Month: May 2016

We remember the past, live in the present, and write the future.

3.5 Stars. One of the best ways to get me interested in a book is to tell me there is a character that is obsessed with outer space! I picked this book up for the science and the aliens, but it is mostly a high school drama. Despite the concept, it was very realistic. It wasn’t what I expected, but that wasn’t such a bad thing.

Your entire sense of self-worth is predicated upon your belief that you matter, that you matter to the universe. But you don’t. Because we are the ants.

Aliens have been abducting Henry Denton since he was thirteen years old. When he is sixteen years old, they finally communicate with him. The world is ending in 144 days, but Henry can prevent the disaster if he pushes their red button. For most people this would be an easy choice, but Henry isn’t sure the world deserves a second chance. He is a “punch line at school, a ghost at home.” He’s relentlessly bullied at school, his boyfriend Jesse committed suicide, his mom is struggling to make ends meet, his dad abandoned the family, his immature brother is about to be a father, and his grandma is suffering from Alzheimer’s. He struggles with the guilt that he is the reason for his dad’s abandonment and his boyfriend’s death. He’s exhausted by life’s endless disappointments and humiliations and thinks the world might need a clean slate. But one day he meets Diego, a mysterious new student, and he starts to get the tiniest bit curious about what the future might hold if he does push the button.

As human beings, we’re born believing that we are the apex of creation, that we are invincible, that no problem exists that we cannot solve. But we inevitably die with all our beliefs broken.

The first chapter packs a punch. “Life is bullshit.” It hooked me from the opening line! We Are the Ants is 455 pages, but it reads like 250-300 pages. The writing is breathtakingly gorgeous when Henry waxes philosophical about the universe and our place in it.  It deals with so many issues, but it never felt like too much. The central focus is mental illness, suicide, and bullying. The peripheral issues become part of Henry’s decision-making process.

During the 144 days, Henry asks the people in his life “If you knew the world was going to end, and you could press a button to prevent it, would you?” Not many people believe Henry is actually getting abducted by aliens, so it’s treated as a hypothetical question. It was really interesting to read everyone’s answers and the reasoning behind their answers. One of the things I loved about Diego is that he believes Henry, but his main goal is to help Henry see the beauty in life and to help him want to push the button. Henry also writes short essays about all the ways the world could end and those appear every few chapters. Some of his theories are scarily realistic while others are hilarious.

“If a kid looks like he doesn’t give a shit, it’s not because he doesn’t believe in himself anymore; it’s because no one else believes in him”

Estrogen assembly in your physique drops and these after-effects in a bifold whammy- Decreased sex drive and dryer vaginal tissues which advance to women viagra australia http://appalachianmagazine.com/2019/06/01/goober-peas-the-southern-delicacy-of-boiled-peanuts/ aching and afflictive sex. The theory behind better sex is that if it doesn’t work it is simply discarded by the body. buying tadalafil Quite a large number of physicians recommend the treatment to males suffering from the sexual problem. buy sildenafil tablets What does this look like in practice? Much like it already does when you participate on your favorite social network, cheapest tadalafil 20mg but you reap the benefits, you earn the profits, and you have a say in the South) without guilt or second-guessing. “If you want people to treat you normal, you have to act normal.” “I never asked to be treated normal, Charlie. I just want to be left alone.”  Henry is an awesome character and so easy to root for.  He is nihilistic, but he has a great sense of humor and an interesting way of looking at the world. It is heartbreaking to witness the endless violence committed against him, but it is even more heartbreaking when you realize he doesn’t think he deserves any better. The supporting characters were all interesting and none of them felt extraneous.

One of the great things about this book is that Henry has positive relationships outside of his love life. He forms a sweet relationship with his brother’s girlfriend. He has an amazing bond with his grandmother. He has a supportive teacher that sees what a hard time he is having and tries to help him, while also giving him space. She reminded me of teachers I had in high school, coincidentally also in the sciences. I also loved the appearance of Dr. Janeway, which I’m assuming was a reference to the captain in Star Trek: Voyager! My least favorite characters were Jesse and Diego, but we are seeing them through Henry’s idealization (especially Jesse). I loved how Henry actually has to deal with his issues within himself and is not completely “cured” by finding love again. 

“The world pretty much sucks. But the bad shit that happens doesn’t cancel out the good.”

The book’s length is probably what made all of the characters feel so real, but some parts felt too long.  Reading the obsessive thoughts of a passive character for 450 pages was exhausting. The repetition drove me from empathy to exasperation by the end. The abuse/apology cycle happened one too many times. His progression was slow; it was one step forward and two steps back, until we go about twenty steps forward at the end. It’s definitely realistic, but not always riveting. Henry is abused at school, but he doesn’t even get a break from violence at home. His brother Charlie is constantly harassing him. The way Charlie lashes out at Henry seems way beyond “brothers fight, and then they move on”: Charlie’s age, the one-sidedness, the frequency, and the description of Henry’s injuries. It makes the typical annoying sibling behaviors take on a cruel tinge. While we do learn that Charlie is more complicated than we previously thought, his awful treatment of Henry is just accepted.

“Depression isn’t a war you win. It’s a battle you fight every day. You never get to stop, never get to rest. It’s one bloody fray after another.

I didn’t get the kind of ending I expected, but it was appropriate. Hutchinson drew a parallel between Henry’s situation and Jesse’s depression and suicide in a really unique way. It’s a very realistic and honest story. It really emphasizes the importance of the bonds with our fellow humans (I’m thinking especially of a touching scene involving Henry’s grandmother and photos). I thought a lot about the The Rest of Us Just Live Here by Patrick Ness while I was reading. That book also had a unique premise and a focus on mental illness, but I never really connected with the characters. If you liked the idea of The Rest of Us Just Live Here but were hoping for something a little deeper, you’ll love We Are the Ants. Warning: bullying, violence and sexual content.

The universe may forget us, but our light will brighten the darkness for eons after we’ve departed this world. The universe may forget us, but it can’t forget us until we’re gone, and we’re still here, our futures still unwritten. We can choose to sit on our asses and wait for the end, or we can live right now. We can march to the edge of the void and scream in defiance. Yell out for all to hear that we do matter. That we are still here, living our absurd, bullshit lives, and nothing can take that away from us. Not rogue comets, not black holes, not the heat death of the universe. We may not get to choose how we die, but we can choose how we live. The universe may forget us, but it doesn’t matter. Because we are the ants, and we’ll keep marching on.

Auctioneer Simon du Pury shares the story of his life. He explains what lead him into the art world and describes his ascent from a Sotheby’s intern to the “Mick Jagger of auctions.” He also introduces us to the men who had a great impact on his life and career: Swiss art dealer Ernst Beyeler, auctioneer Peter Wilson, and art collector Baron Heini Thyssen. There were many interesting anecdotes, but the art and auctioneering aspects were overshadowed by the intricate details of the lives of the rich and famous. Despite my interest in the arts, I think I was the wrong demographic for this book.

In art, knowledge–of the art, and of the buyers–was power, and knowledge meant business. Ignorance could only be measured in misery and failure, never bliss.

I really liked Hannah Rothschild’s The Improbability of Love and my educational background is in the fine arts, so I thought I would really enjoy The Auctioneer. However, it was too much Top 1% gossip for me. The 1-percenters are going to play a large part in a book of this topic, but it was just too many details. I ended up skimming through many sections of the book, because many paragraphs read like lists of names and places. Not only do we learn about the lovers, finances, and estates of the central players, but we also learn those details about people in their immediate social circle. The gossip didn’t entertain me because I had no clue who 90% of these people were and there were too many to get to know them well via the text. It might have a different effect for the wealthy and/or those that came into adulthood during the 1980s. All that being said, de Pury has an amazing memory! As a brief example of what I am talking about, here is a random sample:

Denise had just had the house redecorated by the interior decorator of the moment, Renzo Mongiardiano, an Italian former theatrical set designer who had been discovered by Stavros Niarchos to redo his Kulm Hotel in St. Moritz. Once Niarchos “discovered” Mongiardiano, so did the rest of the Jet Set. He also had the Kennedy imprimatur, thorough Lee Radziwill, so he was unstoppable.

(I actually did know who the Niarchos family was, thanks to Paris Hilton 🙂 ) So why did I keep reading? There was some interesting information, it was just buried in a sea of proper nouns. While I found the text dry, Simon du Pury himself is full of personality. The writing style is pithy. Every time I thought he was getting a little pompous, he would display some self-effacing humor. The humor is not always politically correct. It seemed overly irreverent and out-of-touch to compare business struggles to atrocities that largely affected the lower classes, whether tongue-in-cheek or not. I thought it was an odd direction to go in the current political climate.

Was I delusional? Maybe, but if you love art, and you believe in art, you always know that art will come back, and take you along with it.

I admired Simon de Pury’s vision. He is not afraid to push boundaries and shake things up. He is honest about his failures, as well as his successes. His career has had many highs-and-lows and he walks us through all of them. One of my favorite anecdotes was from the beginning of his career when he accidentally sliced into a priceless work of art. Can you imagine? He also tells the highly entertaining story of how a jilted lover got revenge on him via an art auction. The Auctioneer gives a real-world glimpse at the eccentric buyers and sellers that could have stepped right out of Rothschild’s fictional book. My jaw dropped when I read about the buyer who spent over $150 million on two paintings by very famous artists and publicly expressed his wish to be cremated with them!

The moral is that if you buy the best, in the long run, if you can stay the course, you will not overpay.

The problem of erectile dysfunction or ED can be very viagra store in india harmful as it can cause permanent damage to your sexual organs. With the accumulation of sexual experience, most men can gradually build up this kind of control ability, but for some men, this is a protracted pattern of sexual disorder can make the person feel depressed because of the incapability of him to gain complete sexual pleasure.Caverta is an online form of orden viagra viagra which has been tested with maximum positive results. You can get the india viagra for sale delivery of your ordered drugs within a committed time- frame. Furthermore, it is so much safer than zithromax that the Chinese medicine has almost no side effects. check it right here now purchase generic cialis I love books about unique careers and I would have loved more insider information about auctioneering and art, within the context of de Pury’s career. He briefly discusses how the face of collectors has changed from royalty to MBAs and how different cultures view auction practices. The back cover teases a reveal of a “[high] crime of an industry known to the elite few, until now.” There are two things that I think that sentence could be referring to and the most interesting of the two is revealed in the first twenty pages. The ways in which art and auctions are impacted by historical events and the role art plays in politics is also interesting. How World War II affected the art world, even now, is endlessly fascinating to me. During his career, de Pury was able to play a part in global politics. During his time with Thyssen, they were asked to provide paintings to set the proper mood at Ronald Reagan and Mikhael Gorbachev’s Geneva Summit in 1985. There is also a really interesting section about an auction he held to give exposure to Russia’s “unofficial” artists.

I ask not for whom the gavel tolls. I know it tolls for me.

Simon de Pury has had an amazing life! The man designed his own Swatch watch! In my plebeian eyes, that is the pinnacle of success! 😉 However, I prefer memoirs that are more personal. I enjoyed the introspective tone of the final page of this book, more than the gossip of the previous chapters. The name-dropping reduced my interest in this book considerably, but I think the audiobook may have been slightly more enjoyable. The sample I listened to was read with the exuberance that I imagined de Pury speaking with. I’ve also enjoyed listening to a series of Simon du Pury interviews from Big Think.

While The Auctioneer was just an okay read for me, ArtNet’s review claims the excessive name-dropping is “the most enjoyable, and creative, aspect of the book.” Just like in art, it is all a matter of preference! If you are a fan of contemporary art and would like a glimpse into the lives of the obscenely wealthy, this book may be for you. Or if you are like me, and are interested enough in the subject to dig through piles of names to get to the good stuff, it might be worth a read.

Some positive reviews, because I may just be the wrong demographic for this book: Kirkus | Publisher’s Weekly. The first six chapters are available through Amazon’s Look Inside feature.

(3.5 Stars) Strange and unsettling collection of short stories. This title will be released on May 31, 2016.

It never ceases to amaze me that, even as our country forges into the future with ever more bedazzling devices and technologies, the archaic infrastructure rots away beneath our feet, the pavement and the rails, the schools and the DMV. (The Knowers)

I really enjoyed Helen Phillips’s The Beautiful Bureaucrat, so I was ridiculously excited to read her latest book. Some Possible Solutions is a collection of eighteen short stories. Many of the stories were set in an altered version of reality or in the not-so-distant dystopian future. The circumstances and dilemmas are familiar enough to modern life to be deeply unsettling. Some of them are observations about major life experiences, rather than beginning-middle-end type stories.

The stories zero in on the contradictions and strangeness of everyday life. There is an eerie Twilight Zone feel and everything feels gray-tinged. Many of the stories directly confront the inherent weirdness of aging, marriage and parenting. There are also themes of loneliness, disconnection, and survival against all odds in hostile environments. The stories don’t provide many answers and are usually open-ended, but they are satisfying kind of open-ended that give me something to think about.

Despite the serious themes, it also made me laugh. Helen Phillips has a way of taking uncomfortable truths and passing thoughts, things many will relate to but usually keep to themselves, and bluntly putting it all out in the open with such wit. One of the funniest stories was the title story Some Possible Solutions, which proposes a number of absurd solutions to romantic predicaments.

The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain. (The Knowers)

My immediate favorites were the ones that most closely followed a typical story structure and were clear to me upon first reading:
1) The Knowers – A woman struggles with knowing the exact date of her death.
2) The Doppelgängers – An exhausted new mom discovers that her town is filled with women who look exactly like her.
3) The Messy Joy of the Final Throes of the Dinner Party – A woman walks into a dinner party and finds that time has frozen for everyone but her.
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4) The Children – A woman is certain that her children are aliens.

There are others where the full weight of them didn’t hit me until I revisited them:
1) Life Care Center – A woman visits her sister at a nursing home and observes the strangeness of the situation. This one became more powerful to me after reading the non-fiction medical memoirs The Shift and When Breath Becomes Air.
2) The Worst – Interesting look at perspective. It reminded me of an incident a couple weeks ago when my sister exclaimed, “There is nothing worse than a paper cut!”
3) Flesh and Blood – A woman is able to see through people’s skin and lives in a state of permanent disgust. Favorite line: “It was bad enough to see strangers and acquaintances this way. But to see your own parents. To be forced to acknowledge the architecture of their bodies, the chaos of their blood vessels, the humility of their skulls. To know that this vulnerability was the place from which you arose.”

I don’t truly understand all the stories yet, like How I Began to Bleed Again After Six Alarming Months Without. But even when I didn’t have a full understanding, I still experienced strong emotions from the overall atmosphere and the unsettling events.

The thing is, the organism survives no matter what; the organism even thrives. (Contamination Generation)

This book’s impact was not immediate for me; I liked it as I read it, but a really liked it after I reflected on it. It has made a permanent impression on my mind. Helen Phillips’s writing makes me feel uncomfortable, mostly because it forces me to confront feelings and eventualities that would be easier to avoid. There is a strangeness to her stories that makes it difficult to recommend for all readers, but I can recommend it to those who like speculative fiction and are in the mood for something strange and surreal. If you read this book, I recommend taking breaks between each story, to fully absorb the message. If you enjoy Helen Phillip’s writing, you might also enjoy the TV series Black Mirror, which is available on Netflix streaming.

And thus life was good and bad, abundant and lean, ecstatic and tragic, blessed and cursed, all at once, on and on, forever and ever, until the end of time. (One of Us Will Be Happy; It’s Just a Matter of Which One)

A short and powerful memoir about living in the face of death.

At 36 years old, neurosurgeon Paul Kalanithi was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. When Breath Becomes Air was written in his final months. In this thoughtful and deeply personal memoir, Dr. Kalanithi explains the questions of life-and-death that drove him to become a neurosurgeon. Over the course of the book, he ponders the role of the doctor and what makes life meaningful enough to go on living.

The physician’s duty is not to stave off death or return patients to their old lives, but to take into our arms a patient and family whose lives have disintegrated and work until they can stand back up and face, and make sense of, their own existence.

This is a one-sitting book. Not only is it short in pages, but it’s also small in size and spacious in formatting. Dr. Kalanithi’s love of language and literature is evident in his writing. The writing is poetic and he frequently references relevant passages from great books. When Breath Becomes Air is divided into two parts: Part 1: In Perfect Health I Begin and Part 2: Cease Not till Death. In Part 1, before his diagnosis, he reflects on his childhood, education, and career. He shares some of the pivotal moments in his life and we witness how seriously he takes his duty to his patients. In Part 2, after his diagnosis, he copes with becoming the patient after years of being the doctor. Always fascinated with the line between life and death, his philosophical questions suddenly become devastatingly relevant. At the end, there is an epilogue written by his wife Lucy. While most of the book is philosophical in nature, Lucy writes about the concrete details and the emotional impact of caring for Paul in his final months and of life after his passing. It is a beautiful testament to her husband.
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I began to realize that coming in such close contact with my own mortality had changed both nothing and everything. Before my cancer was diagnosed, I knew that someday I would die, but I didn’t know when. After the diagnosis, I knew that someday I would die, but I didn’t know when. But now I knew it acutely. The problem wasn’t really a scientific one. The fact of death is unsettling. Yet there is no other way to live.

While it had the potential to be completely depressing, it is more a celebration of life. There is no wallowing in grief, only the commitment to keep living: “until I actually die, I am still living.” Despite the personal stakes, Dr. Kalanithi writes with surprising objectivity and rationality, almost detachment. It wasn’t until Part 2, when his daughter was born, that I became emotional. After that point, it was extremely difficult to continue reading through my tears. Below is the last paragraph before the epilogue (skip if you need to), one of the most touching and heartbreaking things I have ever read:

(Directed to his infant daughter) When you come to one of the many moments in life where you must give an account of yourself, provide a ledger of what you have been, and done, and meant to the world, do not, I pray, discount that you filled a dying man’s days with a sated joy, a joy unknown to me in all my prior years, a joy that does not hunger for more and more but rests, satisfied. In this time, right now, that is an enormous thing.

I admired Dr. Kalanithi’s honesty, commitment to life-long learning, and for generously sharing his thought process from his final year. I desperately hoped for a different ending, even though I knew it wasn’t possible. Intellectually I know that death happens every second of the day, and to everyone eventually, but it is still difficult to accept that such a thoughtful and vibrant mind could be gone from this earth. I wish he could know how deeply his book has affected so many people! I’m glad he wrote it and to know that it will be there when I need it most (hopefully not for a long time). This novel is relevant to everyone, because we are all living in the face of death. If you enjoyed Gilead by Marilynne Robinson, you will probably enjoy this book. I didn’t enjoy Gilead when I read it, but I think I owe it a reread.

The earth is quickly turned over by worms, the processes of nature marching on, reminding me of what Paul saw and what I now carry deep in my bones, too: the inextricability of life and death, and the ability to cope, to find meaning despite this, because of this. What happened to Paul was tragic, but he was not a tragedy. (Lucy’s Epilogue)

The Bennets navigate modern life in this modern retelling of Pride & Prejudice. I feel like I have been using the words “heartbreaking” and “brutal” too much in my recent reviews, so this book was a nice break from darker topics. Eligible is a fun summer read! I’ve never read Pride & Prejudice, or even seen the movie, but I am going to assume there’s less sex and crude language. 😉 I typically prefer my books about the wealthy to have lots of skeletons in the closet, but the dry humor made this book about engaging. I’m usually more likely to cry than laugh when reading, but I laughed a lot while reading this book. These people are completely ridiculous!

“They’re in love.” Mr. Bennet smiled wryly. “I suppose they are,” he said. “But that’s a condition that’s acute, not chronic.”

Jane and Elizabeth Bennet return home to Cincinnati, Ohio to assist their parents while their father recovers from heart surgery. During their stay at the Bennet estate, Elizabeth notices that the property is in a state of disrepair and discovers that her parents are close to bankruptcy. She does the best she can to help her stubborn family adjust to their new circumstances. Despite her own situation, Mrs. Bennet’s main concern is getting her daughters married and taken care of, so she arranges for the sisters to attend a barbecue that will also be attended by Chip Bingley, a doctor and star of the most recent season of the dating reality show Eligible. Jane immediately hits it off with Chip, but Liz begins an antagonistic relationship with Chip’s friend Fitzwilliam Darcy, a neurosurgeon.

“But don’t you think the house is kind of a mess? And the yard, too?” Mr. Bennet sounded untroubled as he said, “Everything tends toward entropy, my dear. It’s the second law of thermodynamics.”

The book opens with a Mark Twain quote: “When the end of the world comes, I want to be in Cincinnati because it’s always twenty years behind the times.” That quote sets the scene perfectly! Eligible is almost 500 pages, but it is a fast read because the chapters are so short. There are 181 chapters and some of them are only a paragraph long. The book is told from Liz’s point-of-view, except for the last chapter. I didn’t immediately love the book, but the story really gets going after the barbecue. There was less romance than I expected; I completely forgot about Chip and Darcy when I first wrote the summary! The romantic conflicts that do arise are from miscommunication, assumptions, and withheld information. This would normally drive me crazy, but the book is written with such self-awareness that it won me over.

Time seemed, as it always does in adulthood after a particular stretch has concluded, no matter how ponderous or unpleasant the stretch was to endure, to have passed quickly indeed.

When I think of this book, I think mostly about family and the interactions between the unabashedly WASPy Bennets. A large part of the book deals with Liz attempting to help her family stand on their own two feet. The domestic drama had the potential to be boring, but the Sittenfeld’s dry sense of humor and witty observations make it compulsively readable. The Bennets can be terrible people, some more than others (Mrs. Bennet and Lydia really are the worst). They are even awful to each other: “the Bennets’ antipathy for one another was of such an intimate variety it was almost like affection.” Even so, their family banter feels authentic. Each family member has a distinct personality (except for Kitty):

Mr. Bennet is very sarcastic and has essentially checked out of his marriage. He acts like he is above it all. He has the best lines in the novel!
Mrs. Bennet is extremely prejudiced (racist, anti-Semitic, transphobic, etc.) and has an online shopping addiction.
The oldest two sisters live in New York:
Jane (39) Yoga instructor who has not had much luck with relationships and desperately wants a child. She is very sweet and caring.
Elizabeth (38) Magazine writer in an unhealthy, secret relationship. In her family she is “a voice of reason amid a cacophony of foolishness” and the only Bennet sister who is entirely self-sufficient. She isn’t perfect, but her willingness to learn and grow made me root for her.
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Mary (30) is a professional student. She uses studying to limit her interactions with the rest of the family and she is unconcerned with finding a suitor. She leaves the house every Tuesday night to attend a secret activity.
Kitty (26) & Lydia (23) are crude and lack ambition. Kitty follows Lydia’s lead. They are active Crossfitters.

Surely, if Liz had learned that anybody in her social circle in New York had eloped with someone transgender, she’d have greeted the news with support; she might even have felt that self-congratulatory pride that heterosexual white people are known to experience due to proximate diversity.

All of Mrs. Bennet’s daughters end up in relationships and situations that do not meet her approval at one point or another. The supporting characters that Mrs. Bennet is so concerned about are the only normal people in the book, though that might be because we don’t get to know them that well. Even Darcy, who was one of the only characters I could name beforehand, only appears sporadically. (I have to admit that even with short glimpses, I see the appeal!)

“A reality show isn’t unlike the Nobel Peace Prize, then,” Mr. Bennet said. “In that they both require nominations.”

My favorite parts were those that involved the reality show, which was a brilliant way to show old customs in a modern light. It is funny when Liz, who has has been smug about her media-savviness the entire time, finally lets loose! I also liked that characters that weren’t interested in being in relationships or having children didn’t miraculously have a change of heart by the end. All the characters experience growth, even if it is just baby steps. Even Mrs. Bennet becomes the tiniest bit more open-minded, though she still manages to remain awful while doing so. I count it as progress because dealing with Mrs. Bennet types is like a 50 First Dates situation. It feels impossible to make progress that makes it through to morning!

Then she was in a different part of the club, and she and Kitty were dancing to a rap song they both knew all the words to, and Kitty was wearing a thin plastic headband with antennae off of which wobbled life-sized sparkly pink penises. How marvelous this headband was! Even more marvelously, Kitty pointed out that Liz was wearing an identical one. Truly, it was a magical night.

I’m not sure if Jane Austen fans will like this retelling, but an individual’s reaction to the above passage might be a good indicator! 😀

This is the book I was hoping to read when I picked up Everybody Rise last year. Eligible lightheartedly pokes fun at contemporary life and those who have trouble acclimating to modern mores, while also providing an updated look at love and relationships. If you are looking for a silly summer read and enjoy books about dysfunctional families, this may be the one for you. I feel inspired to read Austen’s Pride & Prejudice now, especially since Rosamund Pike is the audiobook narrator!

“There’s a belief that to take care of someone else, or to let someone else take care of you—that both are inherently unfeminist. I don’t agree. There’s no shame in devoting yourself to another person, as long as he devotes himself to you in return.”

A sweet and heartwarming story about a 63-year-old woman who goes through a major life change and reluctantly stumbles into a journey of self-discovery. Britt-Marie is a character from My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry, a book I have not read. The two books are independent stories and don’t need to be read in conjunction with each other.

A year turned into several years, and several years turned into all the years. One morning you wake up with more life behind you than in front of you, not being able to understand how it’s happened.

Britt-Marie is set in her ways, but she is forced into uncomfortable new circumstances after leaving her philandering husband. After decades of being a homemaker and being taken advantage of by her husband, she finds temporary employment and independence in Borg, a neglected community hit hard by the financial crisis. Britt-Marie is uptight and inflexible after years of emotional neglect, but she may have found the place she belongs in this town full of outsiders!

At a certain age almost all the questions a person asks him or herself are really just about one thing: How should you live your life?

“It’s easier to stay optimistic if you never have to clear up the mess afterwards.” I have a soft spot for stories about grumpy creatures of habit who are ripped from their comfort zones. When we meet Britt-Marie, she is being extremely rude to a woman at the employment office. She is a stickler for her lists and is obsessive about having an organized cutlery drawer. She is hard to like at first, but it is easy to understand how her eccentricities developed when her family background and the sad facts of her marriage are revealed. Her desire to be seen and concerns about being forgotten are especially affecting.

It’s not that Britt-Marie chose not to have expectations, she just woke up one morning and realized they were past their sell-by date.

Britt-Marie isn’t the only peculiar person in this book. She ends up in Borg, a town full of interesting characters. Borg is not Britt-Marie’s ideal environment; it is run-down and no one has any interesting in cleaning it up. The people have lost all hope after the financial crisis left most of them without jobs and everyone else has given up on them too. Britt-Marie accidentally befriends this ragtag band of misfits and gives them something to strive for. Likewise, the people of Borg help Britt-Marie relax a little and learn to open herself up to laughter and friendship. The citizens of Borg and Britt-Marie are both jolted out of complacency and learn that it is never too late to live a fulfilling life.

“Things have changed. … They no longer want to go, they want to see what happens next. It’s been awhile since anyone in Borg wanted to know what happens next.”

As a warning for anyone like me that finds their eyes glazing over at the mere mention of sports, a youth soccer team plays a central part in this book. I did think the idea of sizing up a person by their team preference funny. (Note: I never finished the Harry Potter series because I got stuck on the first few chapters of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. That’s right! I can’t even handle the potential for fantasy sports! )

All marriages have their bad sides, because people have weaknesses. If you live with another human being you learn to handle these weaknesses in a variety of ways. For instance, you might take the view that weaknesses are a bit like heavy pieces of furniture, and based on this you must learn to clean around them. To maintain the illusion.

These are: Cheeses, cottage cheese and buttermilk Soy products, viagra buy germany such as miso and tempeh are among the good soy products. In order to achieve the best performance this product is very much for you to reach at your saturated point of life levitra tablet sooner than intended. One becoming easily irritated, short temper, in addition to uneasyness. 10.Physical illnesses just like headaches, digestive disorders, and chronic pain pertaining to order cheap viagra no particular purpose. A healthy male should ejaculate 20 million per milliliter to 150 million levitra 10 mg per milliliter. Of course the dust is building up unseen, but you learn to repress this for as long as it goes unnoticed by guests. And then one day someone moves a piece of furniture without your say-so, and everything comes into plain view. Dirt and scratch marks. Permanent damage to the parquet floor. By then it’s too late.

While it was an enjoyable book, there are a few things that made the story feel like it was progressing extra slowly:

1) Formulaic? – I haven’t finished A Man Called Ove, because halfway through I decided to switch from audiobook to print. The part I did listen to really struck an emotional chord with me. Because of my previous, albeit incomplete, experience with Ove, I felt like I’d read much of Britt-Marie before: a miserable grump evolves into a lovable grump, a lonely person loses finds a family of choice after losing a spouse, and gradual bonding with an animal. It is just too easy to compare the two.
2) Repetition – This is a character-driven story about a woman is likes to clean and organize. This means there is a lot of detail and repetition about her domestic activities. Also, certain phrases and themes are repeated ad nauseum. Sometimes it is nice to just read a story and have it all laid out for you, but geez! I get it!
3) Naming Conventions – One of the characters is referred to as ‘Somebody’ and it threw me off every single time.

“If you can be heard then you exist.”

The publisher describes Britt-Marie as “hard to like, but easy to love,” which is the perfect way to describe her. There is a big heart hiding underneath her prim and proper exterior! If you are looking for a pleasant story that will give you some faith in humanity, this is a solid choice! If you like books like The Rosie Project, you will probably enjoy Fredrik Backman’s quirky characters and heartwarming tales.

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“She slept the unreflective sleep of a child, and she woke up with great spirits. Another day. This alone should immediately have made her suspicious, because little good can come of waking up all enthusiastic like that.” Agreed, Britt-Marie!

Ballet drama + juvenile detention center + dark, fairytale-like atmosphere. That’s all I needed to know to make me want to read this young adult novel full of secrets and betrayal! Beautifully written mystery with supernatural elements. It went a little off the deep end in the last fifteen pages, but it was worth the read for the exploration into the invisible walls that divide us.

“Ori’s dead because of what happened out behind the theater, in the tunnel made out of trees. She’s dead because she got sent to that place upstate, locked up with those monsters. And she got sent there because of me.” Eighteen-year-old Violet is a self-absorbed, ambitious ballet dancer, who is about to attend Julliard. Violet and Orianna have been best friends since childhood, but Violet can barely contain her resentment towards Ori. Violet has had every advantage in life and is a good dancer, but she lacks the ‘spark’ and natural talent of Ori, who is not as privileged. Ori has been sent to a juvenile detention center for committing a violent crime and Violet is oddly unaffected by it.

Home is where the heart is, and where the hell is, and where the hate is, and where the hopelessness is. Which made Aurora Hills pretty much like home.

Amber is an inmate at Aurora Hills juvenile detention center, home of “forty-one of the worst female juvenile offenders in the state.” She was convicted of a violent crime when she was 13 years old, but everyone thinks she is the only true innocent there. She has become institutionalized and she speaks in the collective voice of the detention center. In the opening of the book, all of the doors at the detention center have become unlocked and all the guards have disappeared.

When people decide there’s ugliness inside you, they’ll be looking to find it on your face.

Orianna is described as selfless to a fault and an extremely talented ballet dancer. She is maybe a little too perfect! We only get to know Orianna through Violet and Amber, but she is central to the story.

People can’t move on until the finger is pointed, and the gavel’s come down. This is called closure, and it’s also called justice, and they are not always the same thing.

I really enjoyed the mystery and the creepy atmosphere. Nova Ren Suma’s prose is poetic and very lovely to read. It has a dreamy, fairytale quality to it, a similar atmosphere to We Were Liars and Wink Poppy Midnight. The Firebird, a ballet based on a Russian fairy tale, is alluded too frequently and it was weaved into the story effectively. The characters were hard for me to connect with because they felt like author constructions developed to encapsulate a message, rather than fully developed people. I tend to have this connection issue with artistically written first-person perspective, especially with multiple points-of-view. When all the characters communicate in a writerly way full of literary devices, it is hard for me to immerse myself in the story.
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I knew that just because people on the outside were free and clean, it didn’t mean they were the good ones. They were the worst kind of liars. They were total assholes. They were traitors. They were bitches. They were snitches. They were cowards. They claimed they had your best interests at heart, but really they were in it for themselves. They said what they wanted about us. They threw us under buses, and then they walk away. Not everything said about us by those on the outside was the truth, not even close.

My favorite part of this novel was the exploration into the divisions that separate people. Besides the physical barriers between innocent and guilty and life and death, there are also the self-created prisons of the main characters. Both Violet and Amber are very protective of their secrets and do not let people close. There are also the invisible walls that separate Violet and Ori, issues of privilege and talent. Outside appearance can also serve as a deceiving “wall” that prevents a person’s true character from being revealed. It is easy to refuse to acknowledge these walls, but they are always there.

Not one of us was truly innocent, not when we were made to stand in the light, our bits and cavities and cavity fillings exposed. When we faced this truth inside ourselves, it somehow felt more ugly than the day we witnessed the judge say “guilty” and heard the coatroom cheer.

Reading this story was an uneven experience for me, but I am glad I read it! The beginning was slow, like there was a lot of filler for the sake of dragging out the mystery. I also dreaded Violet’s chapters, because she was a boring, empty shell of a person. She is one of those characters that vaguely alludes to a secret until she suddenly decides to reveal the answers at the end. She doesn’t do much and she is exhaustingly repetitive about her ambitions and resentments. Amber’s chapters were by far the most compelling. Her life as an inmate and the relationships between the young women were so interesting. It was like Orange is the New Black: The Juvie Edition with a weird, dreamy feel, and I was hooked during the middle. But that end! The last fifteen pages were insane. It is one of those endings that comes completely out of left field and I have a hard time accepting it because I suddenly didn’t understand the rules of this world.

Maybe, long ago, we all used to be good. maybe all little girls are good in the beginning. … But something happened to us between then and now. Something threw sand in our eyes, ground it in, and we couldn’t get it out. We still can’t.

Overall, I enjoyed this book and I would read more by this author, even if they all have crazy endings! The two books I thought of while reading this book are very different in regards to genre, but are similar in theme: The Library of Mount Char (dangers of letting your pain consume you and human adaptability) and Unfair (a nonfiction book about injustice in the United States justice system).
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Semi-related: Ballerina Misty Copeland to ‘Inspire the Next Generation’ With Her Own Barbie Doll (5/22/16)- Firebird costume! I get irrationally excited when I spot connections (no matter how tenuous) to my reading in the news!

Graphic nonfiction featuring first-person accounts of the real-life horrors that occurred during the Ukrainian famine of 1932 and the recent conflict in Chechnya. Content warning: Graphic descriptions of brutality.

“Maybe we’d like to share our secret, that secret called war, but those who live in peace have no interest in hearing it.” – Anna Politkovskaya

It was actually the subtitle rather than the title that caught my attention: Life and Death Under Soviet Rule. Author Anthony Marra’s books have made me really interested in this region and its history. If you’ve ever read Constellation of Vital Phenomena or The Tsar of Love and Techno, you will find many of the situations in this book familiar. This nonfiction book is bleaker than Marra’s fictional works. There is no humor and there is very little hope, just survival. The glimmers of humanity are quickly extinguished.

It was written and illustrated by Igort, an Italian comic author. It is 384 pages, but it only took a couple of hours to read since the pages are filled with artwork. The artwork is effective and haunting. The illustrations emphasize the reality of the events described. The drawing style and color palette suit the content; the published version is sepia-toned with selective splashes of black and saturated reds. You can get a good sense of the book by looking through the pages available on Google Books. This book is a collection of survivor and witness testimony, historical records, and author reflections. The historical information wasn’t extremely in-depth, but it gave much-needed context to the interviews. Igort’s analysis and reflections made it obvious how deeply he cares about the subject. The phrasing was a little awkward sometimes. I’m not sure if that was because of translation or a very conversational writing style.

Human brutality sparks the imagination…

The content is divided into two sections: The Ukrainian Notebook and The Russian Notebook. The organization of this book is a little scattered within its individual sections.* It really is structured like a notebook. At times, it reminded me of a documentary in book form. My issues with the organization made it hard to have a complete understanding of the historical facts, but the individual elements are all very impressive. I did not finish the book feeling that I could produce a coherent summary of historical facts, but I did finish it with a fuller understanding of the human impact. The most powerful (and horrifying) parts of this book are the personal accounts of the survivors.

One can adapt to anything. The patience of Ukrainian peasants is proverbial.

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Rage. It lashes out at life’s little things.

The Russian Notebook focuses on Russia in the 2000s and the Second Chechen War. The focal point of this section is Anna Politkovskaya, a journalist and human rights activist, who was assassinated near her Moscow apartment. Anna was an inspiring woman and a vocal opponent of the Second Chechen War. I am always in awe of people who fight on behalf of others, despite the threats to their own survival. I admire those that are able to preserve their value system and their empathy for all people, even when they have seen the darkest of humanity. I thought this author description particularly chilling: “the sense of oppression one feels in a place that only appears to be free, where the system depends on a cloak of indifference that can cover up any kind of crime without any punishment ever taking place.” I could remember many of the events discussed and this book and the format helped me form a complete picture of the human beings behind the events I saw on the evening news.

Anna’s was a better Russia, and perhaps what we have learned from her is the need to remember, to not turn a blind eye or look the other way, to not accept prepackaged truths but to defend everyday values no matter what, the values that make us, after all, human.

The author closes the book with a postscript that ties the events of 2014 (the Russian annexation of Crimea and the invasion of Ukraine) to the historical context he provided in the previous pages. He tells the story of a Russian soldier, “not an activist, not a troublemaker, simply a man who had made a decision. A just man who paid for his choice.” The Ukrainian and Russian Notebooks isn’t easy subject matter; it is difficult to read what fellow humans have endured. It tells the stories of people who are most affected by the political decisions made in distant cities and who are doing the best they can to survive. It serves as a reminder that barbaric methods did not die with the past and how all the events of the past have a profound effect on the present and future. It gave me greater historical context for the fiction works I have already read and served as an introduction that encourages me to do further reading on the subject. I am adding The Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin by Timothy Snyder to my “to read” list.

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* The organization was sometimes hard for me to follow. On page 32: “This famine was intentionally provoked; the documents prove it.” I expected to see an example of this, but all that followed were callously casual observations from officials. Further research led me to a Wikipedia summary of American historian Timothy Snyder’s research, Deliberate targeting of Ukrainians. Three hundred pages later in section two, there is a part regarding the deportation of the Kulaks that would have made more sense with the proper time period in section one, rather than the proper country in section two. It also includes a telegram that seems to be some of the documentation mentioned on page 34. I think it may have been structured this way to tie the two notebooks and the events together, but the way it was done was confusing.

History is the error we are forever correcting. (The Leopard)

I can’t read Anthony Marra without highlighting half the book! The Tsar of Love and Techno consists of nine interconnected short stories spanning over 75 years in Chechnya and Russia. It addresses the futility of trying to erase people and events, human adaptability, the absurdity of life and war, and the smallness of our lives in relation to the enormity of the universe.

It takes nothing less than the whole might of the state to erase a person, but only the error of one individual–if that is what memory is now called–to preserve her. (The Leopard)

Anthony Marra is such an efficient writer. He distills so much wisdom into brief sentences and his prose is beautiful without being flowery. The stories are primarily set in a landmine-filled pasture in Chechnya, a pasture that was also the subject of an obscure nineteenth-century painting, and Kirovsk, Russia, where many of the characters grew up. Kirovsk is a nickel mining town described as a “poisoned post-apocalyptic hellscape,” with an artificial forest designed to “make people forget that [they’re] living where humans don’t belong.” But even in the bleakest of settings, Marra manages to inject humanity and humor. His characters are complex and they often betray their loved ones, but they are doing the best they can to survive.

We’ve given them all we can, but our greatest gift has been to imprint upon them our own ordinariness. They may begrudge us, may think us unambitious and narrow-minded, but someday they will realize that what makes them unremarkable is what keeps them alive. (Granddaughters)

The character’s fates are often spoiled in the earlier stories, so the mystery is how they reached their fate. Enough background is given that many of the stories could be read outside of the novel, but it is a much richer experience to read them all together. Each story has its own message, but there are common threads weaving them all together. The following spoiler-tagged text is a list of the connections shared between the stories and a partial summary of the whole story within the individual stories:

[spoiler]
The Leopard: (1937) State censor in Leningrad ordered to add party boss to “pastoral by the nineteenth-century Chechen painter Pyotr Zakharov.” Painting sent to Grozny. In another part of the story, the state censor is unable to complete the task of removing a ballerina from a photo and he leaves a trace of her hand.
Granddaughters: (1937-2013) Galina, granddaughter of the aforementioned ballerina, is the star of this story. She meets her first love Kolya, who is later sent to mandatory military service in Chechnya. Lydia, a friend of hers and the daughter of Vera, is murdered by Kolya when he returns home.
The Grozny Tourist Bureau: (2003) Ruslan wrote his dissertation on the nineteenth-century pastoral landscapes. He is in possession of the Zakharov painting, which he saved from the museum after it had been damaged by bombing. Girlfriend Nadya, a restoration artist, wrote her dissertation on state censor in The Leopard and removed the party boss from the Zakharov painting. Ruslan lived on Zakharov’s pasture until his wife and child died. Ruslan fixes damage to painting and adds wife and child to painting. Galina discovers that Kolya died on Zakharov’s pasture and is given an old childhood photo of Kolya with his mom and brother. She forcibly purchases the painting from Ruslan.
A Prisoner of the Caucasus: (2000) Kolya is held captive in pit on Zakharov’s pasture during his second deployment. The man who lives there now is Ruslan’s former father-in-law. He has a photograph of the Zakharov painting and orders Kolya and his fellow captive soldier to restore property to its original condition. Kolya’s mixtape (“the only question he had to which he could ever hope to receive an answer.”) and the photo of Kolya with his mom and brother appear in this story.
The Tsar of Love and Techno: (2010/1990s) Galina gives the family picture and Zakharov painting to Kolya’s brother Alexei. The story behind Kolya’s mixtape and family picture is revealed. Alexei visits Zakharov pasture and sees two figures, just like in the painting.
Wolf of White Forest: (1999) Full story of Vera, Lydia and Kolya, first mentioned in Granddaughters: Mixtape in Kolya’s pocket, family picture on his bookshelf.
Palace of the People: (2001) Told by Sergei, son of Vladimir. A character has connection with The Leopard.
A Temporary Exhibition: (2011-2013) Nadya (from The Grozny Tourist Bureau) is hosting an exhibition of state censor’s work. Characters from Palace of the People appear in this story and there is a connection with the end of The Tsar of Love and Techno.
The End: (Unknown) The final seconds following the end of A Prisoner of the Caucasus

[/spoiler]

The future is the lie with which we justify the brutality of the present.(The Leopard)

My favorite stories were The Leopard, The Grozny Tourist Bureau, and Wolf of White Forest.

• The Leopard, set in 1937, is about a state censor who airbrushes people out of existence. His brother was killed for political reasons. Out of guilt, he begins to paint his brother’s face over the faces he is erasing.

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• Wolf of White Forest centers around an elderly woman who is still haunted by her accidental denunciation of her mother in 1941. The decades pass and she is forced to adapt to new traditions. As the old guard falls, a new guard enters. Vera’s money-making activities inadvertently result in the further disintegration of her family, in an incident that mirrors her childhood indiscretion.

No one was innocent, no one was unconnected, no one was not complicit. The strongest, most damning adjectives she’d reserve for her own silences, if she could only now raise her voice. (Wolf of White Forest)

My least favorite story was the longest of the bunch, The Tsar of Love and Techno. A young man gets confirmation that his brother is dead and looks back on their childhood in the toxic environment of Kirovsk. It took me a few days to get through it. It jumps between the present-day and the featured character’s childhood memories. I preferred the childhood part so much that I kept getting irritated at the constant interruption. I think I would have liked it more if the memories were bookended by the present. I also don’t think it stands on its own as well as some of the others.

You remain the hero of your own story even when you become the villian of someone else’s. (The Leopard)

I had a hard time seeing how it was going to all tie together, but Marra did not disappoint! The last two stories A Temporary Exhibition and The End are also better in the context of the whole book, but they give the book a satisfying conclusion that brought tears to my eyes and a sad smile to my face. The writing style of The End was distinctive from the other stories, very poetic with cosmic imagery.

“All these people who opened their purses on the metro, when they see a legless vet, they feel ashamed and maybe a little pity. But when they see me crawling across the metro car, they see someone defiant, silent, not begging for anything, and they feel pride. They’re paying me for the privilege of feeling proud when they should feel disgraced.” (Palace of the People)

One of the hard things about reading interconnected short stories is that upon the first reading my brain gets overloaded trying to keep track of the whole story, while also trying to enjoy the individual story. It would definitely reward a reread. While I rated this book four stars on Goodreads, I almost talked myself into five stars by the end of writing this review!

If you enjoy Marra’s work, I would recommend The Ukrainian and Russian Notebook, a graphic nonfiction by Igort (working on the review now). It is much more bleak, but it is powerful to read the real-life accounts of people who live in the region. For more absurdity in terrible situations, you might also want to try Kurt Vonnegut, especially Slaughterhouse-Five and Mother Night. For more books centered around paintings, The Improbability of Love is a lighter novel that is set in the art world.

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Quote that all book lovers can appreciate:

During my early days in the department, I wasn’t entrusted with such delicate assignments. For my first year, I combed the shelves of libraries with the most recently expanded edition of Summary List of Books Excluded from Libraries and the Book Trade Network, searching for images of newly disgraced officials. This should be a librarian’s job, of course, but you can’t trust people who read that much.