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Disfigured: On Fairy Tales, Disability, and Making Space by Amanda Leduc

October 18, 2023 by

Source: Public Library
Paperback, 251 pgs.
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On Fairy Tales, Disability, and Making Space by Amanda Leduc, which was my next pick for my work’s book club, is a series of essays examining the myths, fables, and the comic book universe through the lens of disability exclusion and how some of the characters in these stories are often disfigured or disabled in some way and must embark on a quest or journey that transforms them into an able-bodied, perfect version of themselves in order to obtain their happily ever after.

“But it is never society that changes, no matter how many half-animals or scullery maids are out there arguing for their place at the table. It is almost always the protagonists themselves who transform in some way — becoming more palatable, more beautiful, more easily able to fit into the mould of society already in place.” (pg. 41)

“For many able-bodied people in the world today, the idea of disability comes shrouded in darkness. It is inconceivable to so many that someone could be disabled and also happy, because we as social beings have been taught, through the books we read and the films and television we watch and the music we listen to, the stories we tell one another, that to be disabled is to be at a disadvantage: to be a lesser body, to be a body that cannot function at the same level as other bodies in society.” (pg. 48-9)

While the Beast in Beauty and the Beast is under a spell to look unpleasing and Ariel in The Little Mermaid wants to have legs like humans to meet her prince, these characters are disabled because they do not fit into society’s version of who they should be, according to Leduc. But, they can be their best selves as they are, even without societal approval and achieve happiness to a certain degree, like all of us. She reminds us, “I was never there in fairy tales. I never saw myself.” (pg. 89) Representation matters.

The text, however, gets a bit dry in some parts, which forced me to skim over some of the historical details that I don’t think made her points any more poignant than they were in the first place. I wasn’t sure why she included her medical notes from her surgeon and doctors, except to provider her own background. I think for me, it interrupted the flow of her essays. I would have preferred her to parse out the relevant parts and included them in the narrative of each chapter rather than add-ons.

Leduc raises a number of points through her essays on disability as seen in fables and other stories, including Disney interpretations of those princess stories. Her parallels are solid, and she admits that charity is a societal way of excluding the disabled because it focuses too much on helping individuals, rather than embarking on larger societal change. “Fairy tales and fables are never only stories: they are the scaffolding by which we understand crucial things. Fairness, hierarchy, patterns of behaviour; who deserves a happy ending and who doesn’t. What it means to deserve something in the first place; what happy endings mean in both the imagination and the world.” (pg. 233-4) On Fairy Tales, Disability, and Making Space by Amanda Leduc provides a great deal to think about, particularly as we continue to expose our children to fables and fairy tales. We need to think how these stories will skew their worldview.

RATING: Tercet

About the Author:

Amanda Leduc is the author of the novel THE CENTAUR’S WIFE (Random House Canada, 2021) and the non-fiction book DISFIGURED: ON FAIRY TALES, DISABILITY, AND MAKING SPACE (Coach House Books, 2020), which was shortlisted for the 2020 Governor General’s Award in Nonfiction and long-listed for the 2020 Barbellion Prize. She is also the author of an earlier novel, THE MIRACLES OF ORDINARY MEN (ECW Press, 2013). She has cerebral palsy and lives in Hamilton, Ontario, where she serves as the Communications Coordinator for the Festival of Literary Diversity (FOLD), Canada’s first festival for diverse authors and stories

Filed Under: borrowed copy, challenges, essays, New Authors Challenge, nonfiction, Read in 2023, reviews Tagged With: , ,

Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones by James Clear

October 11, 2023 by

Source: Public Library
Hardcover, 320 pgs.
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Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones by James Clear, which I found through The Book Connection, is something I needed at the right time. As a poet, rejection is part of the publishing wheel, and like everyone, it gets me down. Clear points out that when we want to make behavioral changes, it takes a Herculean effort or it really takes a shift in our focus. It is not will power that will sustain the adoption of new habits or some bottomless pit of passion, it takes practice and hard work every day. Showing up for the good habits and making the bad habits unattractive to ourselves.

“True behavior change is identity change. You might start a habit because of motivation, but the only reason you’ll stick with one is that it becomes part of your identity. … Improvements are only temporary until they become part of who you are.” (pg. 34)

“Your behaviors are usually a reflection of your identity. What you do is an indication of they type of person you believe that you are …” (pg. 34)

I think many of us believe our identities are merely our family or our occupation. Some even view their status as a winning athlete as their identity, but we are more than those items. What happens when those criteria no longer exist? Do we cease to have an identity? If you are no longer a professional athlete, who are you? Behaviors and values are other criteria we can look to as we characterize ourselves.

What’s important about Clear’s book is that it is not about setting goals, such as “I will write 25 pages per day on my novel?” It is about changing the processes behind goal setting to make behavior change more successful and achievable. We should all strive to do 1% better in our attempts to change behavior every day and through this long-term practice, we can achieve behavior changes over time. Our intentions should be clear and attractive to us, such as “I will write 1 new page of my novel at 12 p.m. in my office on Mondays.” These intentions will make it doable and with minimal pressure and provide a time and location.

Clear also discusses the idea of habit stacking in which you start new habits right after ones that you wish to continue and can signal to you that it is time for the new habit. For instance, if you grab a cup of coffee early in the morning, you can stack it with the habit of meditating for 1 minute with the cup in your hands, if your goal is to meditate more. There are lots of ways that habits can be stacked to make achieving change easier. Inserting habits where you can can ensure that a new habit becomes more automatic. Clear says, “The more attractive an opportunity is, the more likely it is to become habit-forming.” (pg. 104) This is something the advertising industry knows well, which is why we consume new products, social media applications, and other items so easily.

Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones by James Clear is definitely a great book if you are looking to ditch bad habits or form new ones. Want to hike more, this book can help you start and maintain the habit. Want to write more, same thing. He does warn that “when preparation becomes a form of procrastination, you need to change something. You don’t want to merely be planning. You want to be practicing.” (pg. 143) But remember, “the human brain loves a challenge, but only if it is within an optimal zone of difficulty.” (pg. 231).

RATING: Cinquain

About the Author:

James Clear is a writer and speaker. He is the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Atomic Habits and the popular 3-2-1 newsletter.

Filed Under: borrowed copy, challenges, New Authors Challenge, nonfiction, Penguin, Publishers/Publicists, random house, Read in 2023, reviews Tagged With: ,

Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne by Katherine Rundell

October 4, 2023 by

Source: Public Library
Hardcover, 352 pgs.
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Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne by Katherine Rundell, my final book for the 12 books recommended by 12 friends reading challenge, is part biography and part critique of his work as a sermon writer and poet. Donne was considered to be one of the most romantic poets of the time period, which also included William Shakespeare and others. Much of what Rundell pieces together from Donne’s life is from fragmented time lines and very few complete documents, as he liked to destroy documents written from his friends after they had died. He also often wrote fragments of poems on napkins or other scraps, which were given to others or thrown away or lost.

In one section of the book, Rundell points to a copyrighted book called “Amours” by J.D., with other sonnets by W.S., but it is unclear if it is even Donne’s work or that of Shakespeare. The author admits it is impossible to know who wrote the work or the sonnets inside.

Rundell is clearly a lover of Donne’s work, and she admires his intimacy with his subject, and while she does humanize rather than exalt Donne, with very few documents to demonstrate his movements, etc., she’s piecing together his life from scraps. What is known of Donne is that he did indeed love his young wife and family, despite the hardship of family life and earning a living at a time when Catholics were persecuted, killed, and shunned/snubbed. His brother died in jail after being found to have hidden a priest in his home. Donne also lost two of his 12 children in childbirth, including the twelfth and then lost his wife. His life was hard, somewhat of his own doing and decisions, but also because of the political and religious landscape at the time.

I will be honest there were parts of this book that got too academic and I skimmed them. I was disappointed that there was not more about the poems and the actual life that could be verified, but that is not the author’s doing. Her writing style was a bit dry at times, even as she seemed to talk directly to the reader. Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne by Katherine Rundell does its best to pay homage to the man, including his faults, while highlighting his contributions to poetry and religion. I will leave you with a poem I memorized in school:

Death, be not proud
Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;
For those whom thou think’st thou dost overthrow
Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,
Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and soul’s delivery.
Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,
And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well
And better than thy stroke; why swell’st thou then?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally
And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.


RATING: Tercet


About the Author:


Katherine Rundell is a Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, where she works on Renaissance literature. Her bestselling books for children have been translated into more than thirty languages and have won multiple awards. Rundell is also the author of a book for adults, Why You Should Read Children’s Books, Even Though You Are So Old and Wise. She has written for, among others, the London Review of Books, The Times Literary Supplement, The New York Review of Books, and The New York Times, largely about books, though sometimes about animals, night climbing, and tightrope walking.


Click the image below to see all of my reviews for this challenge and maybe add some to your own reading lists.




Filed Under: borrowed copy, challenges, New Authors Challenge, nonfiction, Read in 2023, reviews Tagged With: , , , 
Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers by Jesse Q. Sutanto


September 6, 2023 by  
Source: Borrowed

Hardcover, 352 pgs.

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Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers by Jesse Q. Sutanto is just what you would expect it to be, especially given that fantastic cover. Vera Wong gets up at 4 a.m. every morning to start her day with texts to her adult son, Tilly, and to have her brisk walk before opening her “world famous” teahouse for business in San Francisco’s Chinatown. There are only two things wrong, she has just one customer, and the sign above the teahouse might just be misrepresenting the establishment as “Vera Wang’s World-Famous Teahouse.” Her son, Tilbert, is less than pleased by this, but since she has few customers, he believes the likelihood that his mother will be sued by the real Vera Wang are small to none.


One morning, Vera finds a dead body in her teahouse, and because the police don’t provide her with the respect she believes she is due and don’t seem concerned with the murder, she takes it upon herself to investigate — complete with her little notebook of suspects.


“Vera’s murder investigation is going so well that she wonders why more people don’t just decide to leave their boring desk jobs and go into detective work. She’s started daydreaming of having the huge VERA WANG’S WORLD-FAMOUS TEAHOUSE sign taken down and replace with VERA WANG: PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR.” (pg. 85)


Her son, Tilly, is a lawyer, but since he rarely keeps in touch, he’s mostly unaware of Vera’s investigation, until of course she starts asking him some very specific hypothetical questions about evidence tampering. Along the way, she begins offering advice to all kinds of potential suspects in the Marshall Chen murder. Sana, Riki, Oliver, Julia, and Emma begin to circle in Vera’s orbit as the search for the killer continues, even as Officer Gray insists that Vera stay out of it.


Like Sutanto’s other books, you are in for a wild ride with some crazy antics. But you will love Vera Wong — she’s a mother/grandmother in search of purpose and with this group, she has a lot of work to do, including solving a murder. I highly recommend Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers by Jesse Q. Sutanto. If you read Aunties, you will love this one.


RATING: Cinquain


Other Reviews:



About the Author:


Jesse Q Sutanto grew up shuttling back and forth between Jakarta and Singapore and sees both cities as her homes. She has a Masters degree from Oxford University, though she has yet to figure out a way of saying that without sounding obnoxious. She is currently living back in Jakarta on the same street as her parents and about seven hundred meddlesome aunties. When she’s not tearing out her hair over her latest WIP, she spends her time baking and playing FPS games. Oh, and also being a mom to her two kids.


Filed Under: borrowed copy, fiction, Penguin, Publishers/Publicists, random house, Read in 2023, reviews Tagged With: , 
A Woman Is No Man by Etaf Rum


September 5, 2023 by  
Source: Borrowed

Hardcover, 352 pgs.

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A Woman Is No Man by Etaf Rum was our August book club pick at work, and even though I had to miss the meeting for another meeting, I’m so glad I read this one. Deya is a high-school student in Brooklyn, N.Y., and her traditional Arab family from Palestine has her meeting with suitors before graduation, despite her hopes for a college education. To preserve their culture in which women are the silent backbone of the family, young women are married to men in their teens to have children and raise the next generation. Like her mother, Isra, Deya is expected to marry someone she barely knows and to start a family.




“A woman is no man,” is an oft repeated refrain from Deya’s grandmother. Told in alternating chapters by Isra and Deya, the narrative is threaded with the past of the grandmother, Fareeda, who also married young but was fortunate enough to flee Palestine after being evacuated to a refugee camp. Her strength is in her faith, but she also is the backbone of her family and the driving force behind their move to America. While both Deya and Isra see the move to America as a gateway to freedom and more opportunities, Fareeda sees it as something that must be guarded against because it will destroy their Arab culture. However, it is clear that Fareeda’s and Isra’s view of their culture stems from similarly abusive relationships with their fathers, and now husbands.


“…yet something about them seemed so American. What was it? Deya thought it was they way they spoke — their voices loud, or at least louder than hers. It was the way they stood confidently on the train, not apologizing for taking up the space.” (pg. 107)


The tension in this book is broken wide open by a family secret. For her entire life, Deya has been told her parents died in a car accident, but the truth will set them free in many ways, allowing a granddaughter and grandmother to bond, a daughter to understand her deceased mother better, and a daughter to have hope that her own hard-line mother may change.


Peeling back these layers chapter by chapter will slow the pace, but Rum’s narrative is this way to demonstrate the repetitive cultural oppression these women experience every day. As a modern reader outside the Palestinian culture, it will seem repetitive and unnecessary, but I would argue it is with purpose that Rum adopts this slower progression. We need to feel that pressure, that weight of oppression and constant restriction to understand how hard it would be to break free from it even as an American immigrant.


A Woman Is No Man by Etaf Rum is an emotional roller coast, and it will have readers shouting at these women to take advantage of their freedom and run away. But when you leave all that you know, it leaves you bare to the harsh realities of being alone in an unfamiliar world. Which is better? Sticking with the devil you know, or striking out into the unknown? Rum has created a multi-layered story that looks at the oppressive nature of the Arab community and religious expectations and the lure of freedom with consequences.


RATING: Cinquain


About the Author:


The daughter of Palestinian immigrants, Etaf Rum was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. She has a Masters of Arts in American and British Literature as well as undergraduate degrees in Philosophy and English Composition and teaches undergraduate courses in North Carolina, where she lives with her two children. Etaf also runs the Instagram account @booksandbeans.


Filed Under: borrowed copy, challenges, fiction, Harper Collins, New Authors Challenge, Publishers/Publicists, Read in 2023, reviews Tagged With: , 
Piranesi by Susanna Clarke


August 14, 2023 by  
Source: Public Library

Hardcover, 272 pgs.

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Piranesi by Susanna Clarke, is my 11th book for the 12 books recommended by 12 friends reading challenge, is a novel written with Greek mythology at its base, particularly the labyrinth and its connection to madness or mental health. In Clarke’s novel, Piranesi is given his name by the Other, the only other living person in the House, which is packed with giant statues and a maze of halls — some of which are flooded or partially flooded. From time to time, the main character is visited by birds and he fishes in certain halls for food when the tides are high. He’s a recordkeeper, tracking what’s in each hall and the tides. The Other, however, seems to have access to real-world supplies and knowledge, but relies on Piranesi to map the House for him as he continues his search for the secret knowledge.


This is a mysterious tale with slow reveals, and while clues are dropped along the way, readers may find they, too, are duped by the labyrinth. Who are these mysterious people and how do they have knowledge of the real world if they have only ever lived in the House. What is the point of all this record keeping and traipsing back and forth if there are only two people alive here? Why can they not simply live in one place together and be a society unto themselves? It is clear the relationship is not reciprocal and is lopsided in the power dynamic from the beginning.


The start of this book left a lot to be desired. It was a slow narrative that left me bored initially. I wasn’t interested in the characters for about 40 pages. However, once I got past that point, I started noticing some kernels of how this world was not necessarily real but an amalgamation of things from the real world and that it was not a post-apocalyptic world like I initially thought. Piranesi is the main protagonist and because he doesn’t initially have all of the information needed to unravel this House and its mysteries, neither does the reader. This can be tiresome, but ultimately, the novel revealed itself through a series of events and the dynamic with the Other was more intriguing and less sterile.


Piranesi by Susanna Clarke is a book that can try your patience and it was not a beach read, which is what I was looking for last week. However, it was interesting to unravel the secrets of the labyrinth. It was more satisfying than I thought at the beginning. I’d recommend this for readers who like to think outside the box and who like mysteries where you are unraveling them with the protagonist.


RATING: Quatrain


About the Author:


Susanna Clarke was born in Nottingham in 1959. A nomadic childhood was spent in towns in Northern England and Scotland. She was educated at St Hilda’s College, Oxford, and has worked in various areas of non-fiction publishing, including Gordon Fraser and Quarto. In 1990, she left London and went to Turin to teach English to stressed-out executives of the Fiat motor company. The following year she taught English in Bilbao.


She returned to England in 1992 and spent the rest of that year in County Durham, in a house that looked out over the North Sea. There she began working on her first novel,  Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell. She lives in Cambridge with her partner, the novelist and reviewer Colin Greenland.




Filed Under: Bloomsbury, borrowed copy, challenges, fiction, New Authors Challenge, Publishers/Publicists, Read in 2023, reviews Tagged With: , , 
My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite


July 14, 2023 by  
Source: Public Library

Hardcover, 240 pgs.

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My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite was the July selection for my book club at work, and it was a wild ride. Korede is the older sister and she’s a nurse. Ayoola is the youngest sister who says she earns money on YouTube and has a hard time keeping her boyfriends alive. Set in Lagos, Nigeria, this dark thriller plunges readers headlong into criminal activity.


#FemiDurandIsMissing has gone viral. One post in particular is drawing a lot of attention — Ayoola’s. She has posted a picture of them together, announcing herself as the last person to have seen him alive, with a message begging anyone, anyone, to come forward if they know anything that can be of help.


She was in my bedroom when she posted this,…


Since their father’s death, Korede has become Ayoola’s protector. This is her weakness and it ultimately entangles her in her sister’s murderous actions. What unravels here is not the loyalty and bond between the sisters, but the moral constraints that should hold them to societal expectations. Braithwaite’s plot-focused novel reveals each layer of these sister’s personalities and their relationship chapter-by-chapter until you feel as though you don’t know what is true and what is fiction, much like the lives posted on social media.


Korede and Ayoola’s relationship is tested not during the cleanup of murders, but when the doctor Korede has been crushing on meets her beautiful, angelic sister and he asks for her sister’s phone number. Yes, this sounds a bit like a young adult novel, but it is more about how one sister’s protection of her sister becomes the thing that crushes her imagined romance. How can she tell him to stay away from her sister without divulging the truth? It is this absurdity that leaves readers perplexed at this surreal world.


My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite is deceiving in its matter-of-fact tone and simple plot-focused cadence because so many nuances of character are revealed throughout the novel. Definitely a good novel to take to the beach or on vacation.


***It’s very strange that I’ve read 2 books this summer involving serial killer themes.***


RATING: Cinquain


About the Author:


Oyinkan Braithwaite is a graduate of Kingston University in Creative Writing and Law. Following her degree, she worked as an assistant editor at Kachifo Limited, a Nigerian publishing house, and as a production manager at Ajapaworld, a children’s educational and entertainment company. She now works as a freelance writer and editor. In 2014, she was shortlisted as a top-ten spoken-word artist in the Eko Poetry Slam, and in 2016 she was a finalist for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize. She lives in Lagos, Nigeria.


Filed Under: borrowed copy, challenges, fiction, New Authors Challenge, Read in 2023, reviews Tagged With: , 
The Deeper the Water the Uglier the Fish by Katya Apekina (audio)


July 6, 2023 by  
Source: Borrowed

Audiobook, 10+ hrs.

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The Deeper the Water the Uglier the Fish by Katya Apekina, narrated by  Amy Melissa Bentley and   Roger Wayne, is my 10th book for the 12 books recommended by 12 friends reading challenge. This is a deeply disturbing book in which a fractured family’s second chance is less than ideal as an absentee father fails at every turn to step in and do right by his daughters. Dark and disturbing, so many layers in this twisty novel.




*** Trigger Warning: underage and inappropriate sexual encounters and suicidal ideation, etc.***


Dennis is the least complex of the characters. His main motivation is his writing and his ego, which clouds his view of how to be a father to daughters who unwittingly witness their mother’s attempted suicide. It’s clear that he has a penchant for young ladies and the fragility of Mae’s mind leaves her vulnerable to his influence. Edie, on the other hand, is more independent, yet she falls into a similar pattern with Charlie, the neighbor she cons into taking her from New York to Louisiana to see her mother, who is in a psyche ward.




Apekina is exploring the depths of pain and how it can adversely impact yourself and those closest to you. In these present-tense accounts that shift from the past to the present and into the future, readers are taken on a nearly surreal journey into the lives of these sisters, their relationship with each other and their parents, and the after-affects of mental illness. So much occurs in this novel, but it is best experienced without any preamble from others. It’s deeply disturbing and sad.


The Deeper the Water the Uglier the Fish by Katya Apekina was an uncomfortable read and at times confusing, as mental illness can be. I did not really like any of these characters, but I could empathize with these girls and was heartbroken with how each travels on their own dangerous journey. Mae was acutely affected, and how she copes is devastating.


RATING: Quatrain


About the Author:


Katya Apekina is a novelist, screenwriter and translator. Her novel, The Deeper the Water the Uglier the Fish, was named a Best Book of 2018 by Kirkus, Buzzfeed, LitHub and others, was a finalist for the LA Times Book Prize and has been translated into Spanish, Catalan, French, German and Italian. She has published stories in various literary magazines and translated poetry and prose for Night Wraps the Sky: Writings by and about Mayakovsky (FSG, 2008), short-listed for the Best Translated Book Award. She co-wrote the screenplay for the feature film New Orleans, Mon Amour, which premiered at SXSW in 2008. She is the recipient of an Elizabeth George grant, an Olin Fellowship, the Alena Wilson prize and a 3rd Year Fiction Fellowship from Washington University in St. Louis where she did her MFA. She has done residencies at VCCA, Playa, Ucross, Art Omi: Writing and Fondation Jan Michalski in Switzerland. Born in Moscow, she currently lives in Los Angeles with her husband, daughter and dog.




Filed Under: audiobooks, borrowed copy, challenges, fiction, New Authors Challenge, Read in 2023, reviews Tagged With: , , , 
Odder by Katherine Applegate


June 21, 2023 by  
Source: Borrowed

Hardcover, 288 pgs.

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Odder by Katherine Applegate, illustrated by  Charles Santoso, is my 8th book for the 12 books recommended by 12 friends reading challenge. Odder is a sea otter who has been raised by humans and released into the wild. She adjusts well, but she seems a bit more daring than her friend. Told in the present and alternating to the past when she was being raised in animal rehabilitation facility, Odder’s life in Monterey Bay, California, is an adventure.


From too late (pg. 4-5)

...

You've been there,
haven't you,
in the cafeteria line
or the breakfast buffet,
taking a chance on
some new food?
Grab, gulp, grimace:
You spit the offending
item into a napkin,
no harm, no foul.

Same goes for the shark,
who quickly 
reconsiders and
retreats.

...


underwater

Underwater
there's no need for noise,
for grunts or squeals or chirps.

Not when you can twist
and pretzel and weave.

Not when you've turned
frolic into art.


Applegate uses narrative poetry to tell Odder’s story. The poems really read more like prose. Odder is a curious otter who loves to swim and dive and push the envelope. But it wasn’t always this way. She’s had to learn how to be an otter after she was discovered by humans as a pup. I won’t spoil the whole story, but it is a heartwarming tale of growing up parentless and learning to discern where dangers lie. It’s also a story about learning to love and evolve beyond what you perceive as your capabilities. Sometimes you can surprise yourself.


Odder by Katherine Applegate, illustrated by  Charles Santoso also touches on the healing process from trauma. Kids will learn a lot about otter behaviors and how they interact in the wild, what their habitats are like, what they eat, and what animals they fear. I learned a great deal about the rehabilitation process and how humans try to prevent these wild animals from bonding with their caretakers. Applegate also includes resources for kids to check out and learn more about otters and rehabilitation programs.


RATING: Quatrain


About the Author:


Katherine Applegate is the Newbery Medal-winning and #1 New York Times bestselling author of numerous books for young readers, including The One and Only Ivan, the Endling series, Crenshaw, Wishtree, the Roscoe Riley Rules chapter books series, and the Animorphs series.


She lives with her husband, who writes as the author Michael Grant, and their children in California.




Filed Under: borrowed copy, challenges, children's fiction, New Authors Challenge, Read in 2023, reviews Tagged With: , , 
Love in the Time of Serial Killers by Alicia Thompson


June 20, 2023 by  
Source: Public Library

Paperback, 340 pgs.

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Love in the Time of Serial Killers by Alicia Thompson, the latest of my buddy reads on StoryGraph, tells the tale of true crime aficionado Phoebe Walsh who comes back to Florida to help her younger brother clear out their father’s house after he dies unexpectedly. She’s working on her dissertation while clearing out her father’s house, but her love of the true crime genre has warped her sense of the world and relationships. Her brother, Connor, is a foil to her darker, sarcastic, untrusting personality. He sees everything as rosy and loves just about everyone, even the mysterious neighbor, Sam, next door, despite his lack of video gaming knowledge.


Phoebe and Connor have several years between them and each lived with a different parent — Connor lived with the mercurial father and Phoebe lived with the practical and strict mother. They saw little of each other growing up, and Connor’s memories of their father are very different from Phoebe’s memories. Both are anxious in different ways, but together they are able to work together through the anxious stuff. Their relationship was a highlight of the book, as well as Phoebe’s forced reconnection with a childhood friend.


Phoebe is a character who puts up walls and while she’s analyzing everyone and everything around her through the lens of serial killers, it’s clear she’s yearning for connection and family. Her tentative interactions with the neighbor are telling, even as she’s pushing away with comments about serial killers and the dangers of the unknown.


“‘I’ve read The Phantom Prince,’ I said. ‘The updated version with the foreword where she completely disavows her relationship with Ted Bundy. If that doesn’t convince you that romance is dead, nothing will.’


Sam stepped down from the ladder, as if he needed to be more grounded to have this conversation. ‘You do that a lot. Bring up serial killer stuff when the topic turns more serious.'” (pg. 176)


Love in the Time of Serial Killers by Alicia Thompson was a fun read for the summer, not too creepy and not too cheesy. I really enjoyed the well developed characters and Phoebe’s journey back to her childhood and her ability to overcome her obsessions and anxiety to reconnect with her brother. The romance was steamy.


RATING: Quatrain


About the Author:


Alicia Thompson is a writer, reader, and Paramore superfan. As a teen, she appeared in an episode of 48 Hours in the audience of a local murder trial, where she broke the fourth wall by looking directly into the camera. She currently lives in Florida with her husband and two children


Filed Under: borrowed copy, challenges, fiction, New Authors Challenge, Read in 2023, reviews Tagged With: , , 
Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner


May 18, 2023 by  
Source: Public Library

Hardcover, 256 pgs.

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*** trigger warning***


If you’ve ever lost a parent or had a parent who passed away after a cancer diagnosis, this book may resurface some trauma.


****


Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner, which is the selection for my work’s book club, is at times funny, but deeply sad. Her details about food and shopping trips with her Korean mother can be a bit overwhelming, but they serve to explain their connection. They connected over food, particularly Korean food, and trips to the H Mart. Zauner begins her memoir telling us up front that her mother has died, so it is not a surprise later on, which is a credit to her thinking about her audience in advance. “Ever since my mom died, I cry in H Mart.” (pg.3) “Food was how my mother expressed her love. No matter how critical or cruel she could seem — constantly pushing me to meet her intractable expectations — I could always feel her affection radiating from lunches she packed and the meals she prepared for me just the way I liked them.” (pg. 4)


Zauner moves through her grief in a haphazard way through this memoir, but it’s not really a self-help book about grief. She does blame strangers she sees in H Mart for still having their mothers or grandmothers, but it is this irrationality that endears her to us as a reader. She’s in the depths of her grief and trying to hold onto the good in spite of the struggle.


She recounts her teen years, mental health issues, her struggle with identity (being half Korean and half American), and her need to be an artist, which runs contrary to her mother’s aspirations. Zauner also does a lot of internalizing. She fails to see how her mother cared for her when she was young, but her mother’s cancer diagnosis certainly puts that in better perspective.


“I had spent my adolescence trying to blend in with my peers in suburban America, and had come of age feeling like my belonging was something to prove. Something that was always in the hands of other people to be given and never my own to take, to decide which side I was on, whom I was allowed to align with. I could never be of both worlds, only half in and half out, waiting to be ejected at will by someone with greater claim than me. Someone full. Someone whole.” (pg. 107)


Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner is a memoir focused on an immigrant daughter’s struggle of losing her mother when she still needs her guidance, but it’s also a story of balancing heritage from both sides of the family and maintaining the connections that are important to us. One drawback for me was the separation between Michelle and her father, while she touches on how her perspective of him and his rebel life as a young man changes and his care for her mother further changes her view, she does little to explore that disconnect. It’s as if he has vanished from her life and story. I hope she revisits this relationship in another memoir.


RATING: Quatrain


About the Author:


Michelle Chongmi Zauner is a Korean-American musician and author, best known as the lead vocalist of the alternative pop band Japanese Breakfast.


Filed Under: borrowed copy, challenges, memoir, New Authors Challenge, nonfiction, Read in 2023, reviews Tagged With: , 
Four Aunties and a Wedding by Jesse Q. Sutanto


May 3, 2023 by  
Source: public library

Hardcover, 304 pgs.

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Four Aunties and a Wedding by Jesse Q. Sutanto bring the aunties together with Meddy, Nathan, and Nathan’s family. The wedding plans are under way and it’s a destination wedding to Oxford, England. For some reason I went into this sequel just assuming there would be another murder. Not sure why, perhaps it was the description and the mention of the mafia.


This wedding is being planned down to the minute details, but one choice could have her wedding on the cover of the news. As Meddy gets closer to her own wedding photographer, Staphanie, and her family, similarities emerge between their immigration stories and how they interact with each other and the world around them. Meddy feels a kinship to Staph (unfortunate name, indeed), but what she find outs could upend not only her new friendship, but also the entire wedding.


“Toodle pip, cheerio!”


I turn to Nathan in a panic. “I think she’s having a stroke.”


Sutanto has a gift for comedy. Her over-the-top story lines are a bit unbelievable, but her comedic timing keeps readers turning the pages. When Meddy’s aunts adopt a British accent on the plan to the destination wedding, you can just imagine what kinds of slip ups and misunderstandings are going to happen with Nathan’s uptight, unsuspecting parents. I love all of these characters from the blood thirsty aunties to the bumbling and naive Meddy. Nathan is even lovable in all his forgiving glory.


Four Aunties and a Wedding by Jesse Q. Sutanto is another entertaining read with a crazy cast of characters. I definitely recommend reading these books in order. You want some laughs, Sutanto is your author. I laughed out loud so many times reading this, my husband thought I was losing it.


RATING: Quatrain


Other reviews:



About the Author:


Jesse Q Sutanto grew up shuttling back and forth between Jakarta and Singapore and sees both cities as her homes. She has a Masters degree from Oxford University, though she has yet to figure out a way of saying that without sounding obnoxious. She is currently living back in Jakarta on the same street as her parents and about seven hundred meddlesome aunties. When she’s not tearing out her hair over her latest WIP, she spends her time baking and playing FPS games. Oh, and also being a mom to her two kids.


Filed Under: borrowed copy, fiction, Publishers/Publicists, Read in 2023, reviews Tagged With: , ,