The Shift by Theresa Brown

“If we could know the future our jobs would be a lot easier.”

A detailed and exhausting account of one nurse’s twelve-hour shift on a hospital’s hematology/oncology floor. Medical memoirs are a favorite genre of mine and I enjoyed it!

If I sound the alarm and the patient is OK, then I over-reacted and have untrustworthy clinical judgment. If I don’t call in the calvary when it’s needed, then I’m negligent and unsafe for patients. You don’t always know because what goes on inside human bodies can be hidden and subtle. This job would be easier if there weren’t such a narrow divide between being the canary in the coal mine and Chicken Little.

Over the twelve-hour shift, Brown is responsible for four patients. Four patients don’t sound like many at first, but the stakes are high and there are multiple tasks to juggle per patient. Her patients are immunocompromised, so a number of extra precautions have to be taken during each task to keep them safe from invisible dangers. We spend time with these four patients:
Dorothy – A woman in her 50s with a positive attitude. She is being treated for leukemia and is waiting for her lab work to return to normal so she can be discharged after a six-week stay.
Richard – A fragile lymphoma patient in his late 70s, who has just been prescribed an extremely toxic chemo drug that demands constant supervision while being administered.
Sheila – A woman in her mid-40s with antiphospholipid antibody syndrome, a blood clotting disorder. She is experiencing mysterious abdominal pain.
Candace – A difficult (or empowered, depending on your perspective) cancer patient in her early-40s, who is scheduled to receive a transplant of her own cells.
In the book’s disclaimer the author notes that while these stories are true, specific details have been changed to protect patient and staff confidentiality. In some cases, composites are used. While she is unable to give us updates on patients after they leave the hospital, we do get enough of a conclusion for the aforementioned patients.

I watch the intern walk down the hall, slightly stopped, as if he bears the weight of the world on his shoulders. But it is I who will give Mr. Hampton his Rituxan, who will monitor him for serious changes in blood pressure, heart rate, and breathing, who will need to call this intern, or his replacement, if the treatment intended to heal ends up hurting instead. The intern doesn’t know this drug as well as I do. The intern won’t be the person hooking it up to Mr. Hampton’s IV, watching it run down the plastic tubing directly into his vein, knowing that if things go badly, it will be result of the work of my own hands.

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The more patients an individual nurse cares for, the smaller amount of TLC per patient. More significantly, research on staffing levels has made it pretty clear that the more patients a nurse has above a certain number (the number itself depends on the patient population and how sick the patients are), the larger the likelihood a patient will die who wouldn’t have otherwise. In other words, nurse-to-patient ratios aren’t just about patients feeling cared for; they’re also about fragile people staying alive.

Besides the patients, my favorite parts were Theresa Brown’s insights into problems with the way care is managed at hospitals. I wish there was more time spent on these topics. Theresa airs her frustrations with a system that doesn’t allow her to spend as much time with a patient as she would like. She always wanted to do more for them, but time constraints and the hospital’s bottom line didn’t allow it most of the time. She addresses the lack of emotional care for patients, hospital hierarchy, practitioner fatigue, the overcomplicating of processes in the name of safety and excessive workload. Though she gets frustrated, Brown loves her job and shows remarkable empathy for her patients and colleagues. In one chapter, she notices that she treats the escort in a way that she complained about a doctor treating her earlier. She realizes that everyone has a lot to do and maybe they are all doing the best they can to get through the day and keep their patients alive.

As force from the syringe makes blood swirl into the saline I stop and watch it billow like silk. Red. Beautiful. I never gave blood too much though before I took this job, but now I revere it. Blood is the liquid of life. Red cells give oxygen, platelets form clots, and white cells protect us from infection. Without healthy blood humans cannot live.

Because the author was an English major before changing careers, the language occasionally becomes poetic. This leads to some distracting figurative language and excessive literary references. (“Changing the bandages on his dying toes caused a shadow of pain to fall over his face, like the moon covering the sun during an eclipse.”) While it did make the work feel more human, it was jarring to shift from routine, “day-in-the-life” language to emotional language.

I had doubts that the author could maintain my interest with such a tight focus, but I enjoyed the whole book. We are all likely to be patients at some point, so this is a useful read for everyone. “There will come a time when each of us will need a clean, well lighted place that stays open all day and night, offering shelter from life’s storms.” It certainly will make me more patient! If you liked this book, you might also like The Real Doctor Will See You Shortly: A Physician’s First Year.

In all the hurly-burly, I’d forgotten, but now I remember: The most important thing of all is that everyone’s alive at the end of the day.

So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed by Jon Ronson

2.5 Stars, 3 for the first half and 2 for the second half. Entertaining, but superficial exploration of public shaming in the age of social media. I was expecting fluffy, but this was fluffier than most of the popular social science books I’ve read. It is as much about the author and the process of writing this book, as it is about public shaming. One of my biggest book pet peeves is when an author keeps mentioning the book in the book (also see: [book:Yes Please|20910157]), so that heavily colors my perspective!

A life had been ruined. What was it for: just some social media drama? I think our natural disposition as humans is to plod along until we get old and stop. But with social media, we’ve created a stage for constant artificial high drama. Every day a new person emerges as a magnificent hero or a sickening villain. It’s all very sweeping, and not the way we actually are as people. What rush was overpowering us at times like this? What were we getting out of it?

I was interested in this book because internet shaming sessions always make me so uncomfortable! They are so counterproductive and self-serving. (“We express our opinion that Justine Sacco is a monster. We are instantly congratulated for this—for basically being Rosa Parks. We make the on-the-spot decision to carry on believing it.“) Many times a person’s words are interpreted in the least charitable way so that they can become the latest poster child for everything wrong with the world. Death threats and a persistent pile-on that continues until someone is professionally destroyed seem excessive for many of these conceptual crimes.

We became keenly watchful for transgressions. After a while, it wasn’t just transgressions we were keenly watchful for. It was misspeakings. Fury at the terribleness of other people had started to consume us a lot. And the rage that swirled around seemed increasingly in disproportion to whatever stupid thing some celebrity had said. It felt different to satire or journalism or criticism. It felt like punishment. In fact, it felt weird and empty when there wasn’t anyone to be furious about. The days between shamings felt like days picking at fingernails, treading water.

I was surprised at how many of the cases in the book I recognized. That probably means I should spend less time on the Internet! A few of the cases discussed in this book: (The Sacco and Stone links are articles by Jon Ronson)
Jonah Lehrer – Pop-science author who got caught plagiarizing and fabricating quotes. He gave a self-serving public apology that didn’t go so well.
Justine Sacco – Tweeted “Going to Africa. Hope I don’t get AIDS. Just kidding. I’m white!” before flying off to South Africa. By the time she landed, she had became infamous and was fired from her PR job.
Lindsay Stone – The woman photographed flipping the bird and pretending to shout obscenities next to a “Silence and Respect” sign at Arlington National Cemetery. She lost her job as a caretaker for people with learning disabilities.
Donglegate – Woman (Adria Richards) at professional conference overhears two men joking about “dongles” and tweets their photo to the world. One of the men (Hank) is fired. Woman receives backlash for the public shaming and is the target of violent threats. She is fired from her job after hackers take her employer’s servers hostage.

Since Lehrer is an author, it doesn’t surprise me that his transgressions destroyed him professionally. Stone’s and Sacco’s attempts at humor were disrespectful and offensive, but it probably should have been a learning experience rather than permanent professional destruction. As the situation is presented, I felt the worst for the Donglegate guys because it was a private conversation. Later, I felt awful for the woman who exposed them because she became the target of ongoing, over-the-top vitriol.

There is also a really interesting interview with Texas Congressman Ted Poe, who was known for using public shaming as a punishment when he was a judge. My biases were similar to Ronson’s when I started reading the interview, but by the time I finished reading it I developed a more nuanced perspective. It really gave me something to think about.

“The justice system in the West has a lot of problems,” Poe said, “but at least there are rules. You have basic rights as the accused. You have your day in court. You don’t have any rights when you’re accused on the Internet. And the consequences are worse. It’s worldwide forever.”

The first half the book was really engaging, but halfway through the chapters started drifting away from the central topic. It lost all organization and I began to lose sight of the author’s overall point. We follow along as the author goes to a shame eradication workshop, the filming of a shame porn, and a prison to discuss shame and criminality. I should have been more interested in these parts because these are the sections that aren’t plastered all over the Internet. I was more affected by the stories of the people on both sides of public shaming than I was in the author’s antics. The most interesting chapter in the second half is about reputation management firms, companies that manipulate Google search results. Their goal is to shift the offensive material to the second or third page of the search results because very few people look past the first few links.

“It feels like they want an apology, but it’s a lie.” Mike Daisey and I were sitting in a Brooklyn restaurant. He was a big man and he frequently dabbed the perspiration from his face with a handkerchief that was always within his reach. “It’s a lie because they don’t want an apology,” he said. “An apology is supposed to be a communion—a coming together. For someone to make an apology, someone has to be listening. They listen and you speak and there’s an exchange. That’s why we have a thing about accepting apologies. There’s a power exchange that happens. But they don’t want an apology.” He looked at me. “What they want is my destruction. What they want is for me to die. They will never say this because it’s too histrionic. But they never want to hear from me again for the rest of my life, and while they’re never hearing from me, they have the right to use me as a cultural reference point whenever it services their ends. That’s how it would work out best for them. They would like me to never speak again.” He paused. “I’d never had the opportunity to be the object of hate before. The hard part isn’t the hate. It’s the object.”

The interviews reminded me of the type in entertainment magazines, where the interviewers meet with celebrities at restaurants and every minor action is written as if it is deep insight into the mind. Ronson raises interesting questions and leaves them dangling in the air, with no attempted resolution. In the chapter about a list of prostitution customers that was publicly exposed, it was noted that the men on the list escaped public shaming. However, those same men actually mocked the only woman on the list. It is brought up in a “Hmm, that’s interesting! I wonder why?” type way and then that line of thought was promptly dropped. I would love to read more about how sex/race/etc. affects the intensity of shaming. I also wanted more from Adria Richard’s interview. Every time it would get interesting, he would move on to the next segment. Though in Ronson’s defense, she had a rigid belief system and didn’t see people beyond identity politics. There wasn’t much room for self-analysis.

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My key takeaways from this book:
• While there may be some power element to public shamings, people usually think they are doing something good by participating.
• It is easy to forget that your social media profiles are not part of a closed network. Just like reality TV participants forget the cameras are watching their every move, it is easy for regular people to forget that the eyes of the world are upon them when they are primarily interacting with a select network. Even with perfect privacy settings, an offended follower can easily share private material.
• Schadenfreude – We all have the propensity to enjoy shaming people.
• People are more than their worst mistake.
• Google is forever! There is a the mistaken notion that the targets of shaming continue their life without major repercussions after public attention wanes. The increasing use of Google searches by employers makes that extremely unlikely.
• If you ever become the target of public shaming, don’t engage…or be a man in a consensual sex scandal.

We are defining the boundaries of normality by tearing apart the people outside it.

I probably would have gotten as much insight from seeking out articles about public shaming, but this was a quick read. It gave me a nice break from a book I was really struggling with. It reads like a magazine article, so it is perfect if you need something to read in an area with lots of distraction. This book would be most useful for people who have been publicly shamed or those who enjoy participating in public shaming. If you are interested in topics addressed in the book, you might enjoy [book:Unfair: The New Science of Criminal Injustice|23364926]. It is about the US justice system, but it covers the psychology behind a people’s actions when it comes to judgment and punishment.

We were creating a world where the smartest way to survive is to be bland.

Some updates on the cases mentioned above:
Jonah Lehrer – Has a new book coming out in July, [book:A Book About Love|27274438]. I am sure it will be thoroughly combed through!
Justine Sacco – An article from the Gawker writer who publicized Sacco’s tweet to a wider audience: Justine Sacco Is Good at Her Job, and How I Came To Peace With Her.
Lindsay Stone– Reputation management seemed to work for her by the end of the book. Ronson’s book brought it to the forefront again, so her transgression is the top result on Google again.
Donglegate – PyCon updated their harassment procedure, requesting that people “do not disclose public information about the incident until staff have had sufficient time in which to address the situation.” Hank had an easier time recovering from Donglegate than Adria and he found another job quickly. She is now an independent technology consultant.

Wink Poppy Midnight by April Genevieve Tucholke

Strange and magical coming-of-age story constructed like a fairy tale. I don’t think these characters will stick with me, but I loved the atmosphere and I am so excited to read anything this author publishes.

Every story needs a hero.
Every story needs a villain.
Every story needs a secret.

What really happened?
Someone knows.
Someone is lying.

“All the strangest stories are true.” Wink Poppy Midnight moves at a brisk pace and it can easily be read in one sitting. I selected this book because of the stunning cover that sets the mood perfectly and the comparison to [book:We Were Liars|16143347]. The two books are more similar in atmosphere than they are in storyline. There is an unsettling darkness lurking beneath the story. It has a timeless quality. It feels like a fairy tale and it makes constant reference to them throughout the story. Almost every character has a unique name (Wink, Poppy, Midnight, Bee, Hops, Leaf, etc.), which adds to the magic. It seems like there is something supernatural going on the entire time, but part of the fun was that I never could be certain of it!

We were like the three Fates, weaving the story together, threads of gold, red, and midnight blue. There would be wolves and tricks and lies and cunning and vengeance in our story. I would make sure of it.

The setting is dreamlike and magical. There are farmhouses, woods, a dangerous river, potentially haunted houses, and an albino stag. The perspective alternates rapidly between Wink, Poppy, and Midnight. Perspective changes are clearly marked by name. Wink is an eccentric, mysterious girl who loves fairy tales and wants her life to be like one. Her dad wandered off, her mom is a fortune teller and she has six siblings. Poppy is a cruel, manipulative queen bee, who lives to be the center of attention. “I never cried, not even as a baby. My parents said it was because I was such a sweet little angel, but my parents are fools. I never cried because there are only two reasons people cry, one is empathy and the other is self-pity, and I never had any of either.” She is really mean, but I love how unapologetic she is. (She reminded me a little of Amma in Gillian Flynn’s Sharp Objects.)

Midnight is a boy with a big heart who is caught in between the two girls. After his mother, a writer, runs off to France with his brother, Midnight and his father move into a creaky old house across from Wink’s farmhouse. He hopes the distance from Poppy will loosen her grip on him. Poppy has no intention of letting him go and she is enraged when Midnight’s attention shifts to Wink. Wink is determined to make Midnight play the part of the Hero in a fairy tale of her own making. Poppy is the obvious Villain and it is the Hero’s job to defeat the Villain. But the tagline says “Someone is lying,” so nothing is as it seems.
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“There’s a monster in the shape of a beautiful woman. She kills people. Children, old people, everyone. She tries to kill the girl that Thief loves. He fights the monster, and he kills her, because he’s the hero. There is a great victory. And a descent into darkness. There are clues and riddles to solve, and trials of strength and wit. There’s redemption, and consequences, and ever after.”

Wink, Poppy, and Midnight are all trying to find their place in the world. This story demonstrates that people can’t be reduced to an archetype and that life is enough as it is. There is so much beauty in the smallness of life. Wink Poppy Midnighta great read for a chilly evening when you are looking for a little magic and whimsy in your life. (The quotes below are theme related. I don’t consider them spoilers, but I tagged them because they appear near the end. Tread carefully!)

[spoiler]

“Wink wasn’t a villain. She wasn’t a hero. People aren’t just one thing. They never, ever are. Wink was flesh and blood. She was bad. And she was good. She was real.”

[/spoiler]

[spoiler]

“I used to think that I needed to be part of a story, a big story, one with trials and villains and temptations and rewards. That’s how I would conquer it, conquer death.” She sighed again, and nestled closer into me. “All that matters, in the end, is the little things. The way Mim says my name to wake me up in the morning. The way Bee’s hand feels in mine. The way the sun cast my shadow across the yard yesterday. The way your cheeks flush when we kiss. The smell of hay and the taste of strawberries and the feel of fresh black dirt between my toes. This is what matters, Midnight.”

[/spoiler]

This book debuts on March 22, 2016.

Eleanor by Jason Gurley

Time is a river, and it flows in a circle.

A beautifully written and heartbreaking novel about a family ripped apart by grief. It also deals with the complicated relationships between mothers and daughters. I enjoyed many parts of this story, but by the end, this magical realism tale got a little too fantastic for me.

Esmerelda’s death split their family as finely as an atom, and the resulting detonation blinded them all.

1985: Six-year-old Eleanor’s family is destroyed when her twin sister Esmerelda dies in a tragic car accident. Eleanor is forced to grow up quickly and bear the burden of her parents’ grief. Her father leaves the family home and she is left to take care of her alcoholic mother who can’t bear to look at her. When Eleanor is 14, she begins disappearing from the world and reappearing in places she does not recognize. While she is away, hours, days, and sometimes even years pass. One day Eleanor dives off a cliff and discovers that someone from another realm has been desperate to make contact with her.

(Mea) She is a witness to history, in a sense, observing the membrane’s captured memories like films trapped in amber. Mea has watched so many of these memories that she has ceased to think of them as real events that once occurred in some other realm. A bird who falls from its nest and starves while its mother stares down at it; a planet that forms from the dust of a long-dead star and flowers in the deepest, quietest night, then one day withers away, unnoticed by the universe; a mountain that grows out of deep seismic unrest and rises powerfully into a violet sky and is then immobilized by ice. Each of them beautiful and tragic, each of them far removed from Mea’s home in the darkness.

Eleanor is shelved in the adult section of my library, but I think it would appeal to young adult readers as well. This story has many fantasy elements, including time manipulation and multiple dimensions. We spend some time in the real world, but we also visit mysterious places. Gurley’s evocative prose fully transports you to these strange lands that aren’t constrained by the conventional rules of Earth. Atmospherically, it reminded me of Gaiman’s The Ocean at the End of the Lane. It also made me think of The Love that Split the World (book), What Dreams May Come, the bookshelf scene in Interstellar and Inception. I originally thought that the fantasy elements were going to be a psychological manifestation of grief, but they are major plot elements.

(Eleanor) She’s too old for these sorts of excursions with her father…one—but Eleanor doesn’t care too much. She knows why she craves these moments. She was robbed of a true childhood, and now, as a teenager, she leaps at every opportunity to regress, even a little. She is her own psychiatrist.

The story alternates between several perspectives. There are actually two Eleanors in this novel. It begins in 1962 with the first Eleanor, Agnes’s mother and the main Eleanor’s grandmother. She is depressed and is wistful for her life before she became a wife and mother. The bulk of book centers around her granddaughter and namesake. Young Eleanor desperately misses her sister and longs for someone to comfort her. Her parents inability to deal with their grief has caused her to grow up too fast. Agnes is Eleanor’s mother. When we first meet her, she is overwhelmed with motherhood. After Esmerelda’s death, grief consumes her. Paul is Eleanor’s father. He was closer with Eleanor than Esmerelda and he carries some guilt for that and for the circumstances surrounding Esmerelda’s death. Mea is a mysterious, formless being who becomes fixated on Eleanor. The Keeper lives alone in a desolate valley. She occasionally sees two strange beasts migrating through her territory. The Keeper’s chapters seem the most removed from Eleanor’s world, but they tie in eventually.

(Agnes) All isn’t lost; I still have Eleanor—but thinking of Eleanor means seeing Eleanor’s smiling green eyes, paired so cleanly with her red hair…and then she can only see Esmerelda’s hair, shreds of it caught in the broken windshield, blood streaked on metal and vinyl, the smell of exhaust and burned rubber, the coppery charge of blood. In these moments, Eleanor becomes a monster.

The novel takes place in Oregon and the author builds the setting well. There is a lot of stormy Northwestern weather. The pages are practically drenched and the images in my mind had a gray tint to them. Gurley also builds a strong sense of dread in the beginning. You know what is coming and you can see all the little actions that contributed to it, but you are powerless to stop it. There are so many moving scenes in this book. One of the most poignant moments was when Eleanor and her father stumble upon a video of Esmerelda performing. The scene where Eleanor views her childhood made me so sad and the scene where The Keeper violently confronts Eleanor is traumatic.
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(The Keeper) This forest has burned and regrown twice since the keeper has lived in the valley. The earth here has never forgotten its pain. It cradles the heat of its own death, always just beneath the surface, as though releasing the memory would be to forget it forever, to risk succumbing again. But forests burn. They always return. The keeper’s valley is an open wound, doomed to scratch itself until it bleeds and bleeds.

The first three-fifths of the book feel slow because Eleanor is a passive participant and there is no hint of what is going on, so it begins to feel repetitive. The beautiful writing and imagery kept me interested enough to continue reading. [spoiler]I had made some correct assumptions about Mea, but other than that I was clueless.[/spoiler] During the last 40%, the pace really picks up and you start to get a few answers. Fantasy does require some suspension of disbelief and I was really enjoying traveling between the different worlds and Mea’s desperation to connect with Eleanor. I was willing to accept the unexplained specialness that allowed Eleanor travel to curious places. However, once a fourth character is introduced into the rift, I was completely lost. I could follow the story, but I had no clue why anything was happening or why this new character was so self-assured and powerful. Also: Eleanor’s story was really tragic and I could accept that she had a best friend that experienced similar issues, but the aunt’s story tipped it over the edge into “too much” territory. [spoiler]Even so, the dream-like scene that delves more into her story is really emotional.[/spoiler]

(Eleanor) For a moment, Eleanor resents her mother, but this is nothing new. There have been many such moments during the past seven years. There will be many more. This is what it is like when a child must raise herself and her parent.

I think the end was supposed to feel hopeful, but it didn’t feel that way to me. [spoiler]Grandma Eleanor still showed signs of depression and resentment of motherhood, despite pushing those thoughts away. A second child would only intensify those feelings, even with the altered timeline. She still dived into rough waters and her “rebirth” was helped along by a good samaritan. Agnes still seemed to have inherited her mother’s disposition (“Those dark, sad eyes. Too sad. That’s Eleanor’s fault; she is a lead weight strung to the ankles of those who love her.”). Perhaps everything will happen exactly the same, but Agnes will better be able to deal with it in a more constructive way. But since Grandma Eleanor seems to place some blame for her problems on her own cold and distant mother, I am not so sure. Because Efah was so snakelike, as if he slithered right out of the Garden of Eden, I was hoping for more of a cautionary type tale about manipulating time followed by a correction that would allow Eleanor and her family some closure in the present and allow Mea to pass through to her final destination. Efah ended up being a non-entity. A complete reset being the final solution disappointed me.[/spoiler]

(Eleanor) And it is miserable to think that this is what adulthood is like: two people, cowering behind their grief, lashing out at each other like injured animals.

It was beautifully written and I LOVE the imaginative settings, but it required more blind acceptance of unexplained phenomena than I had to give.

(If you are interested in the “time is a circle” concept, I can recommend the movie Predestination with Ethan Hawke. It hurt my head in a good way! Also Life After Life by Kate Atkinson. It can get tedious, but I talk about it ALL THE TIME.)

Note: Eleanor means “bright, shining one” and Efah means “darkness.”

Room by Emma Donoghue

Holy crap! This one hit me right in the gut. I have never had more anxiety while reading than during the rising action and climax of this book. Heart-pounding, have-to-look-away-from-the-page-because-it-is just-too-much-to-handle-type anxiety. I went into this book only knowing the general circumstances of why Ma and Jack were in Room. I would recommend knowing as little as possible, so a large part of this review is under spoiler tags.

“‘Human kind cannot bear very much reality.’”

Jack just turned five and he has a great life. He spends every day with his Ma and they have so much fun together. But Ma isn’t always as happy as Jack. Sometimes she gets sad and has to spend the whole day in bed. Ma says they can’t live like this much longer and they need to leave their 11’x11′ room. Jack protests, but Ma insists there is a huge, wonderful world right outside their door.

Room has been on my to-read list since it came out, but I never got around to reading it. It was getting harder to avoid spoilers because of the movie release and award show season, so I figured now was as good a time as any! I’m probably one of the last people on earth to read this book, but I think it came into my life at the right time. I don’t know if I would have had the same visceral reaction in 2008.

Before I didn’t even know to be mad that we can’t open Door, my head was too small to have Outside in it. When I was a little kid I thought like a little kid, but now I’m five I know everything.

  • Reading the narration of a five-year-old boy is the biggest hurdle to overcome with this book: inconsistent speech patterns, stream-of-consciousness, and anthropomorphizing inanimate objects. I heard the voice of the actor who plays Jack in the movie, so I read the book in his voice. I think doing that made it a more natural reading experience for me.
  • You really have to read between the lines of Jack’s narration. Jack’s voice shields us from some of the most brutal aspects of Room. Jack is an innocent and doesn’t see anything strange about his life or some of the weird games they play (Keypad!). His Ma has done an amazing job protecting him, despite their difficult situation.
  • Room is beautiful testament to motherhood. Not only has Ma created an environment that makes Jack feel safe, but she is so creative in keeping a routine and educating him. When Jack describes his day, you witness the education she is sneaking in through everyday activities. They waste as little as possible and she is so resourceful in making toys with Jack.

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Giants can be just as bad, be he alive or be he dead I’ll grind his bones to make my bread, but Jack ran away with the golden hen and he was slithering down the Beanstalk quick quick. The Giant was climbing down after him but Jack shouted to his Ma for the ax, that’s like our knives but bigger, and his Ma was too scared to chop the Beanstalk on her own but when Jack got to the ground they did it together and the Giant went smash with all his insides coming out, ha ha. Then Jack was Jack the Giant Killer.

  • I loved how Donoghue incorporated stories we all share: Jack in the Beanstalk, Alice in Wonderland, The Count of Monte Cristo, the Bible, etc. Ma’s story is extreme and specific, but the use of these stories help the reader relate Ma’s personal struggles to universal themes. “Stories are a different kind of true.”
  • I was really surprised that the major shift in the book occurred at the halfway point! It is mostly a character book overall, but the first half has a plot-driven thriller-like aspect. The second half is completely character-driven.

The rest of my points are huge spoilers and the tags aren’t working in this review, so I will have to direct you to my Goodreads review for the rest: Full Review for Room on Goodreads


Room is an emotional, uniquely-told story about growing up and the bond between a mother and child. It deeply affected me and I refuse to believe Ma and Jack aren’t real. 😉

_____________________________

I couldn’t stop thinking about this book after I read it, so we ended up seeing the movie at the theater the weekend after I read it. It was so good! The letter the director Lenny Abrahamson wrote to the author as his request to direct the movie gives you some insight into how seriously he took this adaptation! Emma Donoghue wrote the screenplay and she knew just what to combine, trim and substitute to keep the major themes of the book intact. (There is nothing I hate more than a book adaptation that hits all the plot points, but loses the point.) The movie is a wonderful complement to the book. If you weren’t a huge fan of the book, depending on the reasons, you might enjoy the movie more. Also: If you are bringing someone with you that isn’t familiar with the story, don’t let them watch the trailer! It shows the whole story. I was worried when I brought my husband, because I was going to be a little irrationally hurt if he didn’t like it! Thankfully, he loved it!

Green Island by Shawna Yang Ryan

A brutal, beautifully written family epic that is set during the political turmoil in post-WWII Taiwan. The story of the Tsai family spans six decades and is seamlessly woven around actual events. I recommend this book to anyone who enjoys realistic historical fiction and enjoys deeply touching stories about family.

Something had happened here once, but other things had too, and life went on. We have to remind ourselves to remember

The youngest daughter of the Tsai family is born in Taipei on the night that the 228 Massacre* begins. After the initial civilian uprising, the governor-general calls a meeting under the guise of reaching out and establishing peace. Baba, her father, goes to the meeting in good faith and politely expresses his desire for a democratic Taiwan. A few days later Baba is taken from his home, not to heard from again for a decade. When Baba returns home, he is a changed man and unrecognizable to his family. The youngest daughter, our unnamed narrator who was a newborn when he was taken, has a hard time relating to her father, but he takes a special interest in her. She is angry with him when he makes a decision she considers dishonorable, but decades later she too has to choose between what is right and her family’s survival.

Thousands of husbands disappeared in those weeks. Sons as young as twelve. Brothers. Friends. What better way to remake society, my mother thought, than to eliminate the teachers and principals, the students, the lawyers and doctors—truly, anybody who had an opinion and a voice? Beyond the river, execution grounds, field after field irrigated with blood, waited to be discovered. Buildings would crush the bones.

This ARC was gifted rather than requested. I have to admit that I wasn’t terribly excited about it. The cover and title didn’t stand out for me and I have a negative knee-jerk reaction when I see the words love, betrayal and historical fiction in the same paragraph! That was unfair of me because this book was wonderful and I am so grateful that I got the chance to read it. It had me hooked within the first few chapters.

Shawna Yang Ryan’s writing is beautiful and poetic. The book felt so deeply personal, that I was surprised when I read the author’s bio and it wasn’t at least partially a memoir! The setting is richly drawn. I felt like I was actually in Taiwan and could almost feel the steamy humidity coming off the pages. The author is able to explain the historical context without interrupting the story by sounding like a textbook. It isn’t necessary to have prior knowledge of Taiwan’s history, but I included a short timeline at the end of this review. A general chronology helps me better understand the complexities when I read historical fiction about new-to-me subjects.

“The loss of freedom isn’t a restriction of movement; it’s the unending feeling of being watched.”

Green Island sounds like a pleasant place, but it is where political prisoners were kept during the decades of martial law in Taiwan. There are some violent scenes involving torture. While the story is mostly told from the perspective of the youngest daughter, Ryan occasionally slips into the consciousness of other family members, including the father while he is imprisoned. Green Island isn’t always the easiest book to read because of the brutality the characters experience, but I couldn’t put it down because of how deeply she made me care for the Tsai family. After the narrator moved to the United States, I longed for Taiwan. I missed the interactions she had with her parents and siblings. The author nailed the complicated relationships between family members. The four Tsai children are so different and each play a different role in the family. We don’t spend much time with the oldest brother Dua Hyan, but he becomes one of the most interesting characters. His choices are the most self-serving, but like everyone else he feels his choices are made for the right reasons.

I realized that this was what Mama had meant by love. A shared experience, a shared history, a shared trauma: this is what made us a family. No one else could understand it…I thought of all the moments growing up when I had disliked my family—my resentment of my father, my disgust at my mother, my anger at my siblings. Of all the families in the world, why was I born into this family? I’d thought. As if just dumb fate had brought us together. Now I understood there was something stronger than fate. Choice. It was ugly and quotidian and lacked romance, and that was exactly what gave it its strength.

I loved Baba and the bond he has with his youngest daughter. Baba was a sensible, justice-minded man before he was taken. When he returns, he is hardened and paranoid. The narrator is the only member of the family who has no memory of him and can’t compare him to the person he used to be. As a child, she is unable to make sense of her father, but decades later the political unrest of her home country follow her to the USA and she is asked to make sacrifices for her own family’s survival. She begins to see reflections of his life in her own journey. “There was absolutely no honor in survival.” The book repeatedly asks: “what would you sacrifice for the ones you love?” Some characters will do anything to keep their families together, while others sacrifice anything for their homeland and a better life for future generations.

Wei had told me a gentler era was encroaching upon Taiwan. Brutality belonged to the previous decade. Does brutality ever get old? I wondered. Each generation brings a new group of men who have not yet learned the guilt of the last. They need to feel bones breaking under their very own fingers to know for sure how they feel about it.

The narrator’s life mirrors her parents life in big and small ways, illustrating the endless, repetitive march of history, both in a societal sense and within a family. One small moment I remember is the Tsai women pondering a lifetime with their husbands: “That he remained, in some way, unknown made the thought of a lifetime together bearable.” (the mother Li Min in 1947) and “Maybe what made the years bearable was to let all those bad feelings slip beneath the surface unacknowledged.” (the narrator several decades later). The ending is perfect and it echoes back to prior points of the book, both the narrator’s birth in the beginning and her discovery of how little she knows about the events surrounding her birth. As the narrator grows and fills in the gaps of her knowledge, she learns that life isn’t simple and neither are the choices that people make. Life moves on and complex lives are simplified for the history books and museums, but the past is never “dead, gone, irrelevant.”

I gave my respects to the widow, beaten the night that my motherhood gone into labor with me–neither woman aware of the other or how their fates were tied, however tenuously. Maybe this is what it meant to be a citizen of a place—bonded to each other by the histories thrust upon us.

Regular reasons for low charisma and poor erectile capacity incorporate poor blood flow to and into the penis which cialis uk helps you show signs of improvement erection and hold it for more. Kamagra medicine is to be taken orally which is very simple and reliable. free viagra pills However while conducting trials viagra doctor it was observed that the drug has its great impact over sensuality of the person. This may be an indication of a genuine Canada pharmacy. order levitra The setting and the characters are what makes Green Island special. It was terrifying how trouble followed the narrator over the Pacific Ocean. (See: The assassination of Taiwanese writer Henry Liu). This is a book you can read again and again over a lifetime and get something different from it each time. I learned so much from this book, and it has caused me to seek out further information on Taiwan’s history and the surrounding conflicts briefly mentioned in the text. I’ve read enough about war to see that while the objective facts of these conflicts are different, the impact on people is universally similar. All the books I am about to list are all very different, but they share similar themes: All the Light We Cannot See (especially the last chapter), The Buried Giant, The Constellation of Vital Phenomena|, And After Many Days, and The Nightingale.

The world does not happen the way we lay it out on paper: one event after another, one word following the next like a trail of ants. The rocks in the field do not preclude the flowing river fifty miles away; a man sneezes and at the exact same time a woman washes her feet, a child trips and blood oozes from the broken skin, a dog nips at a flea on its hindquarter, and a bird swallows a beetle. Past, present, and future too swirl together, distinguishable but not delineated by any sort of grammar beyond the one our hearts impose.

__________________________________________
* What better way to follow that last quote than with a timeline! 😉 The BBC has a better version, but for my purposes here is the simplistic timeline of a complex situation:
1927-1949/1950 – Period of Chinese Civil War in the Republic of China (ROC) between the ruling Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Communist Party of China (CPC).
1945 – Japan forced to return control of Taiwan to ROC as part of post-World War II settlement.
1947The 228 Massacre: Discontent with KMT rule in Taiwan boils over after police violently handle a contraband cigarette vendor and kill an innocent bystander. The citizens riot and and the government declares martial law. Over 10,000 people are killed and even more disappear without a trace.
1949 – KMT government and refugees flee to Taiwan after losing the civil war. The war resulted in two de facto states, the Republic of China (ROC) in Taiwan and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) on the mainland. The White Terror period in Taiwan begins with KMT leader Chiang Kai-shek’s reign and continues for almost forty years. Over 140,000 Taiwanese “political dissidents” are imprisoned and thousands are executed.
1971 – UN recognizes PRC as the sole government of China, which a huge blow to the ROC.
1979 – The United States formally recognizes the PRC and severs relations with Taiwan.
1987 – Martial law ends (see 1949). This was the longest period of martial law recorded at the time it was abolished.
1996 – First democratic presidential election in Taiwan.
2000 – 50 Years of KMT rule ends with the election of a Democratic Progressive Party candidate for president.
Present – Taiwan’s political status still controversial. PRC claims Taiwan and ROC still claims mainland China. The numbers of those affected listed above are also in contention.

The Widow by Fiona Barton

Everyone was very kind and trying to stop me from seeing his body, but I couldn’t tell them I was glad he was gone. No more of his nonsense.

2.5 Stars Glen Taylor is out shopping with his wife Jean when he suddenly falls in front of a moving bus and is instantly killed. Bystanders comfort Jean, but truthfully she is relieved. The police and media are eager to talk to Jean after her husband’s death, but it turns out this isn’t the first time Jean has crossed paths with these people. For three years, her husband had been the main suspect in a very public kidnapping case. Was Glen guilty or was he a victim himself? Was his death an accident or murder?

No one wanted to know us now. They just wanted to know about us.

This book deals with crimes against children, but it is not graphic. It was really more about the secrets in a marriage and news media sensationalism than the crime itself. The clearly labeled chapters alternate between:
The Widow – Jean Taylor.
The Detective – DI Bob Sparkes, a dedicated detective who becomes obsessed with the case.
The Reporter – Kate Waters, a charismatic investigative reporter who uses emotional manipulation to score coveted interviews.
• Plus, a few cameos from some of the supporting characters.
It also goes back and forth in time in two sections: the events following two-year-old Bella Elliot’s disappearance on October 2, 2006 and the events following Gene’s death on May 14, 2010.
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And then there he was. Glen Taylor. He looks like the bloke next door was Sparkes’s first thought. But then monsters rarely look the part. You hope you’ll be able to see the evil shining out of them—it would make police work a damned sight easier, he often said. But evil was a slippery substance, glimpsed only occasionally and all the more horrifying for that, he knew.

As facts are revealed, we learn that Jean and Glen’s relationship does not resemble a typical modern marriage. There is a strong stereotypical 1950s vibe. I kept picturing Jean as much older, even though she is in her late thirties. Glen is controlling and manipulative. Jean is submissive and comes across as a bit dull. She stands by her husband, even as the circumstantial evidence mounts against him. Their relationship was interesting and the book explores the mental hoops Jean has to jump through to continue to defend Glen in public and to remain committed to her marriage. A marked difference begins to develop between Jean’s public face and her private life, as she struggles to reconcile the new information with the man she thought she knew. I do love every time Jean says “no more of his nonsense” and I have been overusing variations of that phrase ever since I read this book!

I think I know, but really, I don’t know anything about this man that I’ve lived with all these years. He’s a stranger, but we’re bound together tighter than we’ve ever been. He knows me. He knows my weakness…I know that I caused all this trouble with my obsession.

The Widow was entertaining enough on a surface level, but I was never really excited about it. Everything between the first and last chapter felt so slow. I’ve grown really impatient with books where there is a slow leak of information from an informed character. The constant switching between characters and time periods add to that frustration. The Widow’s chapters were actually my least favorite, because of the dithering about revealing more information. I felt the same way about The Reporter’s chapters when the focus was on Jean. The Detective’s chapters were my favorite because that was when the story felt like it was moving forward. I liked The Reporter’s chapters best when the focus was on the media manipulations of their interview subjects and readers.

It was journalism at its most powerful, hammering home the message with a mallet, inciting reaction, and the readers responded. The comment sections on the website were filled with unthinking, screaming vitriol, foulmouthed opinion, and calls for the death penalty to be reinstated. “The usual nutters,” the news editor summed up in morning conference. “But lots of them.” “Let’s show a bit of respect for our readers,” the editor said. And they all laughed.

If you like this book, you might also be interested in What She Knew.

A Darker Shade of Magic by V.E. Schwab

Rousing, fast-paced adventure full of magic.

“Aren’t you afraid of dying?” he asked Lila now. She looked at him as if it were a strange question. And then she shook her head. “Death comes for everyone,” she said simply. “I’m not afraid of dying. But I am afraid of dying here.” She swept her hand over the room, the tavern, the city. “I’d rather die on an adventure than live standing still.”

Kell is an Antari, one of the few people left who can travel to parallel dimensions. There are 4 Londons in Kell’s world:
Grey London – Ruled by King George. Magic is not really a thing here.
Red London – Kell’s home, which is ruled by the Maresh Dynasty. Magic is respected and practiced with balance.
White London – Ruled by whoever managed to murder their way to the throne this time, currently the cruel Dane Twins, Astrid and Athos. Magic is a limited resource and this London has been savaged by the craving for it. It is a dangerous place to visit.
Black London – Devoured by magic. It has been closed off and people do not speak of it.
(Or as Delilah Bard would summarize it: “There’s Dull London, Kell London, Creepy London, and Dead London,” she recited, ticking them off on her fingers. “See? I’m a fast learner.”)

When Kell isn’t delivering letters between the royalty of the different worlds, he illegally smuggles artifacts between the Londons. This bad habit gets him into more trouble than he bargained for when he ends up in possession of a relic that could cause terrible consequences for all of the worlds. While on the run, he crosses paths with a cross-dressing thief named Delilah Bard who robs him and then ends up saving his life. Lila insists that she joins him on his travels so she can have a proper adventure. What follows is a dangerous journey, as Kell and Lila try to keep the stone from getting into the wrong hands.

“You know so little of war. Battles may be fought from the outside in, but wars are won from the inside out.”

This response is mediated by the release of nitric oxide viagra sample (NO) in body. For example Kamagra viagra purchase no prescription try this link tablets are available in three different forms of consumption- tablets, jellies, and soft tablets. Extreme erectile dysfunction is impotence and order viagra is basically manufactured with profound insight on that problem. If you are a young tadalafil 100mg Click Here adult or the parent of a young adult who is going to begin driving soon, make your plans for the completion of the drivers ed requirement today. I received this audiobook via the now defunct Ford Audiobook Club. A Darker Shade of Magic is one of V.E. Schwab’s adult novels, but it will appeal to young adult readers as well. I was surprised when I saw the book was 400 pages, because it doesn’t seem like there are 400 pages of action when I describe it to others. It doesn’t get caught up in subplots and it can be easily summarized. It is so fast-paced! There was a cinematic feel to the whole book. I love how a sense of magic and chilliness permeated throughout the whole story! The setting was really different from what I usually read, so I am glad the author spent a large portion of the book developing the four worlds and explaining how the magic works. I was a little overwhelmed and confused with all the new information at first, especially since I was listening to an audiobook. I am glad I stuck with it, because it was such a fun book!

“I apologize for anything I might have done. I was not myself.” – [spoiler]Rhy[/spoiler]
“I apologize for shooting you in the leg. I was myself entirely.” – Lila

Kell is a complicated and grumpy character. He has an almost nostalgic fascination with the dull, magicless Grey London. I loved Delilah in contrast with Kell. She is impulsive and sarcastic. Her greatest dream is to be a pirate and have her own ship. How could you not love her? Sometimes I start to feel a sense of dread when the two main characters are opposite genders; like here we go, a forced romance, blech. Fortunately, A Darker Shade of Magic avoids taking that path. There are some few-and-far-between friendly flirtations, but they just add to the fun of the book. It 99.9% ADVENTURE! I have absolutely no clue what direction Schwab is going to go with Kell and Delilah and I love it!

“Bad magic, Kell had called it.
No, thought Lila now. Clever magic.
And clever was more dangerous than bad any day of the week.”

The voice narration is done by Stephen Crossley and he is brilliant. The story is told in third person and I felt like I was sitting in front of a warm cobblestone fireplace riveted while an old man was telling me a legend as it gently snowed outside. (Oddly specific, I know! 🙂 ) The only downside to his narration was I kept picturing Kell as much older than 21, though that could be in part because of his maturity level next to 19-year-old Lila! I would not recommend listening to this book over several months like I did. (November and December are terrible months for me to start audiobooks!) The world is so complex, especially for readers who don’t typically read books with worlds much different from our own. It is helpful to have everything fresh on your mind when you return to it.

The ending gives some closure, but there are enough questions to get me excited about the next one. [book:A Gathering of Shadows|20764879] (Shades of Magic #2) is coming out February 23, 2016 (TOMORROW!). I hope we get to find out Lila’s background and get to visit some of the places we didn’t make it to in the first one!