Falling for the Highlander by Lynsay Sands (Highlanders #4)

Summary from Goodreads:
Lady Murine Carmichael has known her share of bad luck. But when her debt-ridden half-brother tries to sell her off in exchange for a few Scottish horses, it’s the final straw. If keeping her freedom means escaping through harsh countryside alone, so be it. She has barely begun her journey when she lands an unlikely escort—the brawny Highlander who just refused to buy her virtue.

Dougall Buchanan was disgusted by Lord Danvries’ shameful offer, but Murine herself tempts him beyond measure. Even bedraggled and dusty, the lass glows with beauty and bravery. Dougall wants to do more than just help her flee. He wants to protect her—with his life and his heart—if she’ll only let him. For Murine may be pursued by a powerful foe, but nothing compares to the fiery courage of a Highlander in love.

Lynsay Sands, good lord woman, what are you doing with this series?  It started out really fun, and it seemed like branching out into the different women who appeared as potential/thwarted brides in To Marry a Scottish Laird (book 2) would be an excellent plan but what even is this book?

Falling for the Highlander is completely phoned in. Lazy writing, silly plot choices (Really? All these brothers are so smitten that they bring EVERY dress for Murine to choose from so they are conveniently destroyed by a fire forcing her to wear braies so Dougall can ogle her butt?), and strange word choices (butt cheek? In medieval Scotland, really?).  The Buchanan brothers - introduced in Saidh's book - are kind of a riot but they don't help a recycled plot.  And then it just sort of ends. Do better (next time, because I can't quit Sands's Highlanders for some reason).

I'd like a book about Aulay, please.  Given that he's got some hang-ups I think he'd be far more interesting to write about. (Next one's about Niels, though, oh well)

Dear FTC: I had a digital galley, but it expired so when the library's Overdrive system got a copy I borrowed it.  Glad I didn't buy it.

A Girl Walks Into a Book: What the Brontës Taught Me about Life, Love, and Women's Work by Miranda K. Pennington

Summary from Goodreads:
How many times have you heard readers argue about which is better, Jane Eyre or Wuthering Heights? The works of Charlotte, Emily, and Anne continue to provoke passionate fandom over a century after their deaths. Brontë enthusiasts, as well as those of us who never made it further than those oft-cited classics, will devour Miranda Pennington's delightful literary memoir.
Pennington, today a writer and teacher in New York, was a precocious reader. Her father gave her Jane Eyre at the age of 10, sparking what would become a lifelong devotion and multiple re-readings. She began to delve into the work and lives of the Brontës, finding that the sisters were at times her lifeline, her sounding board, even her closest friends. In this charming, offbeat memoir, Pennington traces the development of the Brontës as women, as sisters, and as writers, as she recounts her own struggles to fit in as a bookish, introverted, bisexual woman. In the Brontës and their characters, Pennington finally finds the heroines she needs, and she becomes obsessed with their wisdom, courage, and fearlessness. Her obsession makes for an entirely absorbing and unique read.
A Girl Walks Into a Book is a candid and emotional love affair that braids criticism, biography and literature into a quest that helps us understand the place of literature in our lives; how it affects and inspires us.

*publisher catalog waves title about person talking about Brontës under my nose and I practically short-circuit until I get my hands on a copy*

A Girl Walks Into a Book is a lovely memoir about how one woman found solace and guidance throughout her life through a love of the Brontës and their work. Lots of life lessons, dreams, heart-break, and learning to be an adult who works through difficult situations, particularly relationships. Pennington touched on all of the Brontës' books, a number of the film adaptations, and even includes a shout-out to the Thursday Next series by Jasper Fforde (aww, yeah).

Dear FTC: I had to buy a copy of this book because no one would give me a galley (sad but true).

Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud: The Rise and Reign of the Unruly Woman by Anne Helen Petersen

Summary from Goodreads:
From celebrity gossip expert and BuzzFeed culture writer Anne Helen Petersen comes an accessible, analytical look at how female celebrities are pushing boundaries of what it means to be an acceptable woman.

You know the type: the woman who won't shut up, who's too brazen, too opinionated, too much. She's the unruly woman, and she embodies one of the most provocative and powerful forms of womanhood today. In Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud, Anne Helen Petersen uses the lens of unruliness to explore the ascension of pop culture powerhouses like Lena Dunham, Nicki Minaj, and Kim Kardashian, exploring why the public loves to love (and hate) these controversial figures. With its brisk, incisive analysis, Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud will be a conversation-starting book on what makes and breaks celebrity today.

After living through the first half of 2017, Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud is the book I needed to give me a boost and a reminder to square my shoulders and keep on going.

I really, really enjoyed this book of ten essays that examined unruly women (women who are too loud, too slutty, too old, too fat, too strong, too pregnant, etc) and deconstructed the media and culture reaction to each "type". And no woman is perfect, another way we become unruly. I would have happily read even more because Petersen situated her writing in a good middle ground - she pulled theory from philosophy, gender studies, etc but also used hundreds of pop culture examples. This is a good place to start for anyone looking to examine "post-feminist" backlash.

Dear FTC: I read a digital galley of this book from the publisher via Edelweiss.

Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore by Matthew J. Sullivan

Summary from Goodreads:
When a bookshop patron commits suicide, it’s his favorite store clerk who must unravel the puzzle he left behind in this fiendishly clever debut novel from an award-winning short story writer.

Lydia Smith lives her life hiding in plain sight. A clerk at the Bright Ideas bookstore, she keeps a meticulously crafted existence among her beloved books, eccentric colleagues, and the BookFrogs—the lost and lonely regulars who spend every day marauding the store’s overwhelmed shelves.

But when Joey McGinty, a young, beguiling BookFrog, kills himself in the bookstore’s back room, Lydia’s life comes unglued. Always Joey’s favorite bookseller, Lydia has been bequeathed his meager worldly possessions. Trinkets and books; the detritus of a lonely, uncared for man. But when Lydia flips through his books she finds them defaced in ways both disturbing and inexplicable. They reveal the psyche of a young man on the verge of an emotional reckoning. And they seem to contain a hidden message. What did Joey know? And what does it have to do with Lydia?

As Lydia untangles the mystery of Joey’s suicide, she unearths a long buried memory from her own violent childhood. Details from that one bloody night begin to circle back. Her distant father returns to the fold, along with an obsessive local cop, and the Hammerman, a murderer who came into Lydia’s life long ago and, as she soon discovers, never completely left. Bedazzling, addictive, and wildly clever, Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore is a heart-pounding mystery that perfectly captures the intellect and eccentricity of the bookstore milieu and will keep you guessing until the very last page.​

I wasn't sure what to make of Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore.  Is it a thriller?  A coming-of-age story?  Psychological?  With loads of psychological thrillers on the market from authors like Gillian Flynn and Ruth Ware, this didn't feel like it fit.  But it went on the Discover display at the store, so I felt like I ought to give it  a shot.

Sullivan chose an odd but compelling way to tell a thriller story that turns out to be something else entirely. Lydia is an interesting main character with a lot of secrets and backstory.  It was pretty compelling reading - if she investigates Joey's last request, will she bring the Hammerman out of hiding? What is this message hidden in his books? However, Lydia also felt very flat as a character, without much internal motivation until the end of the book. There were some good twists and turns in this novel, all leading back to the theme of family and secrets. Structurally, though, Sullivan chose to close the novel with an Epilogue.  It was a total cop out.  He should have just written a closing chapter or two rather than cram all sorts of stuff into a time jump. #banepilogues

Dear FTC: I read a digital galley of this book from the publisher via Edelweiss.

Believe Me: A Memoir of Love, Death, and Jazz Chickens by Eddie Izzard

Summary from Goodreads:
Critically acclaimed, award-winning British comedian and actor Eddie Izzard details his childhood, his first performances on the streets of London, his ascent to worldwide success on stage and screen, and his comedy shows which have won over audiences around the world.

Over the course of a thirty-year career, Eddie Izzard has proven himself to be a creative chameleon, inhabiting the stage and film and television screen with an unbelievable fervor. Born in Yemen, and raised in Ireland, Wales and post-war England, he lost his mother at the age of six. In his teens, he dropped out of university and took to the streets of London as part of a two-man escape act; when his partner went on vacation, Izzard kept busy by inventing a one-man act, and thus a career was ignited. As a stand-up comedian, Izzard has captivated audiences with his surreal, stream-of-consciousness comedy--lines such as "Cake or Death?" "Death Star Canteen," and "Do You Have a Flag?" have the status of great rock lyrics. As a self-proclaimed "Executive Transvestite," Izzard broke the mold performing in full make-up and heels, and has become as famous for his advocacy for LGBT rights as he has for his art. In Believe Me, he recounts the dizzying rise he made from street busking to London's West End, to Wembley Stadium and New York's Madison Square Garden.

Still performing more than 100 shows a year--thus far in a record-breaking twenty-eight countries worldwide--Izzard is arguably one of today's top Kings of Comedy. With his brand of keenly intelligent humor, that ranges from world history to pop culture, politics and philosophy, he has built an extraordinary fan base that transcends age, gender, and race. Writing with the same candor and razor-sharp insight evident in his comedy, he reflects on a childhood marked by unutterable loss, sexuality and coming out, as well as a life in show business, politics, and philanthropy. Honest and generous, Izzard's Believe Me is an inspired account of a very singular life thus far.

Eddie Izzard is one of those chameleon actors for me: I would never recognize him on the street and his characters have a huge range (I would never have pegged him to play a Nazi in Valkyrie but he was excellent) plus he's a comic.  Believe Me is a good, solid memoir running from his very early childhood all the way up to his recent successes as an actor. If you're used to Izzard's stand-up shows, the writing here isn't nearly as laugh-out-loud funny, but he's got a really dry writing style and has some excellent bits in the footnotes.  I snorted several times. The last 50 pages or so get kind of pokey and wander around but it is a fascinating look at how he built his career from the ground up.  I also feel like I understand his sexuality much more, which is a good reminder for me that people do not fit neatly into little boxes.

Dear FTC: I read a digital galley of this book from the publisher via Edelweiss.

The Nakano Thrift Shop by Hiromi Kawakami (translated by Allison Markin Powell)

Summary from Goodreads:
Featuring a delightfully offbeat cast of characters, The Nakano Thrift Shop is
a generous-hearted portrayal of human relationships by one of Japan's most beloved authors.

Objects for sale at the Nakano Thrift Shop appear as commonplace as the staff and customers that handle them. But like those same customers and staff, they hold many secrets. If examined carefully, they show the signs of innumerable extravagancies, of immeasurable pleasure and pain, and of the deep mysteries of the human heart.

Hitomi, the inexperienced young woman who works the register at Mr. Nakano's thrift shop, has fallen for her coworker, the oddly reserved Takeo. Unsure of how to attract his attention, she seeks advice from her employer's sister, Masayo, whose sentimental entanglements make her a somewhat unconventional guide. But thanks in part to Masayo, Hitomi will come to realize that love, desire, and intimacy require acceptance not only of idiosyncrasies but also of the delicate waltz between open and hidden secrets. Animating each delicately rendered chapter in Kawakami's playful novel is Mr. Nakano himself, an original, entertaining, and enigmatic creation whose compulsive mannerisms, secretive love life, and impulsive behavior defy all expectations.

The Nakano Thrift Shop is a quirky, understated book about three people who work at a thrift shop (four, if you count the owner's sister) over the course of about one year. Hitomi observes the oddities of her employer, Mr. Nakano, and his sister while appearing to drift a little bit in life (I hate to use the term "quarterlife crisis" but it does feel like she is trying to figure out life a bit).  She also develops a strange relationship with the delivery driver Takeo, who definitely sends her strange signals.  This is an excellent book for when you need something quiet.

The translation seems good (I had thought that "Indian summer" was an odd idiom to use but it turns out that it was ported into Japanese some time ago). There is a weird convention about quotation marks - sometimes used, sometimes not.

Dear FTC: I received a digital galley of this book from the publisher via Edelweiss.

Isadora by Amelia Gray

Summary from Goodreads:
Using the scaffolding of Isadora Duncan’s life and the stuff of her spirit, Amelia Gray delivers an incredibly imaginative portrait of the artist

In 1913, the restless world sat on the brink of unimaginable suffering. But for one woman, the darkness of a new era had already made itself at home. Isadora Duncan would come to be known as the mother of modern dance, but in the spring of 1913 she was a grieving mother, after a freak accident in Paris resulted in the drowning death of her two young children.

The accident cracked Isadora’s life in two: on one side, the brilliant young talent who captivated audiences the world over; on the other, a heartbroken mother spinning dangerously on the edge of sanity.

Isadora is a shocking and visceral portrait of an artist and woman drawn to the brink of destruction by the cruelty of life. In her breakout novel, Amelia Gray offers a relentless portrayal of a legendary artist churning through prewar Europe. Isadora seeks to obliterate the mannered portrait of a dancer and to introduce the reader to a woman who lived and loved without limits, even in the darkest days of her life.

I've been very interested in this novel for a while.  Isadora Duncan is an absolutely important figure in the development of modern dance and in breaking away from the classical ballet tradition.  She's also a tragic figure in the discipline, first losing her eldest two children to an accident and then dying of a broken neck when her scarf is caught in a car's axle.  Of course, I would want to read a novel based on her life.

This didn't quite pan out.  There's an interesting biographical novel somewhere in Isadora, one about grief and loss and art, but it's bogged down by the style. The novel begins on the day that Isadora's children drown in a car accident in the Seine and spans the next 18 months or so told by a rotating cast of 4 characters: Paris Singer, Isadora's lover and father of her younger child; Elizabeth, Isadora's sister; Max, Elizabeth's lover (maybe her lover, maybe not?) and a teacher at the Duncan school in Darmstadt; and Isadora Duncan herself.  There are also other characters coloring the narrative, the Duncan matriarch, another Duncan sibling and his wife, students of the Duncan school, and so on. Now, the major snag here is that Isadora narrates in the first person and everyone else in a close third person point-of-view, with some letters mixed in between chapters, and that makes it absolute hell to read. Also, while some of Paris's sections were interesting, absolutely none of Max's sections were worth reading, in my opinion. Isadora's sections are the strongest, and most beautiful, with Elizabeth's a perfect contrast as the sister always in the shadow. If I could take a knife and snip out everything else leaving only these two sister narrators (and magically make Isadora's sections a close third POV) this would be a marvelous novel.

Dear FTC: I received a digital galley of this book from the publisher via Edelweiss.

We Are Never Meeting in Real Life. by Samantha Irby

Summary from Goodreads:
Sometimes you just have to laugh, even when life is a dumpster fire. With We Are Never Meeting in Real Life., "bitches gotta eat" blogger and comedian Samantha Irby turns the serio-comic essay into an art form. Whether talking about how her difficult childhood has led to a problem in making "adult" budgets, explaining why she should be the new Bachelorette--she's "35-ish, but could easily pass for 60-something"--detailing a disastrous pilgrimage-slash-romantic-vacation to Nashville to scatter her estranged father's ashes, sharing awkward sexual encounters, or dispensing advice on how to navigate friendships with former drinking buddies who are now suburban moms--hang in there for the Costco loot--she's as deft at poking fun at the ghosts of her past self as she is at capturing powerful emotional truths.

Somehow, I had not run across Samantha Irby, a writer/humorist from Chicago, on the Interwebs. (No lie - I saw the cover with its grumpy kitten and was like SOLD, I wonder who wrote this.) we are never meeting in real life. is a very solid collection of personal essays ranging from hilarious (her bachelorette contestant application) to the stone-cold sobering (a phone call at college informing her that her father is missing, possibly dead). The arrangement of essays is very clever, moving us from topics we grasp easily - and easily chuckle over - moving through gradually harder subjects as Irby reveals to us - always with a quip - who she is as a queer, disabled black woman. She will cut you to ribbons with her words then enjoy a marathon of Real Housewives in her pajamas without a second thought. I think my favorite piece was the one about the Civil War reenactment she ran across while in Naperville for a wedding.  Definite recommend.

we are never meeting in real life. is out May 30th!

Edited to add: Congrats to Irby on her TV deal for her previous book, Meaty!

Dear FTC: I received a digital galley of this book from the publisher via Edelweiss.

Little Sister by Barbara Gowdy

Summary from Goodreads:
Thunderstorms are rolling across the summer sky. Every time one breaks, Rose Bowan loses consciousness and has vivid, realistic dreams about being in another woman's body.

Is Rose merely dreaming? Or is she, in fact, inhabiting a stranger? Disturbed yet entranced, she sets out to discover what is happening to her, leaving the cocoon of her family’s small repertory cinema for the larger, upended world of someone wildly different from herself. Meanwhile her mother is in the early stages of dementia, and has begun to speak for the first time in decades about another haunting presence: Rose’s younger sister.

In LITTLE SISTER, one woman fights to help someone she has never met, and to come to terms with a death for which she always felt responsible. With the elegant prose and groundbreaking imagination that have earned her international acclaim, Barbara Gowdy explores the astonishing power of empathy, the question of where we end and others begin, and the fierce bonds of motherhood and sisterhood.

Little Sister is one of those books that has such a good premise and idea behind the characters but then gets really underserved by the construction. The book takes so long to get to WHY Rose becomes so obsessed with Harriet and how the two of them might be connected (or not) that I was having trouble staying with the story.  And then it doesn't really dig into whether Rose was actually having visions, or just migraines, or if there truly was something supernatural.  For a short novel it should not have taken me this long to read. The mother, Fiona, was a great character and one of the few times that I've read an aging parent with dementia who is portrayed sympathetically but also given a three-dimensional personality beyond the mental deterioration.

Dear FTC: Thanks to Tin House Galley Club for the ARC.

Chemistry by Weike Wang

Summary from Goodreads:
Praised by Ha Jin as "a genuine piece of literature: wise, humorous, and moving," and perfect for readers of Lab Girl and Celeste Ng's Everything I Never Told You, a luminous coming-of-age novel about a young female scientist who must recalibrate her life when her academic career goes off track.

Three years into her graduate studies at a demanding Boston university, the unnamed narrator of this nimbly wry, concise debut finds her one-time love for chemistry is more hypothesis than reality. She's tormented by her failed research--and reminded of her delays by her peers, her advisor, and most of all by her Chinese parents, who have always expected nothing short of excellence from her throughout her life. But there's another, nonscientific question looming: the marriage proposal from her devoted boyfriend, a fellow scientist, whose path through academia has been relatively free of obstacles, and with whom she can't make a life before finding success on her own.

Eventually, the pressure mounts so high that she must leave everything she thought she knew about her future, and herself, behind. And for the first time, she's confronted with a question she won't find the answer to in a textbook: What do I really want? Over the next two years, this winningly flawed, disarmingly insightful heroine learns the formulas and equations for a different kind of chemistry--one in which the reactions can't be quantified, measured, and analyzed; one that can be studied only in the mysterious language of the heart. Taking us deep inside her scattered, searching mind, here is a brilliant new literary voice that astutely juxtaposes the elegance of science, the anxieties of finding a place in the world, and the sacrifices made for love and family.

Chemistry is a book that fits in between Dear Committee Members and Dept. of Speculation - which is an intersection that I didn't know I needed. I really enjoyed the narrator as she winds up having to break almost everything in her life from her academic career to her long-term relationships before she can figure out who she is or what she wants. The writing is very wry and there's a lot of science and chemistry (NERD CRED FTW). I had some trouble at the beginning with the tenses - present tense is used for EVERYTHING, including events from the narrator's childhood, and I found that kind of annoying.

Dear FTC: I received a digital galley of this book from the publisher via Edelweiss

New Boy by Tracy Chevalier (Hogarth Shakespeare)

Summary from Goodreads:
From the New York Times bestselling author of Girl with a Pearl Earring comes the fifth installment in the Hogarth Shakespeare series, a modern retelling of Othello set in a suburban schoolyard

Arriving at his fifth school in as many years, a diplomat's son, Osei Kokote, knows he needs an ally if he is to survive his first day so he's lucky to hit it off with Dee, the most popular girl in school. But one student can't stand to witness this budding relationship: Ian decides to destroy the friendship between the black boy and the golden girl. By the end of the day, the school and its key players - teachers and pupils alike - will never be the same again.

The tragedy of Othello is transposed to a 1970's suburban Washington schoolyard, where kids fall in and out of love with each other before lunchtime, and practice a casual racism picked up from their parents and teachers. Peeking over the shoulders of four 11 year olds Osei, Dee, Ian, and his reluctant girlfriend Mimi, Tracy Chevalier's powerful drama of friends torn apart by jealousy, bullying and betrayal will leave you reeling.

I am having extreme side-eye with this this book. I love the Shakespeare Hogarth series idea, but I don't think New Boy executed well. We've had Othello updated using teens before but Chevalier chose to use 6th graders in the 1970s as her setting. Her depiction of racial tension in 1970s America worked but the sexual politics fell very flat, particularly since the action took place in a single school day.  One school day.  I know eleven-ish/twelve-ish year-olds are DRAMA (I've got twin nieces that age, tell me about it) but it felt over-constructed. Maybe it would have worked better to run the story over time as the children aged and developed relationships but this was far too short a time span.  In addition, I think Hogarth missed an opportunity to get an author who is not a white person to write Othello's story.  Chevalier is a fine writer, but what would Marlon James have done with this?  Jesmyn Ward? Colson Whitehead? NK Jemisin? Nnedi Okorafor? (OMG, YES PLEASE WRITE THIS, NNEDI)

Dear FTC: I received a digital galley from the publisher via Edelweiss.

Evensong by Kate Southwood

Sumary from Goodreads:
Margaret Maguire—a widow and grandmother, home from the hospital in time for Christmas—is no longer able to ignore the consequences of having married an imperious and arrogant man. Despite her efforts to be a good wife and mother in small-town Iowa, her adult children are now strangers to one another, past hope of reconciliation. Margaret’s granddaughter could be the one to break the cycle, but she can’t do it without Margaret’s help. It’s time to take stock, to examine the past—even time for Margaret to call herself to account.

By turns tenacious and tender, contrary and wry, Margaret examines her life’s tragedies and joys, motivations and choices, coming to view herself and the past with compassion, if not entirely with forgiveness. Beautifully rendered and poignantly told, Evensong is an indelible portrait of a woman searching for tranquility at the end of her days.


While perusing catalogs, I came across a book set in Iowa.  Gimmie.

Evensong by Kate Southwood beautiful, quiet, slowly unfolding story about an elderly woman near the end of her life.  As she recuperates from a heart attack, she contemplates the consequences of her choice of husband who died decades ago when their two children were young (nothing squicky, just not a great person, in the end). The family dynamics here are very intricate - encounters are either commonplace or fraught with tension between the daughters and grand-daughter.  Anyone who has had that awkward holiday dinner with the one overachieving weirdo relative that everyone else is winding up will understand.

Although I picked up Evensong specifically because it is set in Iowa - a fictional town somewhere down near Ft Madison - and it isn't specifically evocative of place, it very much deserves its comps to Marilynne Robinson's Gilead with with the focus on a long life, family, and the past.

Dear FTC: I received a digital galley of this book from the publisher via Edelweiss.

My Life with Bob: Flawed Heroine Keeps Book of Books, Plot Ensues by Pamela Paul

Summary from Goodreads:
When she was sixteen years old, Pamela Paul opened to the first page of a notebook and began recording the title and author of every book she read during the summer. She continued doing so as autumn turned to winter, as high school turned to college, as her life took her through romance, disappointment, marriage, and motherhood, and as she rose in her career to the editorship of The New York Times Book Review. The once-new notebook—now mottled, coffee-stained, and frayed at the corners—is the record of her lifelong love affair with books, and it has come to mean more to her than any other material possession. She has even given it a name: Bob, for “Book of Books."

Pamela Paul’s life with Bob is a life that many of us will recognize, a life in which books play a much more meaningful role than simply imparting information or entertaining us with compelling stories. When she opens Bob to any page, the titles and authors listed there serve as touchstones to remember the people, places, and emotions of her past – not only what she was reading but where she was and the person she was at the time. It makes a difference that she read The Trial while on a youth program in France, The Hunger Games in the maternity ward, and Swimming to Cambodia in Cambodia, and she reflects on how her life’s journey has been shaped and redirected by the books and authors who spoke to her at that time.

Not merely a chronicle of reading, My Life with Bob is also a testament to the power of books to provide the perspective, courage, companionship, and ultimately the self-knowledge to forge our own path and get where we want to go.

Bob is pretty awesome.

"Books wherein an author talks about how much they love books and what they read" is a particular genre kryptonite of mine. Editor of the New York Times Book Review wrote a book about keeping a book journal for most of her life?  Sign me up.

My Life With Bob by Pamela Paul was a little more memoir that I had anticipated - I was expecting more "this is what I read" as opposed to "this is my life while I was reading books" - but it's a well-written set of personal essays about a life-long love of reading, chronicled by the Bob (Book of Books) that she started while on a study program in France during high school. As someone who only started a book journal once finished with grad school and free once-again to start reading voraciously I found this particularly appealing.

Dear FTC: I received a digital galley of this book from the publisher via Edelweiss.

Tender: Stories by Sofia Samatar

Summary from Goodreads:
The first collection of short fiction from a rising star whose stories have been anthologized in the first two volumes of the Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy series and nominated for many awards. Some of Samatar’s weird and tender fabulations spring from her life and her literary studies; some spring from the world, some from the void.

I haven't read Sofia Samatar's novel (yet - I'm not dead, yet) so I jumped at the chance to read this collection.  There are a lot of good stories in Tender, particularly ones where the world of the story seems "normal" then one small twist reveals that it is actually dystopic (ex. "Selkie Stories Are for Lovers", "Honey Bear" and "How to Get Back to the Forest"). These stories cluster in the front half of the book (Tender Bodies) and it made the collection feel unbalanced to me. For this reason it didn't gel as a collection for me, but the actual writing of the stories is superb.

Dear FTC: I received a digital galley from the publisher via Edelweiss.

The Wanderers by Meg Howrey

Summary from Goodreads:
In four years Prime Space will put the first humans on Mars. Helen Kane, Yoshi Tanaka, and Sergei Kuznetsov must prove they’re the crew for the job by spending seventeen months in the most realistic simulation every created.

Retired from NASA, Helen had not trained for irrelevance. It is nobody’s fault that the best of her exists in space, but her daughter can’t help placing blame. The MarsNOW mission is Helen’s last chance to return to the only place she’s ever truly felt at home. For Yoshi, it’s an opportunity to prove himself worthy of the wife he has loved absolutely, if not quite rightly. Sergei is willing to spend seventeen months in a tin can if it means travelling to Mars. He will at least be tested past the point of exhaustion, and this is the example he will set for his sons.

As the days turn into months the line between what is real and unreal becomes blurred, and the astronauts learn that the complications of inner space are no less fraught than those of outer space. The Wanderers gets at the desire behind all exploration: the longing for discovery and the great search to understand the human heart.

So, before we begin, The Wanderers is not like The Martian.  I know it's being marketed that way - because NOVEL ABOUT SPACE AND ASTRONAUTS WHAT ELSE DO WE COMPARE IT TO - but The Martian is a much different book, very action-driven.  The Wanderers is very character- and setting-oriented so it makes for a very different reading experience.  So, onward.

The Wanderers turned out to be a very enjoyable and thoughtful novel about space exploration that doesn't actually explore space...or does it? It actually reminded me a lot of Carl Sagan's Contact (the movie adaptation at least, since I've not actually read the book) with it's range of time and philosophy about the nature of space exploration (and odd charismatic billionaires). I really liked the characterizations of the three astronauts Sergei, Helen, and Yoshi. They share the narration between themselves and with several family members and Prime employees.  At the outset I wasn't sure if I liked expanding the narration beyond the astronauts, but over the course of the book it turned out to be very interesting. It's very easy to think that the story of space exploration lies solely with those who leave our atmosphere and forget those who remain behind.

Dear FTC: I picked up an ARC of this book from a batch sent to my store by the publisher.

Letters to a Young Writer: Some Practical and Philosophical Advice by Colum McCann

Summary from Goodreads:
From the bestselling author of the National Book Award winner Let the Great World Spin comes a lesson in how to be a writer—and so much more than that.

Intriguing and inspirational, this book is a call to look outward rather than inward. McCann asks his readers to constantly push the boundaries of experience, to see empathy and wonder in the stories we craft and hear.

A paean to the power of language, both by argument and by example, Letters to a Young Writer is fierce and honest in its testament to the bruises delivered by writing as both a profession and a calling. It charges aspiring writers to learn the rules and even break them.

These fifty-two essays are ultimately a profound challenge to a new generation to bring truth and light to a dark world through their art.

I've only recently discovered Colum McCann (let me tell you, Dancer is amazing).  This little book contains life advice disguised as writing advice very much in the vein of Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet. It gets a bit platitude-y at times, in my opinion, but the later chapters have a really wry voice.

Also, dude can write a sentence about anything.  That alone is worth reading.

Dear FTC: I received a digital galley of this book from the publisher.

The Best We Could Do by Thi Bui

Summary from Goodreads:
An intimate and poignant graphic novel portraying one family’s journey from war-torn Vietnam from debut author Thi Bui.

This beautifully illustrated and emotional story is an evocative memoir about the search for a better future and a longing for the past. Exploring the anguish of immigration and the lasting effects that displacement has on a child and her family, Bui documents the story of her family’s daring escape after the fall of South Vietnam in the 1970s, and the difficulties they faced building new lives for themselves.

At the heart of Bui’s story is a universal struggle: While adjusting to life as a first-time mother, she ultimately discovers what it means to be a parent—the endless sacrifices, the unnoticed gestures, and the depths of unspoken love. Despite how impossible it seems to take on the simultaneous roles of both parent and child, Bui pushes through. With haunting, poetic writing and breathtaking art, she examines the strength of family, the importance of identity, and the meaning of home.

In what Pulitzer Prize–winning novelist Viet Thanh Nguyen calls “a book to break your heart and heal it,” The Best We Could Do brings to life Thi Bui’s journey of understanding, and provides inspiration to all of those who search for a better future while longing for a simpler past.

The Best We Could Do is one of the most beautiful and heartbreaking graphic memoirs I've ever read. Bui's attempts to understand herself as a new parent by trying to understand how her parents grew up and existed before she came along will resonate with any reader - that it is all set during the turbulence of the Vietnam War makes it just gutting. The art is superb with sharp pen-and-ink drawings colored by soft pastel watercolor. A must-read and congrats to Bui for being selected for BN's Discover program.

Dear FTC: I bought my copy of this book.

The Women in the Castle by Jessica Shattuck

Summary from Goodreads:
Set at the end of World War II, in a crumbling Bavarian castle that once played host to all of German high society, a powerful and propulsive story of three widows whose lives and fates become intertwined—an affecting, shocking, and ultimately redemptive novel from the author of the New York Times Notable Book The Hazards of Good Breeding

Amid the ashes of Nazi Germany’s defeat, Marianne von Lingenfels returns to the once grand castle of her husband’s ancestors, an imposing stone fortress now fallen into ruin following years of war. The widow of a resistor murdered in the failed July, 20, 1944, plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler, Marianne plans to uphold the promise she made to her husband’s brave conspirators: to find and protect their wives, her fellow resistance widows.

First, Marianne rescues six-year-old Martin, the son of her dearest childhood friend, from a Nazi reeducation home. Together, they make their way across the smoldering wreckage of their homeland to Berlin, where Martin’s mother, the beautiful and naïve Benita, has fallen into the hands of occupying Red Army soldiers. Then she locates Ania, another resistor’s wife, and her two boys, now refugees languishing in one of the many camps that house the millions displaced by the war.

As Marianne assembles this makeshift family from the ruins of her husband’s resistance movement, she is certain their shared pain and circumstances will hold them together. But she quickly discovers that the black-and-white, highly principled world of her privileged past has become infinitely more complicated, filled with secrets and dark passions that threaten to tear them apart. Eventually, all three women must come to terms with the choices that have defined their lives before, during, and after the war—each with their own unique share of challenges.

Written with the devastating emotional power of The Nightingale, Sarah’s Key, and The Light Between Oceans, Jessica Shattuck’s evocative and utterly enthralling novel offers a fresh perspective on one of the most tumultuous periods in history. Combining piercing social insight and vivid historical atmosphere, The Women in the Castle is a dramatic yet nuanced portrait of war and its repercussions that explores what it means to survive, love, and, ultimately, to forgive in the wake of unimaginable hardship.

By my count, novels about non-combatants in World War II seem to be on a trend.  It's not a particular corner of fiction I gravitate toward, possibly because I'm reasonably well-read on the non-fiction side.  But I had an opportunity to read an advance copy of The Women in the Castle, so decided to give it a try.

I think that a reader who finds books like All the Light We Cannot See and The Nightingale to be their jam would also like The Women in the Castle.  The writing is very good, the characters are compelling, and Shattuck has done a lot of research into the psychology of why people who seemed to be decent people became complicit in the atrocities of the Third Reich.  However, the book as a whole just didn't do it for me.  The prologue is very clunky and I wasn't that interested in the adults' stories in that section, many of them from men who make few appearances in the book. The timeline jumped back and forth, over huge swaths of time, and between characters' points-of-view.  It made the story feel disjointed and ruined the plot tension in at least two places (and spoiled a plot point for those of us who know anything about immediate postwar Germany and Central Europe).  What did interest me very much was the point-of-view given to us by Martin, Benita's son, who is about 6 or 7 when the war ends but we aren't given that much from that particular character at that point in time.

The Women in the Castle is a good book but it's audience definitely wasn't me. Compared to recent reads like Pachinko, Everything Belongs to Us, and Rabbit Cake there were too many things that weren't to my taste.

Dear FTC: I read a galley copy that was sent to my store.

Standing on Earth by Mohsen Emadi (translated by Lyn Coffin)

Summary from Goodreads:
In his poems of memory and displacement, Iranian poet Mohsen Emadi charts his experience of exile with vivid, often haunting, imagery and a child's love of language. Lyn Coffin's translations from the Persian allow Emadi's poems to inhabit the English language as their own, as the poet recasts his earliest memories and deepest loves over the forges of being "someone who goes to bed in one city and wakes up in another city." Alternating between acceptance and despair, tenderness and toughness, he writes, "I wanted to be a physicist," but "Your kisses made me a poet." Mohsen Emadi is a powerful witness to life in the present times, and Standing on Earth introduces a major world poet to an English-language readership for the first time.

Standing on Earth is a beautifully written and translated collection of poems centered on loss and displacement. While you could read "the lover" invoked throughout as an actual person - and may, in some instances, be referencing someone specific - I feel like the poet means to reference country and culture. The speaker has been forcibly removed from his culture and so mourns it like a lost lover.  Lyn Coffin's translation is excellent.

Read for the 2017 Read Harder challenge.

Dear FTC: I bought my copy of this book.

Nabokov's Favorite Word is Mauve by Ben Blatt

Summary from Goodreads:
What are our favorite authors’ favorite words? Which bestselling writer uses the most clichés? How can we judge a book by its cover?

Data meets literature in this playful and informative look at our favorite authors and their masterpieces.
There’s a famous piece of writing advice—offered by Ernest Hemingway, Stephen King, and myriad writers in between—not to use -ly adverbs like “quickly” or “fitfully.” It sounds like solid advice, but can we actually test it? If we were to count all the -ly adverbs these authors used in their careers, do they follow their own advice compared to other celebrated authors? What’s more, do great books in general—the classics and the bestsellers—share this trait?

In Nabokov’s Favorite Word Is Mauve, statistician and journalist Ben Blatt brings big data to the literary canon, exploring the wealth of fun findings that remain hidden in the works of the world’s greatest writers. He assembles a database of thousands of books and hundreds of millions of words, and starts asking the questions that have intrigued curious word nerds and book lovers for generations: What are our favorite authors’ favorite words? Do men and women write differently? Are bestsellers getting dumber over time? Which bestselling writer uses the most clichés? What makes a great opening sentence? How can we judge a book by its cover? And which writerly advice is worth following or ignoring?

Nabokov's Favorite Word is Mauve is a fun intersection of statistics and literature. His methodology feels less rigorous, in my opinion, than that of the authors behind The Bestseller Code, but this is far more entertaining. It's very much a "I wonder what the percentages would look like if I searched for [insert word]" book: What word does an author use most frequently? Do authors follow their own writing advice? And do American fanfic writers try to out-British the Brits with their slang? (That was a fun one.) Blatt did try to get a wide-ranging sample of books - bestsellers, Classics, critical hits, etc. although he didn't get much into genres outside the authors who have crossed into the mainstream. I have to rap his knuckles a bit about the Gender chapter: it wasn't terrible, but an acknowledgement that he was sticking with the binary for "x reason" would have been a start.  Those conclusions felt a bit too facile.

Dear FTC: I bought my copy of this book.