were 6th graders and enjoyed it so much they began planning their own books for us to read as a group. Twice they've selected a book, and my job has been to hunt down enough copies for all and help them with discussion. In the spring (when they were 7th graders), the group of about six girls voiced a desire to read Perks, so I gathered the copies and started re-reading with them. WELL. This book was MUCH heavier than I remember! I've seen the movie version a zillion times (maaaaybe one of my two cases where I like the movie better than the book), and it's entirely PG-13. The book, however, is a lot darker with a lot more mature subject matter—alcohol, drugs, abortion, date rape, molestation. After some serious panic on my part, at our first group discussion I quickly established our meetings as a safe space to ask questions and talk about these issues, if they so desired. What began as a concern (is this appropriate for 13-year-olds??) ended up being a wonderful forum for these kids (I think, I hope) and one of my proudest moments as an educator. We discussed issues with privacy and full confidence; I spoke to parents when I was concerned about exposure of certain topics; and I discovered the wide range of how much kids at this age know—some seem to know it all, some still very naive. In the end, I think it established a great deal of trust amongst our group and, with these students heading to high school at the end of this school year, I am going to seriously miss them. Also, perhaps Perks should wait until at least 8th grade!

Velvet Underground by Teri Brown  ||  A random eBook check-out during my summer travels...For a YA book, this story had an uncommon setting (Europe during WWI) and uncommon plot (espionage) which made it a delightful surprise. The main character, Samantha, is a smart, cunning British seventeen-year-old who is recruited for a spy network and sent to "save" a troubled agent in Germany. With little information to go on, she must put the pieces together herself and determine what's truth and what's a lie. The end reveal was a bit Scooby Doo-esque (obvious in that "And I would've gotten away with it, too, if it weren't for you meddling kids!" way), with the villain's motive slightly TOO explained. As you know, I love the pure entertainment of middle grade/YA, but I liked this so much because it was unexpectedly different in its premise—not romancey, not friend drama, not fantasy, not school-based conflict or hijinx. Overall, a very fun adventure.

American Gods by Neil Gaiman  ||  I was invited to join a librarian friend's book club (an offer at which I enthusiastically jumped!), and this was the selection for my first meeting which was scheduled about three days after I received the invite. I binged it mostly over the course of a weekend and...errr, wow. I'd heard of this story, but had no idea what it was about. It's weird. And genre-defying. It's got fantasy, mythology, horror. magical realism. It's got an engrossing plot, though I was never quite confident in the story I was following. It's an allegory on the old versus the new, diversity versus homogeneity. The more commentary I read, the more I've thought about it over the course of the past several months, I wonder if my easy response of "I just didn't get it" is actually discrediting to myself. I think perhaps I did "get" it; it just wasn't particularly impactful to me. It brings up more questions than it answers, is open to much too much interpretation. I think, perhaps, it was just not for me.

Small Great Things by Jodi Picoult  ||  Another book club selection, one that I was NOT initially enthused to read. [I have refused to read Picoult since I read My Sister's Keeper and threw the book across the room upon completion.] The story of a newborn, child of white supremacists, who dies while under the care of an African-American nurse who was instructed to not touch the child. Could she have saved him? Is she at fault? It's formulaic like all Picoult novels—well-researched, thoroughly-written, exploring the gray area of conflicted situations. It has its weaknesses (pulling out EVERY trope of racial microaggressions), to which I absolutely rolled my eyes at in the beginning. Who is Picoult, this privileged white woman, to write with this voice? But then I thought about it. And I read some reactions. And I read Picoult's author's note at the end. And, most importantly, I considered this story within its literary context. See here: I am what I am. I am an affluent white woman. I try to be pretty "woke" about it—aware of my privilege, my perception, and cognizant of the experiences of people in my community that are different than myself. Therefore, as a "woke" liberal, I was aware of Picoult's examples of modern racism, considering them too easy of examples, too stereotypical. Of course, that's insulting; of course, that's racism. Delve into the complexities—that's what needs to be explored and addressed! The thing is, not everyone is me. Picoult's primary audience is not me. To them, maybe these instances aren't so obvious; maybe they need pointing out, as basic as they seem. That's what changed my opinion—considering the message of this book and its intended audience. And if this book serves that role, if it causes some middle-American suburban book club-goer to question interactions, to think deeper about these things, to "wake up" to a reality they've rarely considered, then I applaud its intent.

And lastly...

THE 2017 RUNDOWN

• 70 total books
• 41 children's/YA titles
• 5 nonfiction (yikes, I didn't realize—how dismal!)\
• 7 chunksters (hefty page count and/or daunting complexity, subject, language, etc.)
• 6 graphic novels
• 2 re-reads

Most engrossing: The Diviners by Libba Bray, All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

Most boring: My Name is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout

Most memorable: Mornings in Jenin by Susan Abulhawa

Most forgettable: A Summons to Memphis by Peter Taylor

Most enjoyable: Great With Child by Beth Ann Fennelly, Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden

Most gratifying: Swann's Way by Marcel Proust

Most disappointing: The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu by Joshua Hammer

Fiction | A Villain's Side to History

Consider this the year of checking titles off my circa-2002 Gilmore Girls reading list. First, I conquered Proust, and now I can check off Gore Vidal, as well. Something about this year has inspired me to read more in-depth—partly, I think, because I enjoyed reading David Copperfield so much last Thanksgiving. It's one of those instances of reading the right book at the right time, being in the right mindset and such. (Plus, I've probably gotten much more out of them now than I would have in high school, anyway.) As such, these chunksters have brought me some perfectly lovely and gratifying reading experiences lately—ironically, a welcome respite from the almost-mindlessness of breezing through middle grade titles for work.

When I decided to pick up a Gore Vidal novel, I had two options from my own bookcases—Empire and Hollywood. Upon further research, however, I discovered these were just two titles in his "Narratives of Empire" series, a saga of American history spanning post-Revolution to mid-twentieth century. Obviously it wouldn't do to start in the middle, where either of these titles begins, so I decided to jump back to the first in the series, chronologically. [They can be read in either chronological or publication order.]

That brought me to the premier novel of Vidal's series, Burr, a narrative that challenges the myth of many of America's founding fathers, taking place in the early 1800s.

The premise of Burr centers around one such man with historical renown of nearly-mythological proportion, the villainous Aaron Burr—traitor, murderer of Alexander Hamilton, anti-hero of early American history. The story is narrated by the fictional Charles Schuyler, a young law clerk in Burr's law firm who has no political interest, nor connections, but dreams of becoming a writer and is hired to collect Burr's memoirs as his foray into journalism. While the present-day narrative spans just a few years in the early 1830s, time frequently jumps to Burr's past, 30-50 years prior, as the titular character recounts monumental episodes and pivotal moments in his life and that of his country.

Per the author's afterword, this story told is "history and not invention." In detailing so many conversations and interactions between these figures of American lore, Vidal says, "...the characters are in the right places, on the right dates, doing what they actually did. Obviously I have made up conversation, but whenever possible I have used actual phrases of the speaker." I find this enlightening, because to Vidal, in writing this book, there is not much difference between this, a "historical novel," and history itself. And that matters because Burr shares the conflict of character, the dark side of personalities and relationships, the nuance of politics—pieces of history that have been lost or overshadowed by their myth and legend, the story that has become unquestioned truth over the course of the past 250 years.

So in Burr we are given a front row seat to such historical events as the infamous 1804 duel with Hamilton and his trial for treason, ordered by Thomas Jefferson, involving the conquering (or liberation, depending on whose side you're on) of Mexico, as well as insight into relationships with such figures as Washington, Jefferson, Hamilton, Madison, Monroe, Jackson, and Van Buren.

My knowledge of such figures and events doesn't span far outside what an AP US History textbook may tell me. I've never delved into biographies that share the more personal side to these people; I don't know their backgrounds, their motivations, their conflicts. And because of this, Burr read to me like a television drama in which each person has their own reasons for being and doing—again, an angle and consideration that has disappeared from the story told in textbooks. Whether entirely accurate or not, Vidal presents a much more realistic, human side to a mythic story—one in which (by using Burr's perspective for storytelling) Washington is regarded as an inept military leader; Jefferson is hypocritical and conniving, bribing his way into political power; and Hamilton is an opportunist, using others to gain power and scheming a back-stabbing case against Burr as a last plot of vengeful competition. These are figures presented with their flaws in tact, not erased by a revisionist history that remembers them only as America's greatest heroes.

Another realization I had while reading Burr is how much detail to a story is lost over the years, how history is simplified over time and there are so many pieces that, once so important, may be forgotten entirely. The political climate of Burr's years as Jefferson's Vice-President (beginning 1801) were still rife with lingering Revolutionary conflict. The Federalist Party clashed with the Democratic-Republicans, who believed Federalists too nationalistic and too sympathetic to ties with Britain. And news (though not surprising) to me, these party lines were mostly drawn between New England and the lower states, between the old guard of British-born politicians and populist figures of the new America. Did you know there was an early suggestion the newly-born US be split into two countries, with a dividing line of...the Hudson River?? Or that states maintain a Constitutional right to secede from the union as they wish? Though most likely these were huge conflicts at their time, they are details that have been lost to historical summation.

In a sense, it makes me feel better about politics today. It's not necessarily that things have gotten so utterly complex, such a multi-faceted mess, just now; there have always been fighting factions and too many sides and issues to keep straight, much less figure out how to solve. It's just that we remember history by its headlines and trends—a linear plot that we can easily follow how A led to B and to C. When you're looking back on the big picture of change, it's the cause and effect that seems to matter, not all the details of how we got there. Vidal may present a more cynical history than some care to read, but it's fascinating and enjoyable to experience such a side of the story.

On Interconnectedness

This was the moment when I began to understand how unaware I'd been - not only in planning to run away, but in everything. I'd never understood how closely things are connected to one another. ... We human beings are only a part of something very much larger. When we walk along, we may crush a beetle or simply cause a change in the air so that a fly ends up where it might never have gone otherwise. And if we think of the same example but with ourselves in the roll of the insect, and the larger universe in the role we've just played, it's perfectly clear that we're affected every day by forces over which we have no more control than the poor beetle has over our gigantic foot as it descends upon it. What are we to do? We must use whatever methods we can to understand the movement of the universe around us and time our actions so that we are not fighting the currents, but moving with them.

—From Memoirs of a Geisha, Arthur Golden, p. 127

Reading Notes: Swann's Way, Part III

In the final section of Swann's Way, titled "Place Names: The Name," we're thrust back into our original narrator's voice as he ruminates on the power of names, particularly their ability to trigger a memory or emotional episode from one's past. After a fair amount of lengthy prose on this phenomenon itself, he finally gets to the main point: the narrator's relationship with Swann's daughter Gilberte, of which he had spoken more briefly towards the end of Part I.

In some sense, this is where the prior two seemingly disconnected parts to the novel finally do connect. The narrator is in Paris as a child/youth [I'm a little unclear about the exact age] and while out in the Champs-Elysees he hears the name 'Gilberte,' bringing to mind the girl he met back at Combray who made an "indecent gesture" towards him. [One: I don't know what that gesture actually was. Two: See how he connects the name recollection to memory here with this personal experience; point taken.] The girl connected to the name here in Paris is, in fact, the same Gilberte, and the narrator's intrigue is quickly rekindled and strengthened, especially as he becomes a frequent playmate of Gilberte.

The intrigue quickly turns to infatuation with habits and behaviors mimicking the ones we just read about Swann; the narrator finds that Gilberte occupies his thoughts, even outside of their time together and the experiences they share. He begins to judge his own life through a lens that she colors. His governess suddenly seems less sophisticated than Gilberte's; strangers with whom she interacts suddenly have more appeal, strictly by the fact that they earned Gilberte's attention. Further, M. Swann has lost all identity to the narrator as his parents' friend, the man who came to dinner at Combray and prevented his mother from kissing him goodnight. Now, he is "Gilberte's father," and an individual whose attention the narrator desperately seeks for validation, gaining pleasure at the idea that he may occupy any place in the Swanns' thoughts.

This infatuation is called love by the narrator, juxtaposed alongside Swann's own experiences chronicled in Part II, though identified as mere innocence since he, the narrator, was only a child. It becomes clear as I read this section that Proust always intended to carry the story further, using frequent parenthetical side comments to indicate something that will be noted or seen in the future. In a way, this consideration helps make sense of the novel's disjointedness; presumably this story was always meant to be an anthology, stretched out into segments that hop back and forth in time, with a mere single volume entirely unable to tell the full story. This becomes even more apparent with the story's big twist that **SPOILER ALERT** despite Swann's insistence at the end of Part II that he is, in fact, out of love with Odette, it is she who is Gilberte's mother and Swann's wife! And more interestingly, it is simply stated as fact, without any clue as to what led here. I have to say "well done" to Proust for burying the lead; I'm only discouraged that there are six more volumes to read that may or may not, at some point, finally reveal the full story!

After dropping that bomb, Proust concludes Swann's Way with present-day reflection by the narrator as he observes the Paris of the present, finding it void of the elegance he remembers from his past. But ultimately, how accurate are these memories and recollections?

"The reality I had known no longer existed.... The places we have known do not belong solely to the world of space in which we situate them for our greater convenience. They were only a thin slice among contiguous impressions which formed our life at that time; the memory of a certain image is but regret for a certain moment [emphasis mine]; and houses, roads, avenues are as fleeting, alas, as the years."

Concluding with the idea that reminisces are not realities, that we hold our memories to a higher esteem where they take on a revered status, Proust reflects that perhaps it was never the "thing" in the first place; there's no sanctity in the objects or experiences to which we attribute such strong emotional connection, but rather it's us - our own personal moment of development, realization, experience, etc. - that creates the moment of inspiration and allows these outside "things" to hold such magic.

"But when a belief disappears, there survives it - more and more vigorous so as to mask the absence of the power we have lost to give reality to new things - a fetishistic attachment to the old things which our belief once animated, as if it were in them and not in us that the divine resided and as if our present lack of belief had a contingent cause, the death of the Gods."

And that, my friends, is my completion of Swann's Way. And having finally checked off such a daunting title that has been on my list for fifteen whole years - more of a project, really - I can say with complete confidence and acceptance that I will most likely not be reading on further into In Search of Lost Time. Sorry, Proust.

Reading Notes: Swann's Way, Part II

Part 2 of Swann's Way is a lengthy, 200-page section titled "Swann in Love," and it's drastically different than the book's first part. It chronicles a period of Swann's history when he was (yep, you guessed it) in love, which was a narrative briefly alluded to by our narrator in Part 1 (so brief, in fact, that I had not even remembered it). The object of Swann's affections is a woman named Odette who is described as rather unremarkable, not the most intelligent, and not at all Swann's usual type. Basically, she's a 19th-century basic bitch.

Swann meets Odette through this social circle led by M. and Mme. Verdurin. Basically, they seem to be a group of semi-social outcasts that have created their own circle of friends just to judge those that have judged them. It's an eclectic set of personalities with the most comedic member, I think, being Dr. Cottard, a man who so humorously lacks social awareness that he never forms a true opinion and always responds with an ironic smile as his safety net - if his attitude doesn't match the socially accepted one, well of course, he knew that all along and now he's simply making a joke about it! Socially, Swann is above all of these people and thus considered a catch for their little social set. Yes, he has managed to create a better social persona than they have, but he's just as shallow and eager to please the public as they are. He only sticks around so long because he falls for Odette, and the Verdurins are his gateway to her.

So about this relationship with Odette. It's funny because in the beginning Swann is described as quite the ladies' man. Upon meeting her at the Verdurins, he gets the impression that she is trying to woo him, though he doesn't find her particularly appealing; the only real attraction comes from the fact that he knows she likes him so much. In fact, he's often with other women right up until he meets her and the Verdurins! As time passes, though, that attraction he feels from her causes his own attraction towards her to grow, creating an interesting type of love affair. How genuine can it be considered if you only fall for the person because you know they have fallen for you? (A modern day quandary as well, I'm sure.)

As time passes, Swann's intrigue turns to infatuation, which turns to full-out obsession. We rarely hear Odette's side, just Swann's as he struggles with the passion, thrills, and insecurities of this relationship. They're definitely lovers by its most basic definition; they meet up regularly, sleep together, and carry on some sort of passionate relationship. Swann is left enamoured, holding on to tiny moments, actions, or words during the time they are not together. (That's the novel's theme playing out: the staying power of insignificant memories.)

After introducing this part's main players and building relationships with descriptive interactions, the relationship begins to fall apart as Swann continues to hear rumors of Odette's amorous past, feeding into a deep, unsettled insecurity. He begins to question everything she says and does, convincing himself that the times she is not with him are filled with deception. Both Odette and the Verdurins lose interest in Swann, most likely due a great amount to his obsessive behavior. Proust then uses pages and pages to convey Swann's internal self-deprecation. He's experiencing an obsession to the point where he doesn't know how to not think about it, creating stories and convincing himself of drama that may or may not exist, because it's easier than letting it all go - you're so used to the anguish that you don't know what to do without it.

As a reader, I'm thinking, "Ohmygod please don't let this go on forever," because it's exhausting and also pretty monotonous. And Proust, then, most likely agrees and brings Swann back into the society he has for so long neglected where it becomes clear how much he has detached himself because of Odette. This, I think, is one of the more realistic and universal points in this whole affair of Swann's. He has sacrificed all other aspects of his life for this tumultuous, insecure affair, and it's this break from Odette, as he is trying to "wean himself" from her, that illuminates that sacrifice. When he once again hears the phrase from the piano sonata that came to define his early passion for Odette, he realizes that passion no longer exists; it's maintained only by his memory.

So like the dunking of the madeleine and the view of the church steeples in Part 1, this musical phrase conjures more than just reminisces; it invokes overwhelming feeling linked to a particular time and place. And in this instance, it's the realization that this emotion no longer exists that helps Swann break with Odette for good.

And before Swann had time to understand, and say to himself: "It's the litte phrase from the sonata by Vinteuil; don't listen!" all his memories of the time when Odette was in love with him, which he had managed until now to keep out of sight in the deepest part of himself, deceived by this sudden beam of light from the time of love which they believed had returned, had awoken and flown swiftly back up to sing madly to him, with no pity for his present misfortune, the forgotten refrains of happiness.

The drastic difference of this section from the previous one comes from the narration. It's told in such a third-person omniscient voice that we totally forget that it's actually the voice of "Marcel," our Part 1 narrator. In fact, I don't think he uses the word 'I' until over 100 pages into this section! We very quickly forget that this whole story about Swann and Odette is, in fact, just a retelling. We're reminded that everything we're reading took place in the past, before the narrator's time, and it must have just been retold to him, perhaps by his grandfather who has been mentioned as a friend of Swann's. I was happy to see, as I predicted, that the story would end up focusing more on Swann (since his name is in the book's title and all), but this total disconnect of narrative voice has left me wondering how it all connects. What's the point in sharing this tumultuous romance of Swann's past and nearly losing track of our narrator? Perhaps Part 3 will tell...

Fiction | Taming the Wild

...Youth with its insupportable sweetness,
Its fierce necessity,
Its sharp desire,
Singing and singing,
Out of the lips of silence,
Out of the earthy dusk.

My library book club just finished Willa Cather's O Pioneers!, a selection I gladly picked up since this is my summer of reading classics and heftier titles. Despite its short length, I had zero idea what this 1913 staple of American literature was actually about, beyond what you could garner from the title.

The story centers around Alexandra Bergson and family, pioneers on the Nebraska prairie in the late 1800s. John Bergson, the patriarch passes away early on, leaving the farm in the hands of his daughter Alexandra in what would have been a hugely uncommon move at the time. (A woman in charge? Heavens!) Alexandra is the eldest of four. The two middle brothers, Lou and Oscar, work the farm but are generally more lazy, self-serving, and looking for a quick buck. They lack Alexandra's deep connection with the land itself, which is most likely why John didn't leave them in charge. They are also constantly concerned with how they appear to others and frequently question Alexandra's progressive decisions; they prefer to fall in line rather than stand out. The youngest Bergson, a son named Emil, is only five when the story begins and develops into a more sensitive, adventurous young man. He's somewhat pampered by Alexandra, because she sees how different his nature is from his older brothers, and he's the only one in the family who attends university. As a result, he's not always held in the highest regard by Lou and Oscar who are probably just jealous. Strangely, the family's actual (unnamed) matriarch is the least present character in the novel. She's described as a good housewife but misses life in the old country, and her life seems one of stoic adaptation.

The communities are small and fairly new, land that has yet to be tamed by its human settlers. The Bergsons represent the thousands of families that packed up and headed west because of the free land promised through the Homestead Act, the act of government that officially opened up the western frontier (reminder: lands taken from the American Indians) to settlers. These are people that are at the beck and call of nature; success or failure is almost entirely out of their hands as an unforeseen drought or late freeze can be your downfall. Cather reminds of us of this power of nature constantly:

"The roads were but faint tracks in the grass, and the fields were scarcely noticeable. The record of the plow was insignificant, like the feeble scratches on stone left by prehistoric races, so indeterminate that they may, after all, be only the markings of glaciers, and not a record of human strivings." 

"But the great fact was the land itself, which seemed to overwhelm the little beginnings of human society that struggled in its sombre wastes. ...he felt that men were too weak to make any mark here, that the land wanted to be let alone, to preserve its own fierce strength, its peculiar, savage kind of beauty, its uninterrupted mournfulness."

There are neighbors and characters that humanize the story - Crazy Ivar, an elderly eccentric; Carl Linstrum, a neighboring young man about Alexandra's age who leaves the prairie and later returns; Marie Shabata, a vivacious young woman, the town beauty; Frank Shabata, Marie's husband, a bitter man unhappy with how his life has settled into one requiring constant hard work. These people, alongside the Bergson family, create the novel's page-to-page stories and conflicts. And those stories are nothing new. Obligation, love, jealousy, sacrifice - these are themes that fill the pages of book after book, and feel all the more powerful when set in such a stark environment such as this one.

What makes Cather's story unique, though, is that despite filling her pages with personal and family dramas, it's never a story strictly about the human condition. Alexandra is a strong, independent woman, yes, but she is so focused on the land that she sacrifices the more personal aspects of her life. She's deeply oblivious to the human passions that are playing out right in front of her because she is so self-sacrificing. Great melodramas of the 19th century - Madame Bovary, Anna Karenina, Wharton and Austen - speak volumes on the universality of human nature, but I believe these are never Cather's interest nor focus. Relationships and behaviors fill the pages, but Cather's main focus is always the land.

"Isn’t it queer: there are only two or three human stories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened before; like the larks in this country, that have been singing the same five notes over for thousands of years."

I think O Pioneers! is very nearly a perfectly executed novel. Cather manages to convey complex conflicts and ideas through a simple, succinct story. It's one that is unique to her characters but potentially universal, representative of a specific time, place, or situation. Despite this praise, I have great dissatisfaction with the ending. In a nutshell, without sharing spoilers, I felt betrayed by the author who painted a final portrait of an Alexandra that felt very much opposite the one we had gotten to know for the previous 4/5ths of the book. It felt like the author asserting some moral or standard of the era rather than remaining true to the character she had created; it reeked of too much author voice instead of the character's (and story's) natural denouement. The ending notwithstanding, I found this a surprisingly deep and satisfying read.

Reading Notes: Swann's Way, Part I

As a 16-year-old over-achiever aiming to read all the same books as Rory Gilmore, I must've checked out Proust's Swann's Way from the library about six times without ever having actually opened it to page one. It was always just too daunting, and somehow I knew back then that it was far over my analytical ability level. When my NYC book club chose it as the long holiday selection right before I moved, I decided to buy it anyway - a new motivator to pick up this long set-aside "masterpiece."

...And so it has sat for another three-and-a-half years until my fall reading of David Copperfield inspired me to pick up some other classics for my summer break reading. Thus with 6 weeks ahead of me with ample time and freedom, I decided to finally embark on the Proust journey.

For having held a position on my "to read" shelf for so long, I have known surprisingly little about Swann's Way. My skim through translator Lydia Davis' introduction ("skim" because, wow, she gets detailed) informed me that the novel's narrator is not, in fact, this titular Swann, and whomever he is is never named (though all the internet will call him Marcel, apparently after the author, assuming this is somewhat an autobiographical voice, according to a one-lined reference in a later volume of this anthology). This, along with Davis' further discourse on Proust's run-on writing style and references to this yet-unknown-to-me famous episode with a madeleine, immediately informed me that I may be in rather over my head. Some sort of reading guide seemed necessary, and I luckily found an informal one, a seeming personal reading project and journal called 182 Days of Marcel Proust in which the blog author simply records and reflects during the reading process, about 15 pages at a time. PERFECT.

Part 1, titled "Combray," involves mostly the narrator's reflections on his childhood spent at his grandparent's house in the northern French town of Combray. It starts out as a simple memory of how he often struggled with falling asleep as a child, and then experienced that sensation when you start awake and lose track of where you are and realize you were, in fact, actually asleep, but you have to piece together your surroundings of time and place. I mean, yes, it's a very real and common phenomenon, but pretty much the entire first section of this narration reflects on this idea that stemmed from this small memory. This gives you an indication of just how Proust structures his narration. [Basically, not at all. It's a lot of meandering, stream of consciousness, one thought leads to another idea sort of thing.]

Continuing on, the narrator recalls an incident when Monsieur Swann (a neighbor and friend to his grandparents) is visiting for dinner, thus preventing the narrator's mother from kissing him goodnight, which was apparently an anxiety-inducing tragedy worth reflecting upon years later. Other memories include those with Aunt Leonie, an ailing old codger who confines herself to her bed and constantly laments her state of health, whether real or imagined. [She's just like old Mrs. Harris in the Anne of Avonlea movie.] He recalls an innocent encounter with his Uncle and a prostitute that causes such embarrassment that Uncle is never seen by Narrator again. There are pedantic acquaintances that annoy the family but introduce the Narrator to a great deal of literature and culture. And there are ordinary townsfolk, like M. Vinteuil and daughter, whose small personal dramas cause great reflection on life, love, and humanity. Oh, and Narrator also meets Swann's daughter, Gilberte, with whom he apparently is essentially obsessed. [Supposedly there's more on that later.]

As I've followed along with summaries and notes during my own reading, I was somewhat surprised to realize that I was actually following what was happening. I haven't read an observation on a detail that I couldn't recall...which is a good sign; it means I am following the narration fairly well, at least. But I still haven't felt as though I really get it, that I get what Proust is saying and why. Yes, I can follow the plot points easily, but Proust is using so many words and there's such academic intellect surrounding him; surely there must be something deeper that I am missing. I mean, he's building this story, or rather, narrative, around an individual's memories and recollections and how these affect one's view and perception of the world - something that is very personally and, well, individualistic. It's like trying to put into words a complex cognitive process that happens without awareness or consciousness.

I guess it makes sense when you consider the overarching title of Proust's 7-volume anthology (of which Swann's Way is the first): "In Search of Lost Time." The Narrator here reflects a great deal on sensory experiences (dipping the madeleine into a cup of tea, observing church steeples from a moving carriage as the sun sets) and I guess Proust's p o i n t of this all is to consider how these small, perhaps insignificant moments of "lost time" actually inspire and contribute to our personal, intellectual development and experience.

But I'm still just very taken with the minor role Monsieur Swann has actually played in this first third of the book so far. Waiting to find out when (or even if) he becomes a lead.

Fiction | Life and Breath in War

Susan Abulhawa's Mornings in Jenin has been on my to-read list for I don't even know how long. Like, years - most likely from the early days of my book blogging venture, that past life of New York and a desk job. I wanted to read it then because my unremembered source called it powerful, and I wanted to read a "powerful" story about an unfamiliar place and situation. When I spied it on a library shelf just as I was ruminating on my future diverse reading goals, it finally felt like time to delve in.

The story begins just after World War II in that strip of constant struggle between Israel and Palestine. A Jewish boy and Palestinian boy befriend each other at a time before this land is racked with unrelenting conflict. These simpler days are few in the scheme of our story, though, as the Abulheja family is soon forcibly removed to a refugee camp by the newly formed state of Israel. Exiled from their homeland, the Abulhejas become the personification of this struggle for land and place; four generations live and breathe the reality of war, though their story is just one of many similar.

Our ultimate protagonist is Amal, that original Palestinian boy's granddaughter, who we follow as she fights her way through a violent world from the time she's just a small girl. Her early childhood memories of quiet, cozy mornings on the roof with her father are soon usurped by ones with guns, bombs, and death - hiding out for hours in a hole under the kitchen floor, the only shelter from a raid, with no adult for comfort, holding an infant killed by shrapnel.

Amal grows up fast. Her father's disappearance and presumed death leaves her mother empty; her brother channels his anger, sadness, fear into the Palestinian cause, retreating from his remaining family. Another brother, Ishmael, exists somewhere - kidnapped as an infant and raised by an Israeli family who cannot have children of their own. For much of her life, Amal is on her own - physically, emotionally - spending most of her childhood and adolescence without a sense of safety, comfort, or support, even if only from a nurturing adult figure.

The sequential shifting of character focus by which this story is told is odd, in a way. It lacks the size and complexity of a true multi-generational epic; we get details throughout, though never, it feels, the full story or experience until we reach Amal. On the other hand, though, it always feel as though we have enough context around which to build our perception of Amal's world. We do see where she came from and what drove those people that came before her. This is why I say it felt "odd" - you feel like you know it all, but there is also so much you don't know (particularly about the men in Amal's life; you, the reader, are kept very in tune with the female figures while the men are more described than experienced first-hand).

My only other literary encounter with this time and place was a long-ago book club read, School for Love by Olivia Manning. That story, though, is an entirely different one (perhaps taking place in those "peaceful" years I mentioned that could foster a friendship between an Arab and a Jew). Mornings in Jenin, told very much from a Palestinian perspective, is gut- and heart-wrenching and probably the most difficult book I've read. It humanizes something that is otherwise so distant, little more than a headline in a paper or a blip on the news. It's overpowering with defeat and hopelessness; it's a life drowning in sadness and fear, with only blips of hope and joy, instead of other way around. What's harder to consider is that this story is not an embellishment, nor an uncommon one. It's a reality for many people around the world, one that I cannot even fathom. I am very fortunate that my life of safety and comfort is my reality; we must recognize that it's never a guarantee.

Fiction | A Classic Approach to Reading

I've long talked about Book Riot's Read Harder Challenge that I began back in 2015 and have been picking away at ever since.

Well guys, it's official: I finally finished the 2015 Read Harder Challenge!

My last remaining category for the challenge was "a book published before 1850," and I actually debated several options for this over the course of my participation. Originally, I had wanted to read something American from pre-1850, because I'm already familiar with (and had read) many of the infamous British authors from this era; that would be the easy-out. As time passed, though, I just increasingly felt that sticking to American works was too limiting. ZERO of the options inspired me, and I had, simultaneously, been inspired to read a Dickens classic since I'd only ever read Oliver Twist and that was back in high school. Of the date-qualified options, I chose David Copperfield and, with it being a chunkster and all, saved it for my final Read Harder Challenge project.

David Copperfield, like Dickens' other works, was originally published as a serial over the course of 19 months from 1849 to 1850. Facing its intimidating 800+ pages, I decided to plot out my reading and put myself in the mindset of its original audience; each day, I read a single part, following its original publication schedule of three chapters at a time. This was a fabulous decision, as it made the book's language and heft (daunting to my middle-grade mindset) feel much more manageable.

Largely considered an almost autobiographical work, David Copperfield follows its eponymous main character from his orphaned boyhood to adulthood, through love and loss, happiness and heartbreak, alongside a slew of characters that impact his journey.

Beyond this quick introduction, I think it impossible to outline this book in a succinct paragraph with any certitude. That's not the end goal of the story, to be able to quickly summarize for a friend an enjoyable tale you encountered. What Dickens does with David Copperfield, instead, is create an immersive world in which one character, one man, exists and comes of age. This immersion is achieved in part by its first-person narrative, told from the perspective of an older Copperfield. And it's not even told, as so common, as a reflection but more of a simple retelling with an occasional musing thrown in. Because of this, we the reader forget that we are reading events that have happened in the narrator's past; we are fully engaged in the events unfolding on the page, with the characters with which we interact.

It's a story about the world we live in, with its good and bad, without delving into the world, on a large scale, itself. Rarely do we view Copperfield's place as a citizen of a larger society; rather, his experiences are all relational. He learns of the depths of humanity from the people closest to him—the warm, gregarious Peggotty clan; the unctuous Steerforth; the foolishly optimistic Micawber; the duplicitous Uriah Heep.

On of my most telling observations on this reading experience was the contrast of perspective from that of my own. In a modern world, one in which access is available at our literal fingertips, in which we are inundated with news and opinions, it is a jolt to experience a life in which one's worldview is so strongly influenced by so few people and experiences. Consider that David Copperfield's entire sense of identity and belief was derived from what we read in these pages. It's an experience that is far more personal and intimate than that of today—smaller, perhaps, but no less significant.

Another point: this book is funny! And sentimental! And the poignancy with which Dickens describes certain experiences and emotions was incredibly surprising to me. I guess I tend to view all "classics of literature" from an intellectual frame, assuming the language is straightforward and old-fashioned, lacking expression. But this passage on Copperfield's first bout of intoxication had me laughing, and I'm sure had I not been reading "all-in," focused on the subtleties of language, I would have passed it right by.

"Somebody was smoking. We were all smoking. I was smoking, and trying to suppress a rising tendency to shudder...

Somebody was leaning out of my bed-room window, refreshing his forehead against the cool strone of the parapet, and feeling the air upon his face. It was myself. I was addressing myself as 'Copperfield,' and saying, 'Why did you try to smoke? You might have known you couldn't do it.' Now that somebody was unsteadily contemplating his features in the looking-glass. That was I too. I was very pale in the looking-glass; my eyes had a vacant appearance; and my hair - only my hair, nothing else - looked drunk...

...We went downstairs, one behind another. Near the bottom, somebody fell, and rolled down. Somebody else said it was Copperfield. I was angry at that false report, until finding myself on my back in the passage, I began to think there might be some foundation for it."

I stated in my last post that the dedication I devoted to reading David Copperfield was refreshing; I am so used to breezing through books as we breeze through everything else—news, Netflix, social media—consuming as much as possible in as little time as possible. In some regards I think we suffer from an overabundance of culture available for our consumption. When you live your life alongside the "so many books, so little time" mentality, it becomes habit to speed through one thing to move onto the other. Reading this classic reminded me that books like this were written to be savored, slowly consumed and absorbed, and perhaps that is a mentality I should adopt more often.

2016 in Review

I was a voracious reader as a kid, never leaving the house without a book, coming home from the library with an immovable stack of books, dominating the Accelerated Reader game in elementary classes. When I hit middle school, my reading habits dwindled to non-existence as I got sucked into pop culture and the general interests of a 13-year-old. When I was in the 8th grade, though, my mom eventually banned me from watching any TV until I read a book, convinced this would somehow get me in the reading habit again. I still find major fault with this logic; it's never that easy!

Somehow, though, it totally worked, and I've been a consistent reader again ever since. At the start of this re-found reading craze, I began writing in a notebook a list of all the books I had read, noting the dates of completion and thus creating an easy source of data to compare my reading from one year to another. You can see through my past 16 years as handwriting evolved, pen colors went from adolescent-bright to adulthood-boring. Once I began using Goodreads around 2009, I've kept a digital record of this list, but something about the history and consistency of this same notebook endures and I keep writing it down anyway.

According to my records, my most ambitious year to date was 2012 when I read 75 books. During that year, I was in grad school, taking Children's and YA lit classes, breezing through a zillion book because I could devour them so quickly. Well, considering that's a norm of my life now, I aimed to conquer that reading record in 2016 by surpassing 75 books.

I only half failed. I met my record at 75 but didn't go any further. December always ends more hectic than anticipated, and my final book selection of the year (on my Kindle) ended up being a 570-page one, taking more time than expected.

The thing about reading so many books this year, though, is that I'm not sure I actually enjoyed it so much. I constantly feel desperate for more time to consume more pages, saddened that there's so much I want to read and so little, as they say. But for my final book of the 2015 Read Harder Challenge, I chose David Copperfield and spent the three weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas reading it. I hadn't close-read a book like that in a long time, and I was reminded of how rewarding it is to soak into a story and commit ample time and brainpower to one piece of work. Though I'd never thought it possible, I think maybe I feel a bit of book overload?? Too much, too quickly??

So for 2017, I have a couple new reading goals that have nothing to do with numbers. One, I want to invest more time in reading. I want to read classics that require a mental shift to ride the flow of language; I want to spend 800 pages with a story to feel accomplished at the end. And two, I want to read more diversely - authors, characters, places of color. I want to read stories by voices and experiences vastly different from my own. I know what it's like to be white in America; and while it certainly holds a place in my reading oeuvre, I want to work hard at reading beyond that experience. I toyed with the idea of following Book Riot's 2017 Reading Challenge since I finally finished the 2015, but I think I found a different kind of challenge in Read Diverse 2017 - a challenge with less structure but more community accountability. I'm excited to broaden my reading in a new way.


THE 2016 RUNDOWN

• 75 total books
• 41 children's/YA titles
• 12 nonfiction
• 5 graphic novels
• 3 re-reads (all children's)
• 26 published in the past two years (2015-2016)

Most engrossing: Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card (also most suprising)

Most boring: No Great Misery by Alistair McLeod

Most memorable: Lookaway, Lookaway by Wilton Barnhardt

Most forgettable: Get in Trouble by Kelly Link

Most enjoyable: A Touch of Stardust by Kate Alcott and Harry Potter and the Cursed Child 

Most gratifying: David Copperfield by Charles Dickens and Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Most disappointing: The Future of Us by Jay Asher

The JUV FIC Corner Presents "Tom's Midnight Garden"

Remember back when I used to do children's chapter book features called The JUV FIC Corner? Yeah, I barely do either - my last one was technically in June of 2013! I say "technically" because I think my overall reading habits have become a lot more juvenile in the past two years thanks to my job, so it's not such a rarity that I focus on children's lit anymore.

More to the point, I started doing those posts several years ago to feature some of my childhood favorites after re-reading them as an adult. It's always a lovely connection to check in with the beloved stories that were such monumental pieces of my reading history. It's difficult, as an adult, to recollect the kind of innocent wonder, intrigue, and impact that is an inherent part of childhood. Re-reading these favorite stories, I think, gives us back a piece of that feeling for just a moment.

I remember discovering Tom's Midnight Garden by Philippa Pearce while lying in my grandparents' floor watching Reading Rainbow. After hearing a teaser, I just had to read it. And I must have, at the time, but that time is so long ago, probably 20 years ago at this point, that I can't actually remember much beyond that random day in front of their floor console television set. Something suddenly inspired me to find this book again, and luckily the Nashville Public Library had an original copy available in their annex.

In this lesser-known story (at least to modern American audiences), Tom is sent to spend the summer with his aunt and uncle after his brother contracts the measles. Now living in an upstairs apartment with no garden in which to run around and play, Tom immediately bemoans his lost summer of adventure with his brother Peter. One sleepless night, though, he hears the old grandfather clock downstairs strike a thirteenth hour, and when he goes to investigate, Tom discovers the backdoor now opens into a huge, beautiful garden that definitely wasn't there before... Now, every night when the clock strikes thirteen, Tom escapes to this magical Victoria-era world where he befriends a girl named Hatty who becomes his steadfast companion and playmate.

It's so different from modern stories, yet so alike many classic stories in children's literature where fantasies are actualized. A boy steps outside when the clock strikes a mysterious hour and the whole world is different. The explanation doesn't matter, not yet at least; it's the discovery and exploration that cause the mind-racing, can't sleep kind of anticipation and excitement. This must be where I first fell in love with a time travel story, because the concept is so much a part of the best imaginings - a safe kind of adventure of discovery.

And like many childhood classics, the language is complex, never simplified for an adolescent audience. Pearce jumps a scene to different time, character, or perspective without any warning, in a way that feels apt to scene cuts on film, not narrative in a novel. It's surprising, and delightful, especially to an adult reader like myself, but I wonder about its 21st-century accessibility to young readers. (Most of my technology-dependent modern preteens, sadly, would probably not appreciate the simple imagination of this story.)

To me, though, it's wonderful storytelling and perfectly magical.

Nonfiction | Striving for Success in China's Factories

With only two (!!) categories remaining on my seemingly never-ending quest to finish the Read Harder Challenge I began in 2015, I was finally able to pull a title off my existing to-read list for the "book that takes place in Asia." Leslie T. Chang's Factory Girls: From Village to City in a Changing China is a nonfiction exposé on the life of China's numerous (130 million, to be exact) migrant workers. The story is neither thrilling nor uncommon; instead, Chang chronicles the everyday existence of these millions of people that live a life entirely unrelatable to our Western ideals.

Set primarily in the industrial town of Dongguan, Factory Girls tells a common story - that of millions of girls who leave their rural towns for a life and job in the city. As the older generation stays planted in these small, rural towns, continuing a familial tradition of agriculture, the younger generation's future has changed due to China's modern industrialization. Children, particularly the girls, leave for the factories, becoming their families' primary breadwinners. With their migration comes a new sense of freedom and opportunity in a society where education is valued but legitimacy is not (necessarily), where success depends on street smarts, and where, it seems, anything is possible if you work hard enough and smart enough for it.

Chang is a former Wall Street Journal correspondent of Chinese descent. Unfamiliar with, and a bit wary of, her own ancestry, she explores this facet of modern Chinese society from a voyeuristic perspective through select women she follows over the course of three years. She chronicles their move from job to job, always on the lookout for something better, with little loyalty or regard to particular employers; she observes friendships and relationships that seem superficial at best, entirely artificial at worst. It's a world where better jobs often come after lying on your resume, where pyramid schemes and scams run rampant to prey on hopeful ambition, and where relationships can disappear entirely with the simple loss of a cell phone.

The strength of this book lies in Chang's straightforward way of reporting the story. It's not a dastardly tale of sweatshop work. The impression I get, in fact, is that the sweatshop horrors is the stereotype of yesteryear. Though the work is certainly more monotonous and demanding of time (6-day work weeks, for example) than we are used to, the conditions, based on Chang's telling, don't seem harsh or cruel. In this sense, it's not a story of drama and hardship; it's the story of how these migrant women are constantly working for betterment. There is no passive acceptance of life; these women strive to educate themselves for better jobs and new opportunities.

A factory run by TAL Group that makes US-brand apparel for such companies as
J. Crew and Hugo Boss; Photo via New York Times

Interspersed with the present-lives of Chang's migrant subjects is Chang's own family history as migrants to the U.S. after China's Cultural Revolution. Despite providing some context of 20th-century Chinese history, particularly in relation to Communism, this part of the narrative seemed superfluous to me; the intrigue really lies in the everyday lives of these women who have such different lifestyles and values. I am more curious about the future of these women, living in a city populated by people under 30. Do they eventually return to their rural towns? Or do they continue to live in these industrial cities, creating a new tier of the labor force, the "self-made women?" Perhaps China's industrial society still continues to evolve.

What's most remarkable about this story, as a Western reader, is our very real and legitimate connection to it. This is not a lifestyle or job contained within China's borders; rather, it's entirely a product of worldwide, and particularly U.S., demand for cheaply manufactured consumer products. These factories, and therefore these women and their choices and their lives, can attribute their very existence to our want of new iPhones. Or Nikes. Or 50" TVs. And how utterly distressing and perplexing is this?

Fiction | A Logical Guide to Finding Love

November's book club selection was a lighter tome—The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion. I binge-read the entire book the Sunday before our meeting, and my ability to do that—the fact that it was such a light and quick read—made me question what kind of discussion we'd be able to pull out of this book!

Our main character is Don Tillman, a genetics professor with a slightly odd personality. His life is ruled by organization and structure; he follows the same routines daily and weekly, and he approaches life from an analytical, straightforward perspective. Unfortunately for his love life, this same perspective has never been very successful with women. When a departing friend leaves him a letter that contends he'd make a wonderful husband, Don decides it's time to find a partner. Why couldn't he find a wife using the same methodical approach as a research project?

Thus Don launches The Wife Project. By designing a thoroughly detailed 16-page questionnaire, Don figures he has created the perfect methodology to weed out the incompatible and find his perfect partner. It's a surprise to him, then, when one potential applicant named Rosie fails his compatibility test miserably...because she's the one that he can't seem to stop thinking about.

When, early in the story, his friend and fellow professor, Gene, has Don cover a lecture for him on the topic of Asperger's syndrome, it suddenly becomes very clear to the reader that this, essentially, is describing Don. [But whether Don picks up on these pointed similarities, we remain uncertain.] Though we, the reader, did not have much time with him prior to this revelation, establishing that Don is a narrator with a different way of thinking immediately changes our experience with his story. He's not your typical narrator; he tells his tale almost entirely devoid of emotion. It's a refreshing and entertaining perspective because it's such an uncommon one. In many instances, Don's logic does seem to make complete sense—and don't emotions tend to over-complicate most situations anyway??

This character that is so unused to emotional interactions, though, is in for a world of change as he builds a relationship with Rosie. Uncertain from the beginning of the nature of their relationship, Don distracts himself from such a looming question by delving into her own project of figuring out the identity of her real father. It's just the kind of study that absorbs Don's attention, using a standard method, substantive data, deductions and conclusions. In the meantime, though, Don's way of thinking begins to shift; he's loosening his hold on his routines, and his life is becoming increasingly unpredictable, almost without him realizing it.

Fortunately for the sake of our group discussion, we have an outgoing, agreeable group, so conversation was never an issue, despite this story being lighter fare. In the pop culture realm of stories of autism, we decided this was one told from a more comedic, character perspective as opposed to a dramatic, situational one. [We determined The Big Bang Theory employs this perspective as well.] Having established that we all enjoyed the story, our group was able to delve deeper into specific scenes that chronicle Don's story, discussing the author's storytelling choices and critique all the other pieces that make the story tick. It turned out to be a lively, engaging conversation, and though the story itself lacks any heavy, heady discussion points, it still has plenty to, enjoyably, consider.

Fiction | Falling for a Dead Man

As I've been reading broadly for the past two years for the (2015) Book Riot Read Harder Challenge, I've had to tackle some genres that I read rarely, if ever. That is, after all, the whole point of such a challenge—to read outside your comfort zone! One of my remaining categories has been the "romance novel," not because I have anything against romance novels but rather because I had a hard time deciding which sub-genre I wanted to read. Historical? Chick-lit? Do I look for personal plot appeal or go for a true classic of the genre?

I opted for the classic—something that is, according to pop culture & literature, truly representative of the romance genre. Having shelved books for years at the public library, I'm familiar with names, so I picked one from the depths of my memory - Jude Deveraux - and consulted Goodreads for what is considered her pinnacle work.

And that's how I got to A Knight in Shining Armor, Deveraux's 1989 bestseller that tells the story of the lovelorn Dougless Montgomery.

Our heroine is vacationing in England on what was supposed to be a romantic getaway with her surgeon boyfriend, Robert. Forever failing at love, Dougless has convinced herself that he's a good catch, worthy of her love, though it is painfully clear to us, the reader, that Robert is entirely the wrong guy; he is manipulative, controlling, patronizing—so much so that the romantic vacation, during which Dougless was hoping for a marriage proposal, has unexpectedly turned into a family one that includes Robert's brat of a teenager daughter. Any sense of romance dies swiftly when, after a nonsensical argument, Robert jilts and abandons Dougless at a rural church where she's left wallowing in yet another romantic failure, praying for a knight in shining armor to save her from the despair.

Imagine the surprise when a handsome man suddenly, miraculously appears and introduces himself as Nicholas Stafford, Earl of Thornwyck, the very name on the statue against which Dougless shed her plentiful tears. (Naturally; this is a romance!)

It's questionable who is more confused in this scenario—Dougless, whose heartbreak and frustration turn her romantic sensibilities into practical ones, assuming there's a perfectly rational explanation for this strange man suddenly appearing and claiming to be an Earl who died in the 16th century; or Nicholas, a man who heard a desperate plea for help and now finds himself in an unfamiliar world that is centuries more modern than his own.

Dougless learns of Nicholas' tragic backstory—one involving betrayal, treason, and premature death—as she helps this 16th-century earl navigate the 20th-century world. Naturally, she figures out that this impossible man is exactly who she has been praying for, and the two are inexplicably drawn together by forces that defy logical explanation and are more powerful than either can comprehend. Deveraux isn't easy on either of her main characters, forcing each of them into the time period opposite their own to continue the story and learn more of the puzzle surrounding Nicholas' sudden appearance and his tragic future. This juxtaposition of time ultimately highlights the depth of these two characters—their strengths and weaknesses. At the novel's opening, I very much found Dougless to be a major pushover but with pluck hidden somewhere underneath. As the story evolves, though, so does her character as circumstance demands a more bold, independent woman. (Though, I mean, she could still use a lot of work on the feminist front.)

So what we've got here is not only a love story but a time-traveling one—and I love time travel stories! In terms of the steamy scenes, this is definitely a romance low on that spectrum, so though yes, it's totally a romance, it feels more like an adventure based around a love story. Super fun to breeze through.

Nonfiction | A Secret Town, A Secret Mission

For my most recent book club meeting, I got to delve into some nonfiction for the first time in a while! The book was Atomic City: The Untold Story of the Women Who Helped Win World War II by Denise Kiernan. This one has some local appeal; Oak Ridge, located just north of Knoxville, is a familiar locale to Tennesseans and, in the decades since WWII, has earned some tourist notoriety for its one-time secret status. Plus, the book group I joined skews older, so many of our readers had personal memories attached to this story, as well.

Imagine this scenario: You're living in 1943 in a nation embroiled in war, which permeates every piece of daily life. You've just finished high school or college, and with your brothers overseas fighting for your country, you have few options but to stay close to home and get a job. Then, you get this job offer with a description that could not be more vague. It seems too good to be true—the pay is outstanding and it's supposed to help win the war. Once you've secured the job, you follow the mysterious instructions you were given to take a specific train to a location you've never heard of. And once you arrive to this strange community called Oak Ridge, you settle into a new life, making new friends and doing your best every day at the job you were given. You're not really sure what's going on at Oak Ridge, but it's run by the military and therefore secretive and therefore must be helping the war cause.

This was the reality for the many women Kiernan profiles in this book. The story of Oak Ridge is a fascinating—and multi-faceted—one. This complex created by the US military, originally designed to house 17,000 workers, ultimately became home to over 62,000 individuals. These people all came to Oak Ridge for a job. From them grew friendships, relationships, a town, a community. These people became experts at their job, whatever they were, but only a fraction of 1% of Oak Ridge's residents actually knew their ultimate purpose. It was masked in secrecy, and there were constant reminders that "loose lips sink ships."

It wouldn't be until August 6, 1945, that they would figure out they had spent the last two years building the world's first deployed atomic bomb.

Perhaps now you understand why I said this story is a "multi-faceted" one. Kiernan opted to tell a particular piece of the Oak Ridge story, to view it from one perspective—that of the women whose lives were changed by this incredible reality. In this, I think Kiernan did an excellent job. She uses a handful of women to recollect the Oak Ridge experience; the reader gets to know these women as individuals—their backstories, their motivations, their fears. Through them, we understand how thousands of people united behind a common cause, despite their knowing little about it in the first place!

This is where it gets tricky for me. Naturally, my 2016 perspective is vastly different than the 1943 one of these women. And when viewed through the modern lens to which I am accustomed, this story of Oak Ridge is terrifying!

Kiernan tells this nice, patriotic, feminist story of women doing important work, but can you imagine if we heard this story in present-day terms from some country across the globe?? "Thousands Build Nuclear Weapon in Secrecy!" "Community Brain-Washed Into Building Atomic Bomb!" I understand that times were different. The war was so all-encompassing that "helping to win the war" was justifiable enough reasoning; there was little to question. Further, the mentality was different than it is today—less thirst and desire for constant information, less skepticism, fewer questions. Plus, the mere existence of these opportunities for the women of 1943, when their norms and expectations were so vastly different than today, probably fostered more excitement than suspicion.

And we haven't even touched on the debate surrounding the moral implications of dropping the atomic bomb. That's a whole other part of the story!

For what it is, I think Kiernan's book is an excellent piece of story-telling. She humanizes a piece of history while using plenty of research to create context for the reader. And she is not (and should not be) obligated to, nor responsible for, telling the whole story of Oak Ridge. But having never deeply encountered this particular piece of history myself, it opened up a can of worms


Extra: It's worth noting that our book club discussion was a pretty engaging one. Reactions and opinions seemed to run the gamut. Some women felt the same as me and had many more questions about this whole scenario; others just accepted it for what it was without much questioning. I think it's so interesting, and fosters such great discussion, because the themes go beyond this one historical scenario; it brings into question bigger ideas such as trust and fear, patriotism, society and individualism. A great one for discussion!

Fiction | Old Money, New South

I wrote two months ago of my plan to blog only on what inspired—to not feel pressured to reflect on every single book I read, struggling to muster up a passionate response for a reaction I did not have or feel. But for one book in particular I read last May, it's that exact passionate reaction that has left my mind blank of words. Isn't it the worst when you have so much to say but don't know how to start?

Well, it's finally gotten to the point where it's actually stressing me out to have this still lingering on my mental check-list. The very thought of composing the first words and sentences has felt too daunting to tackle. How do you convey the beauty and brilliance of one author's words when you know your own will be sub-par, unable to do it justice? Usual descriptions fall short, feeling trite and inadequate, trying too hard to emulate the power and precision of the very words you're trying to praise.

(Can you tell I'm stalling here?

Okay, okay; I'll just dive in.)

Wilton Barnhardt's Lookaway, Lookaway is the saga of one positioned, old-money, North Carolinian family. The matriarch of the Johnston clan, Jerene Jarvis, basically considers the family legacy her top priority and manages it by means only common to the old Southern elite. Her husband, Duke, is heir to a Confederate general's legacy, an All-American golden-boy turned politician whose career has floundered and has become a near-caricature Civil War re-enactor. The four kids—Annie, Bo, Joshua, and Jerilyn—are as different as they could come, almost comically so, considering the image and stature Jerene tries so hard to maintain. They're almost like a omnipresent curse on Jerene's perpetual PR campaign of the Johnston name, put in this world to make her job more complicated as they constantly threaten to shame the family name. Oh, but then there's Jerene's brother Gaston, the very definition of boozy, weird uncle—a local author renowned for his fluffy historical sagas, constantly using the stereotype of "eccentric uncle" to mask his embarrassing escapades.

So at the foundation of this novel's structure, you have this family that constantly seems to be falling apart, saved only by the influence, persuasion, and social rank of Jerene. But further up, Lookaway, Lookaway profoundly reveals the tenuous society in which the Johntson clan lives and reigns. The Antebellum period has long left North Carolina's history, but its claws dug into certain parts of society and refuse to let go. The Johnstons live in a world in which old southern ideals, money, and status still play a huge role in creating and defining the social hierarchy. But 150 years have passed since the "glory days" of the Old South, and money and power are no longer determined by a family name. The nouveau riche and opportunists threaten the Johnston position of preeminence, one they have earned by maintaining a certain way of life for decades prior. As their fortunes falter, so, it seems, does the hierarchy that defines their very identity.

It's as if, thought Annie, some wicked masculine committee in charge of Life had known the women would worry their pretty little heads over all this rigmarole and thereby leave the running of the big important world to the men, who would look upon all the flounces and frills, tears and hysteria, with a knowing wink, a nudge in the side, Told you that'd keep 'em occupied.

What I loved about this book is how brilliantly Barnhardt captures this weird, complex, complicated entity known as "the South." I found my breath nearly taken away by certain passages that just—YES!—perfectly capture its world of contradictions. In most modern cities and towns, particularly in the South but really anywhere, it's easy for history to be pushed to the background, often nearly forgotten as the present continuously redefines; people evolve, as do the places they live.

But in some pockets of the South, the relationship with history is ever-present, so deeply ingrained in a place's identity that one cannot exist without the other. Nashville is a bustling, modern metropolis that takes great pride in its history, yes. But take a drive through Mississippi's Delta region, where two-lane highways pass through towns nearly forgotten if not already abandoned, and it's so clearly obvious that the present is a direct result of the past—that this area is still defined by its Civil War way of life, that no modern influences have shifted its story in a new direction.

I don't think Barnhardt's setting is quite so dismal and dire as this but it does successfully illustrate the social complexities existing in this lower region of the country with a dark past, complexities that are often simplified or stereotyped in fiction and culture. Combined with an intriguing cast of characters, each of whom we follow closely through that alternating-perspectives format, these observations paint a dynamic portrait of a place and people holding on tight to an identity, despite its extravagant flaws.

Southerners. Such literate, civilized folk, such charm and cleverness and passion for living, such genuine interest in people, all people, high and low, white and black, and yet how often it had come to, came to, was still coming to vicious incomprehension, usually over race but other things too—religion, class, money. How often the lowest elements had burst out of the shadows and hollers, guns and torches blazing, galloping past the educated and tolerant as nightriders, how often the despicable had run riot over the better Christian ideals...how often cities had burned, people had been strung up in trees, atrocities had been permitted to occur and then, in the seeking of justice for those outrages, how slippery justice had proven, how delayed its triumph. Oh you expect such easily obtained violence in the Balkans or among Asian or African tribal peoples centuries-deep in blood feuds, but how was there such brutality and wickedness in this place of church and good intention, a place of immense friendliness and charity and fondness for the rituals of family and socializing, amid the nation's best cooking and best music...how could one place contain the other place?