Month: August 2017

There are things even love can’t do. Before I got married, I believed love could do anything. … If the burden is too much and stays too long, even love bends, cracks, comes close to breaking and sometimes does break. But even when it’s in a thousand pieces around your feet, that doesn’t mean it’s no longer love. (Akin)

After four years of marriage, Yejide and Akin still haven’t had a child. Akin’s family pressures him to take on a second wife who can provide him with descendants. Polygamy was never part of their plan, so Yejide is livid when a second wife appears at her doorstep. She becomes desperate to get pregnant in order to protect her marriage. Stay with Me is an emotional story about the slow disintegration of a relationship and the damage that societal expectations can inflict.

It was the lie I’d believed in the beginning. Yejide would have a child and we would be happy forever. The cost didn’t matter. It didn’t matter how many rivers we had to cross. At the end of it all was this stretch of happiness that was supposed to begin only after we had children and not a minute before. (Akin)

This is such an emotional read! It made my stomach feel tied up in knots. My heart hurt so much for these characters because of the burdens they were forced to face. Part of me is so thrilled to find a talented new author to follow, but the other part of me is angry that she put her characters through so much pain! When we first meet Yejide, it’s 2008 and she’s still married to Akin. However, it seems that they’ve not communicated over the last fifteen years. She has just received an invitation to be Akin’s guest at his father’s funeral. The chapters alternate between Akin and Yejide as they reveal the story of their relationship, from love at first sight to the challenges that followed. The story of their relationship coincides with the tumultuous presidency of Ibrahim Babangida (1985-1993). Through the many twists and turns in this story, Yejide and Akin suffer a never-ending series of setbacks. Sometimes it felt like too much, but I think that feeling is intensified by the way the reveals are distributed. Each tragedy results from the one before it, but the answers aren’t revealed linearly.

The reasons why we do the things we do will not always be the ones that others will remember. Sometimes I think we have children because we want to leave behind someone who can explain who we were to the world when we are gone. (Yejide)

Yejide has always been alone in the world. Her mother died during her birth and her father likes to remind her of her part in her mother’s death. Her father’s other wives ostracize her. Yejide’s mother is described as a woman without lineage, which makes them question Yejide’s humanity: “when there was no identifiable lineage for a child, that child could be descended from anything—even dogs, witches or strange tribes with bad blood.” When she falls in love with Akin, she finally has a person that is hers and an opportunity to create a family for herself. She finally matters to someone! Everything falls apart when Akin agrees to take on a second wife and she gets crowded out of her own life. Now she must have a child. It will secure her place in the marriage and give her something that is really hers: “A man can have many wives or concubines; a child can have only one mother.”
What’s more, males suffering from infertility may also take a psychological toll, including such conditions as depression and fatigue can also be common causes. cialis cheap Men can follow this remedy free samples viagra in staying at home. You can overcome the sexual problems naturally with the help of herbal supplements such as Booster capsule and Mast Mood oil. viagra cialis cheap This fruit contains very less pulp and 90% of it is filled with a large degree of success viagra sale uk claims in correcting erectile dysfunction in men of reproductive age.

It’s the truth—stretched, but still true. Besides, what would be left of love without truth stretched beyond its limits, without those better versions of ourselves that we present as the only ones that exist? (Akin)

There’s intense love between Akin and Yejide, but they also share have a fear of being alone. There are issues in their relationship from the beginning. Akin is constantly making compromises without consulting his wife. Yejide tries her best to be a compliant wife, despite the endless amount of heartache thrown her way. The gulf between them is widened further because of societal expectations and the desperation to meet those ideals. Shame is a powerful emotion. The shame of not being “woman enough” or “man enough” can drive people to great lengths to hide their supposed deficiencies. Yejide has little support. As a woman, she must endure the community’s blame for anything that’s lacking in her marriage. She also receives indifferent reactions to her very valid emotions, which cause her lose grip on reality and retreat further within herself.

“This is a transition. A transition is a process. It is not a one-off event. There is no need for us to be cynical. There have been setbacks, but I think they are quite understandable. … It is a gradual transition, step by step, my dear. That is the only way to ensure lasting change.”

The drama occurs on both a personal and political scale. During the same time period as Yejide and Akin’s marital strife, Nigeria is undergoing major turmoil. After the 1985 coup, there’s a series of escalating conflicts where nothing really changes except a slow weakening of the country’s stability. The political battles and the characters’ reactions to the events mirror what’s going on in the marriage. Yejide describes family members knocking at her door as soldiers prepared for war because she knows they are going to inflict damage on her marriage. The introduction of the second wife occurs around the same time as Babangida’s successful coup. As Babangida assumes power, Yejide reflects that “Nigeria was still in the honeymoon phase of her relationship with Babangida, and like most new brides she wasn’t asking probing questions, yet.” The violence escalates, but no one is able to see how bad it’s gotten because they are too close to the situation. Even with deteriorating conditions, Yejide hopes that Babangida will maintain power “because the status quo was the devil we knew.” When someone questions the government’s commitment to change, Akin dismisses the idea that they would invest so many resources on something only to abandon their plans.

“She has tried hard-o, even a blind person can see how hard she has tried. But only a few people can win in a fight against their destiny. I have lived long enough to know that.”

Akin thought that as long as he and Yejide had a child they would find true happiness, no matter what had to be sacrificed to achieve that goal. But how many lies and secrets can a marriage endure? Lies pile on top of even more lies until it becomes too much for anyone to bear. Yejide marvels at how one doesn’t need to be lied to by another person in order to be deceived, because “the biggest lies are often the ones we tell ourselves.” It’s easy to blind ourselves to reality and fool ourselves into seeing what we want to see. As Yejide says, “sometimes faith is easier than doubt.” Love is complicated. Sometimes problems are too big to overcome and love just isn’t enough. Did Akin and Yejide ever have a chance at happiness or were they doomed from the beginning? Did the constant pressure to measure up to society’s ideals make honesty and open communication not seem like a valid option and prevent this couple from forging their own path? I thought this story was going to focus on the dynamics of a polygamous marriage, but it was so much more than that. Stay with Me is an amazing debut from a talented new author!

With one wave of a hand, everything changes.

Meg is picking up her daughter Audrey from school, just like any other weekday afternoon. She sees her daughter’s friend Jack waiting to cross the road, so she stops and signals to him that it’s okay to cross. As the teen makes his way to the next curb, he is struck by an inattentive driver in the next lane. Meg knows that the teen would be okay if she hadn’t allowed him to cross in front of her. Consumed by guilt, she dedicates herself to helping Jack’s family at the expense of her own family.

Maybe we’re not the different after all, the two of us—I understand the need to keep a handle on things, to exude the image you desperately want people to see because the real one is scary and unpredictable and might take over if you give it a chance.

Meg’s life begins to fall apart. She can barely keep it together and makes huge mistakes in both her personal and professional life. After years of putting up a perfect front, she begins questioning her parenting skills and her marriage. She and her husband can’t seem to get on the same page and her well-behaved teenage daughter becomes moody and secretive. To make matters worse, Jack’s accident brings up unresolved guilt about an accident she was involved in when she was sixteen-years-old.

“If you can’t trust the ones you love, life will always feel harder than it needs to be.”

I didn’t feel Meg’s guilt as strongly as I felt her personal struggles. My favorite parts were the minor interactions between family members. I even liked the teenager in this book! Meg sees Audrey repeating her past mistakes and there’s a point when Meg realizes that her parents encountered many of the same problems that she’s going through. There’s so much she doesn’t know, but she doesn’t have to be alone in her struggles. I loved this sweet moment when she reaches out to her father:

“When does it get easier?”
“Being a parent, you mean?”
I nod and Dad laughs. “It never gets easier. Just gets less hard.”
I scowl. “Isn’t that the same thing?”
Sometimes it is canadian pharmacies viagra caused by endodontic treatment. No doubt, erectile dysfunction is one cheap sildenafil tablets of the most common sexual disorders that are affecting Indian males these days and really require treatment. Whenever you are using these tablets it is easy to purchase this tablet to achieve successful intercourse. order cialis from canada Playing dead in the creepy new movie After Life (out this year) may not daunt her, but present her with a pot plant or suggest she go for a private dip in a swimming pool and she’s petrified. soft viagra “No,” he says, giving me a wink. “Talk to me in another, oh, five years. You’ll understand better then.”
“I hope we all make it until then,” I say, giving him a wry smile. He bends down to kiss my cheek, and then we go back to the washing and drying, other of us silent with our own thoughts.

This was the first book I read after a long reading drought in the spring and it was exactly the type of book I needed: linear narrative, single character POV, and relatable drama/family dynamics. The thing that made me a little less enthusiastic about it is that Meg is very clear about what she’s feeling and she psychoanalyzes herself. There wasn’t much that I had to figure out for myself. To be fair, that was also what made it a good book for breaking a reading rut! I also felt like the story was happening before my eyes, so it was jarring when Meg referenced her future feelings. But overall, it was a solid story and the characters felt like real people. I liked how the author gave me just enough of an ending to satisfy me, but not so much of one that it felt too tidy. There was something comforting about this author’s style, so I’d be eager to read another one of her books.

“Fixing this is going to be twice as hard as breaking it, but this is as good a place as any to start.”

Despite our best intentions, sometimes we make mistakes. Those mistakes can result in terrible consequences. Sometimes we can never fix what we broke. Being thrown into unfamiliar territory builds new understandings between the characters. Meg learns that we’re all fighting the same battle. She sees firsthand how grief and guilt can cloud judgment and prevent a person from seeing past the present moment. In order to heal, she has to realize that it’s okay to forgive herself and others. She may have to learn to live with the “low hum of guilt,” but it doesn’t have to consume her.

 

---

A relevant quote from the movie version of Patrick Ness’s A Monster Calls: “Most of us just get messily ever after… and that’s all right.”

Without bees, the flowers were just flowers, not blueberries, not bread and butter.

The three protagonists are multiple generations apart, but their lives are all linked by the fate of bees:

• Sichuan, China in 2098: Pollinating insects completely disappeared from Earth over half a century before, so humans have assumed the bees’ job. In order to survive, humans have refined the arduous process of hand-pollination. Children’s are trained for the job as soon as they enter school and they begin working when they turn eight-years-old. Like any parent, Tao wants her three-year-old son Wei-Wen to have more opportunities than she did. She spends her little time off teaching him, so that he can attend a special leadership-training school and avoid a lifetime of back-breaking labor. When Wei-Wen mysteriously collapses and is taken away by the authorities, everything changes. She blames herself because she thinks it’s her dreams for him that put him in a bad situation. She is willing to sacrifice everything to find her son.

• Hertfordshire, England in 1851: William is a biologist whose academic specialty is superorganisms. Superorganisms are individual insects that function together as a single organism; they need each other in order to survive as a whole. William sank into a deep depression after his mentor belittled him for sacrificing his life’s work to have a large family. When his passion reignites, he becomes obsessed with building the perfect beehive, one that will benefit both the beekeepers and the bees. He wants his son Edmund to continue his research, but Edmund is disinterested in his father’s attempts to lure him into the family business. William’s obsession with making his son carry on his legacy prevents him from seeing the true heir to his research.

• Ohio, USA in 2007: George descends from a long line of beekeepers. He devotes his entire life to his bee farm and ensuring his bees are thriving. He wants his son to take over the farm, but his son is more interested in his college studies and cultivating his writing career. The stress of bee farming increases when bee colonies begin disappearing in the southern USA. While his bees are doing fine so far, the future of his farm becomes uncertain.

She read about knowledge. About acting against one’s instincts, because one knows better, about how in order to live in nature, with nature, we must detach ourselves from the nature in ourselves. And about the value of education. Because this was what education was actually about, defying the nature in oneself.

The History of Bees is about letting go and resisting the impulse to exert control over everything. Every parent and mentor in this book has a fixed vision for their child’s or apprentice’s future. There seems to be the expectation that the next generation “justify [their] position on this earth.” Trying to tame the natural order has disastrous consequences. Each character has a firm idea of their child’s place in the universe and the means through which that place will be achieved, but it’s not until they relax their control that they are able to gain clarity. One major lesson is that one doesn’t have to choose between life and passion. Sometimes that passion is our contribution to our families and the future.

A single person’s life, a single person’s flesh, blood, body fluids, nerve signals, thoughts, fears and dreams meant nothing. My dreams for [my son] didn’t mean anything, either, if I failed to put them into a context and see that the same dreams had to apply to all of us.

Durex is one such name that is popular viagra buy uk in the market of medicine. The online pharmacy With many pharmacies in the market, on line viagra https://unica-web.com/PATRONAGE/2019-patronage.html and sildenafil. There is not matter of concern, as the condition cialis tadalafil generic can also affect younger men. Presence of antioxidants like polyphenols in olive oil prevents joint inflammation. cialis cost canada There are so many beautiful moments of interconnection throughout the story. Tao decorates her son’s room with fluorescent star stickers that used to adorn her own childhood room. She feels as if she created “a bond between my own childhood and his, between us and the world, between the world and the universe.” On a larger scale, there’s a moment when Tao watches a documentary about the beekeepers who were affected by Colony Collapse Disorder. History comes alive for her. At another time she may have thought the interviews were just “testimonies from another time” from “people who had nothing to do with [her],” but with experience she realizes that “every single personal catastrophe meant [her] own.”

“And having been freed from sin, you became slaves of righteousness.” What did that mean? That he who is captive is perhaps the only one who is truly free? Doing the right thing can be a prison, a form of captivity, but we had been shown the way. Why didn’t we manage it, then? Not even in meeting with His creation did human beings succeed in doing the right thing.*

This book was originally published in Norwegian, but I read the English translation. I chose this book because I love dystopian fiction and the “in the spirit of Station Eleven and Never Let Me Go” blurb called my name. I can see the Station Eleven comparison more clearly than Never Let Me Go. The thing that draws me to Kazuo Ishiguro’s work is the haunting, melancholic atmosphere and I just didn’t get that from this book.

I debated on whether to round my star rating up on down. I decided to round up because somehow it managed to worm its way into my heart! The downsides of this book were the pacing and some of the characterization. It was slow paced at times, so my interest waxed and waned. It occasionally comes across as a “message” book, but it’s not overly heavy-handed. It almost had a YA feel to it—especially George’s chapters—even though there are no young adult main characters. (I found out after writing this review that this is the author’s first novel for adults.) Tao was my favorite of the three perspectives. She felt the most human, while William and George felt like characters. Even though the male characters didn’t feel as authentic to me, they still had interesting stories. William is strange and insufferable, but his passion for the natural world is contagious. Some of my favorite chapters were actually in his sections, when he talks about the lifecycle of bees (at the 45% & 87% mark of my copy). George is old-fashioned and set in his ways. He’s never able to say the right thing. His folksy simplicity didn’t always ring true to me, but I could understand the dreams and fears that motivated his actions and resentments.

Alone she’s nothing, a part so tiny that it’s insignificant, but with the others she’s everything. Because together they’re the hive.

In The History of Bees, the author draws “connections between the small and the large, between the power of creation and creation itself.” Every living thing in this book is “fighting the ordinary, daily struggle” for their descendants and survival. The three protagonists are decades, sometimes centuries, apart. They don’t know each other and they may not live to realize how essential their contributions were, but together they make a huge impact on mankind’s fate. The characters’ lives and the lives of their offspring didn’t go as planned, but their creative solutions influence humanity’s future path. This book gave me a larger appreciation for all those who’ve come before us and made an impact on our lives, even if they would never get a chance to benefit from it.

OTHER
* My biblical knowledge is lacking, so I wanted some more context with this quote. This sermon helped me out: Slaves of Righteousness, Romans 6:19-23. It also has some analysis of 1984 and Brave New World, which was interesting!
* A reassuring article to read after reading this book: Bees Are Bouncing Back From Colony Collapse Disorder.

Three astronauts embark on a seventeen-month training simulation in preparation for a real trip to Mars. During the hyper-realistic simulation, Prime Space will be studying the astronauts’ behavior and monitoring their communications with their families to see how they hold up on such a long mission. The goal is “not asking them to deal with the environment [Prime Space has] created for them, but creating the right environment for them to deal with whatever they encounter.” The most unexamined territory is not within the simulation but within themselves. The Wanderers is a character-driven novel that explores the nature of humanity and our relationships with each other.

You don’t stop being a real person just because you aren’t in a real place.

I was eager to read this book because it was described as “The Martian meets Station Eleven.” That’s not really what it is (and I don’t think they’re making that comparison anymore), but I was lucky that it ended up being another type of book that I like: introspection in space (in a way)! Like much literary fiction set in space, most of the book actually takes place in the characters’ heads. It’s more like Good Morning, Midnight or Spaceman of Bohemia, because it’s a journey of self-discovery rather than a grand space adventure. It might be telling that it sometimes reminded me more of my nonfiction reading: Spaceman: An Astronaut’s Unlikely Journey to Unlock the Secrets of the Universe* and The Traveler’s Guide to Space: For One-Way Settlers and Round-Trip Tourists. Another reason I was interested in this book was because I’m always fascinated by the experiences of participants in real-life Mars simulations. It definitely satisfied me on that account! The author was inspired by the Mars 500 mission in Moscow. There’s also the HI-SEAS project in Hawaii; the fourth crew disembarked in August 2016 and the fifth crew’s mission should be ending soon.

“Who are these people that can withstand such a trip, the danger, the risk, the isolation, the pressure? What can these people teach us? Because if we— the species—might eventually do something like move to another planet, it would be better if we made a few improvements on ourselves first, if possible.”

The chapters alternate between seven characters. The three astronauts chosen for the mission were selected to perfectly complement each other, “a kind of dream team, a trio whose individual temperaments, skills, and experience would combine in such a way as to be able to withstand the most challenging and dangerous expedition in the history of humankind.” The astronauts are never content to stand still and are always wanting to push the limits of exploration. They love their families, but they can’t resist the call to the unknown.

The Astronauts
• Helen (53yo, USA) is experienced, tenacious, and reserved. She’s driven by a fear of being left behind. The end of her career coming up, but she isn’t ready to hang up her helmet just yet: “She is too young to watch herself be surpassed, and too old to be this hungry. She thinks she is too young to give up her dreams, and too old to want them this much. But she is both too young and too old, possibly, to change herself. And how many years left on Earth?” One of the most tragic things about Helen is that another person decided how her daughter would see her. Eventually, it would become how she saw herself.
• Sergei (45yo, Russia) is straightforward and pessimistic, with some anti-social tendencies. He presents himself like the man he wishes he was and is motivated by the urge to prove his father wrong.
• Yoshi (37yo, Japan) is thoughtful, professional, and likable. He’s the most adaptable and easygoing of the group, but he’s also prone to bouts of melancholy.

Intense focus on what was happening in the present eclipsed all else, but things do not disappear during an eclipse, only disappear from view.

The effects of isolation and confinement on the astronauts is what I came for, but it was their relationships with their families that ended up being the most intriguing. The Prime team is aware that the astronauts are very careful about how they present themselves, so they believe the family members might provide them with better insight. Yoshi’s wife Madoka observes that the tightly controlled conditions of the simulation are actually less extreme than everyday life on Earth. The astronauts have each other, but the family members are all dealing with some form of isolation as they deal with being left behind.

Prime Space team & the Families:
• Luke is a member of the observation team. The “Obbers” monitor the astronauts for signs of psychological distress.
• Mireille is Helen’s daughter. She’s vulnerable and emotional, which she channels into her acting. Her whole life has been overshadowed by her mother’s career. She resents mother for repeatedly putting her career first. She doesn’t want her mother’s story to define her life and she wishes that she didn’t need to be loved so much. Her nickname is Meeps, which made me feel irrationally irritated!
• Madoka is Yoshi’s eccentric wife and a sales operative for a company that manufactures robotic caregivers. Over the years, she has become a “kind of ancillary tool to the Voyages of Yoshi.” Her marriage to Yoshi looks strong to the outside world, but it’s actually hollow at the core. She’s relieved when he goes away for long periods of time because it’s exhausting to keep up the pretense of being Yoshi’s “awesome” wife.
• Dimitri is Sergei’s sixteen-year-old son. He feels inadequate next to his father and brother. He’s gay but isn’t ready to admit it to himself or anyone else.
For this certain medicines are said to be taken with the consent of sexologists Unlike other sexual drugs, viagra levitra online will stay in the body for a period of 24 hours. You need to consume these herbal supplements for healthy bones two times daily with plain water or milk after intake of food. free samples levitra order cialis australia However, there are some other points you should be familiar with. Although a connection between increased toxicity and increases in diseases is obvious, it is important to understand how it works you need to understand the mechanics of how a man commander viagra http://appalachianmagazine.com/category/nature/ gets an erection.
There’s so much value in getting the family members’ perspectives, but there was too much activity on Earth. Madoka’s story is the most refined, so she was my favorite. One thing I really liked about the astronaut chapters was their interactions with each other. The family members operated more like independent satellites. I know that’s the point, but it made those chapters less interesting for me. My favorite section involving the families was the prelaunch dinner when Madoka and Mireille both engaged in a bit of play acting.

“Why shouldn’t we feel awe? In front of a beautiful painting we do not ask ourselves is it real? We know that it is not real. It is a painting. But we can still be filled with awe at its beauty.”

My reading experience mirrored some of the characters’ experiences. This book really messed with my own sense of a reality! I felt awed by the enormity of space when I read Good, Morning Midnight, even though it was fiction. The characters were actually experiencing outer space, so I felt like I was too. The characters in The Wanderers were in a simulation, so that altered my experience. BUT THEN, paranoia sets in. One of the astronauts sees a glitch that makes them suspect they might actually be in space. With a real launch and a simulated launch occuring at the same time it was always a possibility, but that was the first real clue that something shady might be going on. A switch flipped in me; should I have been reading it differently the whole time? The glitch isn’t the point; it’s how the astronauts, and perhaps the reader, react to it.

To orbit the earth is not to be shot up to some magical zone where there is no gravity, but to be shot up in such a trajectory that your subsequent fall means you won’t hit anything; you will persistently and permanently miss the Earth and circle around it. To have done this is to understand the persistence and permanence of falling and to understand that what is true does not always feel like what is true.

The word planet comes from the ancient Greek word for wanderer. The planets “move in relation to each other and the stars, but they don’t wander all over.” You can’t see all of a planet or moon at once, and in some cases, you’ll never see all their faces. Similarly, the characters are only partially visible to each other. Everyone in this book is putting up a facade, concealing parts of themselves from each other, and even from themselves. Being the person they think they’re supposed to be prevents their relationships from being as fulfilling as they could be. The avoidance of feeling or causing pain puts a wall between these characters.

Yoshi will not just be pretending that he is going to Mars, he will be pretending to be the most perfect person to go to Mars, and maybe he is, almost without question, he is, but that doesn’t mean he won’t have to pretend to be what he really is, because aren’t we all pretending to be who we really are?

To some extent, all of these characters live in self-created artificial environments. So between the simulation and the characters’ facades, what’s real? It’s complicated! I’m reminded of Madoka reflecting on the contradictions in her marriage. She acknowledges that the outside perception of her marriage as solid has some truth to it, but the hollow reality of her marriage is also true. At one point, Helen becomes so used to her altered self in the outside simulations that her real self looks fake. Some of the characters realize that they’ve spent much of their lives reacting to situations that they’ve dreamed up; both Yoshi and Mireille mention being affected by conversations and situations that only occurred in their heads. Regardless of what’s actually happened, all the emotions and reactions awakened by their experiences are very real. On a personal level, the events of this book reminded me of dreams. Every once in a while, I’ll wake up irritated with my husband because of something he did in my dream. It’s completely irrational, but it felt so real at the time! And like Mireille, I’ve sometimes worked myself up over an argument that I’ve acted out in my head.

[Letter from Yoshi to Madoka] Pluto and Charon show each other only one face, never turning away. … In astronomy, we use the word barycenter to describe the center of mass between two orbiting objects. Our Luna is smaller than Earth, and so the barycenter of Earth and Luna is on Earth, deep within it, actually. Because Charon is so large, and its gravitational influence so great, the barycenter of Pluto and Charon lies outside Pluto. Strictly speaking, Charon does not orbit Pluto, nor Pluto, Charon. They rotate around a barycenter between them. Looking only at one piece of each other. …. I have come to believe that I have loved you incorrectly. I have been orbiting a dream I cannot touch. I only know one of your faces. It is not that I didn’t want to know another face, it is that I loved that one so powerfully. Maybe I did not wish to know. There is a possibility that you are like Luna, and you see all my faces while I see only one of yours. But, forgive me, I do not think this is true. I think we are mutually locked. Perhaps this is what it means to be married. Perhaps this is what it means to be married to me. I saw a little of you, and thought it was everything. I understand that I was wrong.

You don’t have to travel to space to experience the unknown. In their isolation, these characters are forced to confront long-buried demons. They can no longer avoid seeing the obvious in order to protect themselves. Helen insists on not changing or feeling too much on the simulation so that she can feel or change more during the real trip to Mars, but the change is unavoidable. As much as they fight it, they’ll all be irrevocably altered by their experience. The Wanderers is a quiet novel without much of a plot, but it provides many thought-provoking ideas to explore.

---

OTHER:
* “For a mistake that measured 1/50th the width of a human hair, a two billion-dollar telescope was almost lost.” – More details about this incident is available here (#4 on the list). Mike Massimino talks about another incident with the Hubble Telescope in his book Spaceman, which is one of my favorite memoirs ever. His thoughts during the stressful situation made me laugh, even though I know it wasn’t very funny at the time: “This would be my legacy. My children and grandchildren would read in their classrooms: We might have known if there was life on other planets, but Gabby and Daniel’s dad broke the Hubble.”
* The Madoka/robotic caretaker sections reminded me of two excellent short stories I read recently. They are both available online: Tongtong’s Summer by Xia Jia (included in Invisible Planets: Contemporary Chinese Science Fiction in Translation compiled by Ken Liu) and Saying Goodbye to Yang (included in Children of the New World by Alexander Weinstein)
* Speaking of eclipses, the total solar eclipse is coming up on August 21, 2017! We’re only getting the 67% version here in Houston. 🙁

“I promise I’ll never leave you.”

Deming Guo/Daniel Wilkinson has never had much stability in his life. He was born in New York to an undocumented Chinese immigrant, but was sent to live with family in China when he was only one year old. He was sent back to New York to live with his mother when he turned six. Five years later, his mother disappears without a trace. Peilan/Polly Guo left for work one morning and never returned. At the age of eleven, the people he thought were his family place him in the foster care system. He’s adopted by a white family in a suburban community.

You could play it one way and play it another, the same note sounding different depending on how you decided to hear it. You could try to do all the right things and still feel wrong inside.

Deming’s feelings towards his adoptive parents are complicated. He desperately wants their approval, but he’s never sure what they want from him. They mean well and give him a comfortable life, but they’re out of touch. They insist on complete assimilation, even going as far as changing his name to Daniel. Occasionally they try to incorporate their own conception of Chinese culture into his life, but they don’t ask for his input and there’s no consideration of how varied cultures can be in such a large country. They aren’t sensitive to his unique circumstances and develop a “colorblind” approach to parenting him. When he overhears a racist comment, his adoptive mother panics and insists that he misheard. She often seems to view life in China as inferior to life in the United States. She doesn’t realize her view of China may be biased, that her life isn’t the only type of life worth living, or even that her suburban community insulates her from some of the United States’s own problems.

It was a funny thing, forgiveness. You could spend years being angry with someone and then realize you no longer felt the same, that your usual mode of thinking had slipped away when you weren’t noticing.

With all that he’s been through in his twenty-one years, it’s no surprise that Deming/Daniel struggles with issues of identity and belonging. He blames himself for his mother’s disappearance. He feels unwanted and undeserving of love. A fear of letting people down forces him to keep people at an arm’s length. When he’s uprooted from Chinatown and placed in the predominately white and middle-class Ridgeborough, NY, he has to learn to navigate a completely different culture. He endures a constant onslaught of thoughtless comments and is exhausted by being both invisible and conspicuous at the same time. All throughout the book, he’s forced to compartmentalize his feelings and be careful about what he reveals to each person in his life. He can’t even completely relax with his closest friends: “Be careful. They’re not on your side. It’s important to be strong.” He tries so hard to fit in, to the point of losing himself altogether: “Daniel was malleable, everyone and no one, a collector of moods, a careful observer of the right thing to say.” The issues that Deming struggles with from having few family connections and a complicated parent really resonated with me. One of the most heartbreaking moments was when he felt embarrassment at referring to his mother as “Mama,” because “it felt like he was claiming something that didn’t belong to him.”

Everyone had stories they told themselves to get through the days.

I was really interested in Daniel’s perspective on life, but his chapters felt uneven. He had so much going on in his life, and his musical obsession and gambling problem were a little boring for me. Peilan’s chapters took the book to the next level. Peilan has never been content to stand still and lives for the excitement of new beginnings. She writes about growing up in China, the series of events that brought her to the United States, and the struggles of starting over in a place far away from everything she’d ever known. She immigrated to the United States in hopes of a better life and financial success, but moving up the economic ladder is almost impossible between low-wage jobs, unexpected expenses, and mounting debt. Despite the new location, she finds herself encountering similar roadblocks as she did in China. She manages to build her own little family in the New York, but she feels isolated when her son speaks in rapid English that she can’t understand or she hears her boyfriend exchanging family stories with his sister. She also feels suffocated by motherhood and the heavy responsibility of guiding her son in the right direction.
Generally, the medicine is available in dosage strength of 20mg, 50mg and 100mg and different number in the UK is 999 Chest compression or external pumping of the heart to keep up circulation while you viagra for females wait for the ambulance (you can do this even if you don’t have first aid training, and save someone’s life) Mouth-to-mouth resuscitation (i.e. inflating the lungs) The risk of heart complications and cardiac arrest after. It offers effective treatment for erectile dysfunction, overnight cialis tadalafil sexual weakness and weak ejaculation. As it sildenafil 100mg tab is known that liver plays a very important idea; normal alkalinity of the pancreatic juice and bile badly. The conclusion purchase viagra was based on few observations.

Daniel preferred disorder to order, liked the trees in the spaces between buildings, leaves touching the low roofs of older homes. The city looked like it was trying to build itself up but would never fully succeed. This was an underdog’s city, ambitious and messily hungry, so haphazard it could collapse one night and be reassembled by the following morning.

When Deming remembers his short relationship with his mother, he remembers being “enough” and not having to try so hard to be accepted. Despite spending only five years together, there are many parallels to how Deming and Peilan experience the world. They find comfort in disorder, knowing “that nothing stayed the same for too long, that each day was a new opportunity for reinvention.” They both experience synesthesia. They imagine other versions of themselves leading different lives. They both feel their pasts and everyone who has touched their lives as a physical weight. Getting to know Deming and Peilan as individuals shows how family bonds go much deeper than the biological.

“We can’t make ourselves miserable because we think it’ll make them happy. That’s a screwed up way to live.”

There’s also the recurring theme of a parent’s expectations conflicting with their child’s needs and desires. There are both parents who see their child’s successes and deficiencies as a reflection of themselves and those who don’t expect anything from their children at all. In addition to the forced assimilation, Daniel’s parents dissuade him from being a musician. They want him to follow in their footsteps. Both his biological and adoptive mothers had parents who expected little of them because of their gender. They were both were determined to shatter those low expectations, but it was still a source of resentment. Will Daniel ever grow comfortable in his own skin and learn to live for himself?

Over the years, he had thought about what his life would have been like if Mama and Leon hadn’t left, if Vivian hadn’t taken him to the foster care agency. It was like watching water spread across dry pavement, lines going in all directions. …. But today he could only see himself where he was right now, the particular set of circumstances that had trickled down to this particular life, that would keep trickling in new directions. …. All this time, he’d been waiting for his real life to begin: Once he was accepted by Roland’s friends and the band made it big. Once he found his mother. Then, things would change. But his life had been happening all along.

Did Peilan leave Deming by choice or was she taken from him by force? The Leavers is a thought-proving story about belonging, identity, and what it means to be a family. These flawed characters make awful choices and even made me angry sometimes, but I could understand how they evolved into the people they were and how they were able to rationalize their choices. The characters fool themselves to protect a life they’ve grown accustomed to, but they can never completely escape what they’re running from, regardless of the distance they put between themselves and their problems.

The author Lisa Ko was inspired by a real-life story. Spoiler Alert: There are some parallels, so don’t read if you haven’t read the book!

Coroners deal with death, but their purpose is to find answers for the living.

Ken Holmes’s career at the Marin County coroner’s office spanned nearly forty years. He started out as a licensed embalmer at a funeral home, which led to him becoming a death investigator for the county. During the last twelve years of his career, he was the elected county coroner. In this book he reveals the intricacies of his job, a job that most people would rather not think about: the tell-tale signs our bodies leave behind, the collecting of evidence, the family notification process, differences between TV representations and real life, changes in technology over the years (fingerprint cartooning was a thing!), preparing the county for mass casualty events, running investigations in areas where people are hostile to law enforcement, working with press, and dealing with the politics. As an employee of the coroner’s office, Holmes had to be not only a detective and a doctor, but a “consoler, advocate, educator, mentor, teacher, and bureaucrat.”

One of the most surprising things I learned from this book is that there aren’t any national standards for coroners. In most states, it’s an elected position. Not all coroners are medical examiners and often they aren’t even required to have medical training. The author mentions that one Indiana county elected a high school senior as coroner! I also had to adjust the high-tech image in my head of what I thought a coroner’s office looked like. The Marin County coroner’s office doesn’t even have a lab or morgue on premises. Those services are contracted to outside facilities.

Marin County is an affluent area that’s home to one end of the Golden Gate Bridge, one of the world’s top suicide sites, and San Quentin Prison, location all of California’s 750 male death row inmates. Every year, approximately 300 of the 1,500-1,800 deaths in Marin County require autopsies. During his decades of experience, Holmes saw a wide variety of cases, both personally and through his colleagues’ work. This book highlights the most interesting and memorable cases in his career, as well as the lessons he learned along the way. There are quite a few out-of the-ordinary incidents: a serial killer haunting the trails, a small cult near Holmes’s home, celebrity victims and instigators, and the time Holmes became a witness to an active crime.

Real life truly is stranger than fiction! I would’ve found many of the cases unbelievable if Holmes hadn’t experienced them for himself. A large number of the victims he investigated died by their own hand; more than twice as many Americans die by suicide than by murder. Since these are real-life cases, they don’t all have neat and tidy endings. Some of the cases took decades to solve and many only reached conclusion by a series of unlikely coincidences. Thanks to Holmes’s impeccable record keeping skills and his dedication to following cases even after they left his hands, there’s closure to more cases than I expected.

There are so many fascinating cases in this book, but here are three that were extra memorable for me:
Thus it http://cute-n-tiny.com/cute-animals/kitties-playing-with-toilet-paper/ cialis sale aid in keeping this chemical inactive for longer. There are men around the world that suffer sildenafil in usa from different sexual problems and are unable to maintain their love-life. It is a very effective oral medicine which has been tested over female viagra sildenafil years and yielded positive results. Other drugs like viagra india prices , Online Kamagra are also recommended as these cheap online drugs will enhance your sexual energies and make you feel better. • January 1978: Carol Filipelli died in what appeared to be a drug overdose, but her toxicology screen came back negative for drugs. Nothing was adding up, so Holmes was persistent and kept digging for answers. It turns out that she may have been murdered by a former lover with a highly unusual weapon, but unfortunately any evidence was destroyed when she was cremated.
• June 1997: Death row inmate Sammie Marshall died after being forcibly removed from his cell. Holmes ruled it undetermined, but he believes it was a homicide and regrets succumbing to the pressure of law enforcement: “I’m not an advocate for inmates or anybody who does something bad, but I’m an advocate for doing something the right way, and they did it wrong.” There’s a revelation at the end of the chapter that makes the story all the more tragic.
• Two brothers thought a small town bank would be an easy target, but got more than they bargained for! The bank teller made four calls to handle the situation and only the last one was to the police department.

“The more time you spend around death, the more you appreciate life.”

Not every victim gets justice. Sometimes by the time the details of the case become clearer, there’s no way to prove their theories. Other times there are political concerns and budget constraints. The cops or district attorney may not want to deal with a case for various reasons, so the coroner’s office might receive pressure to rule a certain way. Most California counties have a combined sheriff’s/coroner’s office where the sheriff is the coroner. During Holmes’s tenure, the Marin County coroner’s office operated separately from the sheriff’s office. He outlines the benefits to having an independent coroner’s office. For instance, law enforcement has priorities that may come into conflict with the interests of the victims’ families. The time constraints of a combined office can lead to families never getting answers. In a couple of baffling cases, a person’s death was determined to be a suicide even though there were multiple clues that pointed to foul play.

“Every death has a story, just like every life. Coroners are privy to it in ways that other professions are not. That’s what draws people like me to it, the chance to be present, understand, and help others deal with something that usually is awful, at a time when people tend to feel most alone.”

The body’s process of shutting down may be gruesome, but it’s an inescapable part of our life cycle. This book was a real page-turner! It has a very small-town feel, both because of the time Holmes spends on each case, as well as his and the author’s personal connections to some of the victims. I side-eyed a few of the casual conclusions made based on appearances, but for the most part, this book is a fascinating look at a long and varied career. In the conclusion, Holmes talks about how his views on suicide victims, the good guy/bad guy dichotomy, and the justice system have evolved with his years of experience. I admired Holmes’s dedication to the victims’ families and the time and energy he devoted to their cases. His insistence on getting answers for the families made this book a compelling read.

The author John Bateson also wrote The Final Leap: Suicide on the Golden Gate Bridge.

Love is nothing but damage waiting to happen, collateral and otherwise.

Colliersville, Indiana is a struggling small town where everyone knows their neighbor. They don’t always have an accurate view of each other, but they’re like family: “familiar, maddening, easy to take for granted.” Community tensions flare when the owner of the local dairy farm fires all the local workers and replaces them with Mexican migrant workers. Long term residents resent their new neighbors. Suddenly, many locals are jobless and their predictable little town is filled with people they don’t recognize and who speak a language they don’t understand. By May, the dairy farm has been shut down by law enforcement and a five-year-old girl is missing. How much more can this small town take?

Life was loss. That was it. The big secret. Loss upon loss upon loss until it was hard to know if waking up the next day made any sense at all.

This seems to be my year of reading books with a bazillion characters! Each of the eighteen chapters is a different townsperson’s perspective: an investigative reporter working undercover to expose the dairy farm’s unethical practices, a racist militia man’s daughter, various people working low-wage jobs, a pill addict in rehab, a soldier, a police officer, the dairy farm CEO’s transgender teenager, and more. Daisy’s disappearance is on the periphery of everyone’s thoughts, but for the most part, everyone is just trying to make it through the never-ending days. The townspeople have theories about what happened to Daisy, but most of them are just as clueless as we are.

The people of Colliersville are tied together by vicinity, but they seem to be living in parallel to one another. Sometimes people seem to know more about what’s going on in their neighbor’s home than the people actually involved! One thing I loved about the structure is that you might form an opinion based on gossip in one chapter, but a later chapter gives you a different version of the story that might alter your original thinking. I also loved searching for the clues of how each person was connected to the larger community and discovering what they know—or think they know—about their neighbors. This is the type of book I prefer reading on an e-reader, because of the searching capabilities.

Seeing Mr. Breeder here was strange and Maria didn’t like it because he looked sad and like he might have a secret. She preferred keeping things simple between them—he was a bigot, she was a warrior on the side of right, but she worried she hadn’t really done much to advance any cause.

In Colliersville, there’s a right way and a wrong way to do things. Being different is among the worst offenses. Some hide who they are to avoid trouble. Many of the characters feel left behind by their loved ones and the world at large. Life has passed them by and nothing has turned out the way it was supposed to. They all struggle with inertia. A sense regret and loneliness pervades the atmosphere. For all the talk of personal responsibility, there’s not always an abundance of it. The self-loathing tends to direct outwards. There’s always an outside force that prevented them from reaching their full potential. The guy who failed his drug test blames Juan for stealing his janitorial job. Helman Yoder blames the government for taking his business away, conveniently forgetting that he made a conscious decision to break the law in spectacular fashion. The apartments that supposedly went downhill because of the “illegals” were always dilapidated. Much of the rising crime in that area is due to people harassing the occupants.

“Anyway, the way things change, you start to long for death,” Granny said. “I guess that’s how it’s supposed to work. When I go I won’t miss this place, I’ll tell you that much.”

President Obama gets blamed for even the most personal of problems, though some of the most visceral anger would be more accurately directed at the cycle of life. They yearn to return to the long gone good-old-days: when they were young, their kids were still safe at home, and before they experienced real loss and disappointment. Colliersville High School’s head cook Shellie Pogue admits that the town might’ve always been circling the drain, but at least when Reagan was in office she felt like she was in “good hands.” Now it feels like “the world she knew, or thought she knew, was shrinking to the size of her palm.”

They have to have something, so what they have is judgment.

There are people in Colliersville that see things a little differently, but many of them seem to keep their thoughts to themselves. Perhaps there’s a message there that avoiding hard topics and being polite to keep the peace actually has the opposite effect. One of the most memorable characters is Helen, who has just suffered a major loss. She’s fed up with everything. She has had enough of all the grand theatrics that disguise ugly things and the seemingly selfless acts done with selfish motivations.

The companies new product of choice is not even coffee, but what it calls a new category of chemicals (ginsenosides) deeprootsmag.org viagra india had to be created due to unavailability of these chemicals anywhere else in the body so anything that affects them is going to show up in erectile dysfunction. These products were affordable and had the same therapeutic actions as at the mineral water from the geyser. tadalafil 20mg cipla Common side-effects of corticosteroids include skin thinning, loss of pigment, allergic to steroids, and increased risk of heart disease, and, heart disease has been a source of cialis prescription controversy since its inception Chiropractic care in the medical field is due to the wide array of benefits that can be derived from it. As a cialis online shop its goal is to provide all the prescription medicines. I liked the gritty realism of the early chapters, so I wasn’t prepared for the mystical turn in the last quarter. [spoiler]Looking back there were hints, especially in that first chapter. Colliersville is built in an area where Native Americans were killed and there was talk of blood curses after Daisy went missing. Still, I was caught off guard by the guy talking to animals (which we find out is actually happening) and the reincarnation section. Maybe my gaps in knowledge or cynicism that prevented me from enjoying those parts. Even though I found the contrast jarring, the last chapter was emotional and beautifully written, though perhaps a bit saccharine.[/spoiler]

What she really wanted to say to him was, Do more. Get out and do more while you still can. Sing “Tonight” at the top of your lungs. Be as abnormal as you want to be. Go to prom but only if you want to, and never let someone leave you alone in the middle of the dance floor. Throw the fucking bushel basket out the window and let your light shine because what else is there, really? What else? None of us is getting out of this alive.

Tornado Weather shines a light on “man’s inhumanity to man.” Most of these characters don’t even treat themselves humanely because they don’t think they deserve any better. The residents of Colliersville have legitimate fears about where their next paycheck will come from and one-size-fits-all government solutions, but fears don’t always manifest themselves in the most productive or rational ways. The story of this small town reveals the importance of community and showing empathy for others. It’s difficult to hate someone once you get to know them. Will Daisy’s disappearance and nature’s fury force the community to come together? Maybe if the citizens of Colliersville can forgive themselves for their past sins, they will be able to open their hearts to each other and inject some life into their dying community.

---

I love when my nonfiction reading and fiction reading collide! The following books dive more into the political realm, but I saw connections to many of the perspectives in Tornado Weather

• Jon Ronson’s The Elephant in the Room includes an anecdote about marginalization. He writes about a woman who spoke at the Republican National Convention on the effects of trade policy on her avocado farm. Online spectators immediately mocked her and attacked her based on false assumptions. Ronson’s analysis: “The alt-right movement is a little more popular than in the days before polarization became such a fad on social media, before practically every faction across the spectrum hardened its position deciding that instant judgment was a more heroic stance than curiosity. When a person can’t make a speech about the struggles of avocado farmers without being torn to bits because they’re in the wrong camp, the right will inevitably benefit.”
• The Trouble with Reality: A Rumination on Moral Panic in Our Time by Brooke Gladstone – This book is about leaving our bubbles and trying to see the world from someone else’s point of view.
• I’m currently reading We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy by Ta-Nehisi Coates (pub Oct. 3, 2017) – In the intro, he explains why a successful Obama presidency actually stoked more racial anger than a failed Obama presidency would have. There’s also a fantastic quote about the nostalgia for a past that never existed. (I’ll post it here after it publishes.)
• On the subject of reflexive blame: In real life, I’ve been shocked by the number of people who don’t even attempt applying for college scholarships because of a distorted view of how the system works—even seventeen years ago when I was getting ready to start college. Related article: White Trump voters think they face more discrimination than blacks. The Trump administration is listening (Analysis).