The 12+ books I read in April, ranked

Was a book with pictures my No. 1 true love in April? (SPOILER: YES.)

Hey kids, patriarchy!

My daily routine was jostled a bit this month, resulting in less time to read. I did have a nice vacation toward the end of the month, for which I packed about 20 books and read 7 of them. (Whew! I almost ran out! It was a close one!) I’m currently 81 books into my 200-book goal for the year. Anyway, here’s what I got this month!

12.) Infinity Wars by Gerry Duggan: I’ve been trying to get into comics all year, and sometimes, just like sports or learning a new language, the best way to acclimate yourself to a new concept is to just immerse yourself in it whether you understand it or not. This was probably my least-favorite comic book I've read all year, but it can likely be attributed to me just not understanding what was going on. If it can be believed, this book had even more plot elements packed into it than the 800-page "Winter" (mentioned below.) I think I would have appreciated it more if I had read more of the storylines leading up to it. It was an event comic so I had no context. My favorite part was the origin story of Drax the Destroyer. Aside from that, I was so confused.

11.) Gillyflower by Diane Wald: This was an odd little novella about a woman, Nora, who gets to meet her celebrity crush, Hugh. This book has a lot to say about revering celebrities and the foundations of enduring love in a short amount of time, and it does it well. Since I like a good, pointy adventure, this isn't ranked as high as it could be, but I'd definitely recommend it.

10.) The Wise Man’s Fear by Patrick Rothfuss: This is the second book in the Kingkiller Chronicles that started with “The Name of the Wind,” and I listened to it on audiobook. The aspects of these books that were good were really really good, but the bad stuff was insurmountably terrible. “The Wise Man’s Fear” continued Rothfuss’ unfortunate trend of objectifying women, #notallmen-ing rape victims, and other nonsense shenanigans. The good parts were mundane in the best way. Our lord and savior Kvothe the Bloodless/Arcane/Ladykiller continued his plodding adventures from the University to Severen to the Eld, the Fae, and finally to Ademre, where he learned some fancy warrior rituals. The slow pace was soothing, and I was able to power through the final 50 (yes, 50, mostly awful) chapters on a long drive from Florida to Pennsylvania.

9.) Winter by Marissa Meyer: This book was a lot. It was just a lot in the best and worst sense. It was the wrap-up to an intricate and well thought out series, but it was 800 pages long. Literally every loose end was left flapping in the breeze at the end of the third book, Cress, so everything needed to come together in the end while introducing an entirely new character and giving her a story arc of her own. The series as a whole was amazing. I might have missed a lot of the hype around this series when it first came out, but I feel like not enough people know about these books. Much like ice cream, I can’t resist fairy tale retellings. This was enjoyable, but long, and will try the patience of anyone.

8.) Ellie and the Harpmaker by Hazel Prior: This is a special book I received from Netgalley. If you like romantic stories from authors such as Nicholas Sparks, you will love this book, which features a flighty poet and a neurodivergent hero who makes sandwiches and is obsessed with creating unique Celtic harps. The narrative helps to foster deep connections between the reader and the characters. As a trigger warning, it does contain some domestic violence scenes, but it is overall a fairly pleasant read. Its expected release is May 2, 2019.

7.) Captain America by Ed Brubaker Omnibus, Vol. 1: I was told, after reading Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Captain America to read Ed Brubaker’s Captain America to understand how Captain America is written today: as sort of a pulpy, noir-style political thriller. This girthy tome included the Winter Soldier and a bit of the Civil War stories. It was only mildly disorienting and gave me a good sense of how Captain America and Bucky were written for the movies. More importantly, it included some interviews with the author in the back and I learned a lot about Brubaker’s military background and the works that inspired him to write Captain America in the way he did, which shaped Captain America for the modern day. Fascinating!

6.) The Immortal Hulk by Al Ewing: I tend to view stories in a very macro sense of what they mean and contribute to their genre. As a result, I tend to come up with some odd perspectives and gloss over details others readily absorb. With this, I was really impressed by the theme of dysfunctional father/son relationships viewed through the lens of horror. In the end, don't we all adopt our parents' worst tendencies? If this seems like a weird reading of a superhero comic book, it is. And this is how I read literally everything, so if you don’t like it, you’re on the wrong book blog!

5.) Giant Days, Vols. 2 and 3 by John Allison: I read Vol. 1 of Giant Days back in February, and picked up the second and third volumes from Kindle Unlimited. I’m finding myself growing increasingly attached to the three college friends, Susan, Esther and Daisy. The humor is well-timed, but there are plenty of heartwarming and compassionate moments as well. As an aside, stories like this are making it difficult to not read comics all the time. I feel like this month’s reading list was unintentionally saturated with comics. I’ll do better to read more books without pictures next month for the sake of my health and your sanity.

4.) Thor: God of Thunder, Vol 3: The Accursed and Thor: God of Thunder, Vol. 4: The Last Days of Midgard by Jason Aaron: I was told to read this to get the origin story of Malekith, the big bad in this series as well as in “Thor: Goddess of Thunder.” Everything makes sense now! And I’m really annoyed at how Malekith was portrayed in the “Thor: The Dark World” movie now that I know how truly sinister and awful Malekith can be in the comics. He’s so gross and horrible!

3.) Bitch Planet, Vol. 1 by Kelly Sue DeConnick: I picked up this fun read from Amalgam Comics & Coffeehouse in Philadelphia while I was on vacation. It’s a feminist story, by one of the authors who wrote Captain Marvel, about how a bunch of “noncompliant” women are shipped off to a prison on the Auxiliary Compliance Outpost, colloquially called “Bitch Planet” by the old white men who have vested interests in it. The women are imprisoned for dumb things like “disrespect” and “being a bad mother” but the imprisonment really boils down to the noncompliant women not living their lives solely to please men. One of the imprisoned women, who was a professional athlete in her former life, is encouraged to start a team to play Megaton, a violent sport akin to rugby or American football. Most of the story made me really angry, but there were plenty of really funny parts, too. If you like “Orange Is The New Black” or “Handmaid’s Tale,” you’ll probably enjoy this. My favorite part was the humorous ads at the end of every issue that advertised everything from Agreenex, a pill to make women agreeable, to posters for the comic book itself. The little banner headline above the ads said, “Hey kids, patriarchy!” and it made me laugh every time.

2.) We Set the Dark on Fire by Tehlor Kay Mejia: At the same time I was reading “Bitch Planet,” I was listening to this story on Audible. It was a delicious pairing. In this book’s particular dystopian society, each rich man weds two women: a primera, whose primary objectives are to be a partner and “equal” to her husband, making decisions for the good of the household and carrying out her husband’s vision in society, and a segunda, who is responsible for bearing children and being emotional. The Medio School for Girls splits women into these two categories and trains them to be perfect wives. When two women, Dani and Carmen, marry a despotic tyrant, they do everything they can to undermine him, including participating in political espionage! This story had a lot to say about loyalty, misogyny, oppression, consent and immigration. I would highly recommend it.

1.) Thor, Vol. 1: Goddess of Thunder and Thor, Vol. 2: Who Holds The Hammer? by Jason Aaron: I have a hard time describing just how much I loved this. This version of "Thor" was so awesome, it killed me. I am dead now, and writing this blog post from beyond the grave. Here's what I liked:

- It SMASHED THE PATRIARCHY: Odinson and Odin both flopped around and whined a lot, and it was pretty great. At one point, the woman who had taken on the mantle of Thor told Odinson (formerly Thor) that he should stop worrying about what makes her worthy to wield Mjolnir (the hammer,) and instead work on his own worthiness. Eventually he gathers together a bunch of badass lady superheroes to help Thor vanquish a monster that Odin and his brother, Cul, conjure up to reclaim Mjolnir. Seeing that kind of male allyship from Odinson after a long struggle with his biases hit me with all of the feelings.

- It had ALL OF THE GIRL POWER: The Goddess of Thunder just had a different thought process and approach to her powers. She felt like she was worthy of her powers, but not entitled to them, and that was really cool to see. Thor normally has a little more swagger and braggadocio, but the down-to-earth version was SO COOL. When Thor encounters Absorbing Man and Titania, there was a lot more talk and mutual respect between women, and Titania eventually surrenders, knocking Absorbing Man out with his own weapon. It's scenes like these that draw into sharp relief how ridiculous a male Thor can be sometimes. There’s so much more to say about “Goddess of Thunder,” but I want to keep these descriptions short. I loved these volumes so much I read them twice.

UNRANKED 

"The Shapeshifter" by Claudia Navone

PREVIOUSLY UNRANKED (but now I can talk about it) 

I did a sponsored book review for City Book Review for a book called "Radical Revolution: The Fight for Animal Liberation" It was a 500-page scholarly work on the animal liberation movement, that argued animals ought to be given equal rights as people. It had a very forceful and abrasive tone, and I hated tone-policing someone else's deeply held beliefs. I am no longer vegan or vegetarian, but I was at some points in my life, and I'll still make vegan and vegetarian food and opt to eat vegan or vegetarian when I go out to eat sometimes. I found that you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar (a cruel non-vegan metaphor for attracting non-vegans) when trying to make people understand how you feel. A vegan cookbook containing a delicious recipe for vegan peanut butter cups will make people be a lot more sympathetic to your cause than a 500-page rant about how animals are people too. I saw and understood the argument. I don't think it's changing any minds.

The 16+ books I read in March, ranked.

I didn't read quite as many books as last month, but the books I did read were weightier.

16.) Black Leopard, Red Wolf by Marlon James: I wrote a “good, bad and ugly” post on this book, and I’d rather not talk about it again. It sucked the impact out of every other violent thing I read for two months. This was the only truly intolerable book I finished this month. The marketing for this book was absolute scorched earth, and I was shocked to see The Mary Sue, a site for nerd culture for women, advertising this book on Twitter when the narrative is so brutal toward women.

The rest of the books on this list are just splitting hairs over various degrees of goodness and what I happen to be in the mood to read at any given moment.

15.) In The Woods by Tana French: This was a recommendation from my friend Abby during The Great Book Slump of 2018. She said she liked the storyline. My mom read it, too, and said it was "creepy." It was a methodical murder mystery where every detective got drunk and didn't do a great job... doing their job. The murder was eventually solved, but the story didn't grip me immediately. I think it had something to do with the sleazy detective telling the story. I wasn't crazy about him. I don't normally gravitate toward murder mysteries, either. I appreciated reaching for something that was outside of my comfort zone, though!

14.) Cress by Marissa Meyer: Last month, I read “Scarlet,” the second installment in this saga, and this month, I listened to “Cress” on audiobook with my Libby app. It’s Rapunzel… IN SPAAAAAAACE! This book was very emotional, with Crescent (Rapunzel) falling in love with Thorne (kind of a Han Solo type of guy) and having to survive a desert and make it to civilization after her surveillance satellite crashes to earth. I loved it.

13.) Jessica Jones: The Pulse: The Complete Collection by Brian Michael Bendis: I was going to group Alias and The Pulse in the same entry, but The Pulse was so markedly different in tone and content, that I decided to split them up. The Pulse focuses on a press initiative by J. Jonah Jameson of The Daily Bugle to cover the lives of superheroes in the city. Also, it focuses on Jessica and Luke Cage's relationship. It's not as dark as Alias was, and parts of it had crispy, clear art, as opposed to the watery, moody art of Alias. Jessica's personality was really different, too, and not in a good way. I was not as impressed with this iteration of Jessica Jones, and I got the sense that the writers didn't seem to know what to do with her, but she's still my favorite superhero.

12.) The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss: I enjoyed this book for its deep mythos, world building and setting, magical mechanics, and entertaining characters. I’ve already started the second book, "The Wise Man's Fear" in this unfinished trilogy. It reminded me a lot of the writings from one of my favorite fantasy authors, Robin Hobb. I did not enjoy it for its benevolent sexism and casual ill treatment of women. As insurmountable an obstacle it might seem, it is not difficult for men to regard and speak to women like they are equals and real human beings. When women are treated as others, and not seen as people, it is a stepping stone for them to be mistreated more cruelly elsewhere in literature and in real life.

11.) House of Salt and Sorrows by Erin A. Craig: I received this book from NetGalley and wrote a review of it, and my feelings about fairy tale retellings, here. This was awfully dark, but really quite good.

10.) All The Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr: This book was very well written, but since historical fiction isn’t really my thing, it’s farther down on the list than might be comfortable for some people. It won a Pulitzer Prize in Fiction in 2015. I felt like this book was a little too compassionate to Nazis, especially in the current political climate, which I wrote about here.

9.) Captain Marvel: In Pursuit of Flight by Kelly Sue DeConnick: I read this ahead of the movie to get a sense of what Captain Marvel was all about. The greatest joy I derived from a dour fan who wrote after Issue 2 that he was sad he couldn’t drool over a nonautonomous lady in a swimsuit anymore (this is a vast oversimplification of the tone of his message, which was straight sexist trash garbage.) After subsequent issues, Captain Marvel fans raked him over the coals. I didn’t just like this book, but I loved the Captain Marvel movie. It’s taken time, but Marvel movies have grown on me. I think they just needed to grow beyond origin stories and the subsequent “Do we really need superheroes?” conversations to evolve into something deeper.

8.) "Die"(the first four issues) by Kieron Gillen: I found this series on one of those “100 NEW BOOKS YOU NEED TO READ YESTERDAY” listicles. The easiest way to describe this series is that it’s a cross between Jumanji and D&D. There’s a healthy dose of darkness, adulthood trauma and Lord of the Rings references, which is always a plus. I feel like the first four issues said a lot, but I need to spend more time in the universe to get a feel for whether I like it or not. It seems promising. The compilation of a handful of issues comes out in June, if you prefer that format. I read the first four issues and pre-ordered the fifth.

7.) Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn: Nope, I didn’t have nightmares after reading this, not me! I read Flynn’s “Gone Girl” a couple years ago, which was ultra creepy, but Sharp Objects was even more disturbing. I must have been in the mood for a creepy story, because this one left me dazed and enthralled. I'm going to have nightmares about missing teeth for the next month. I read it because I was curious about the HBO series that was based on this book. The themes reminded me of the real-life news story where a girl planned the death of her mother because she was the victim of Munchausen by proxy.

6.) Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: This book is about a Nigerian woman, Ifemelu, who moves to America, lives there for a while, and then moves back to Nigeria. This book was A LOT in the very best way. It had a lot of the same conceits as Ta-Nehisi Coates’ “We Were Eight Years In Power” (see below,) but also it had a fictional story that covered all the nuances between being African-black and Non-African-black and made observations about racism in America through Ifemelu’s blog posts. On top of all that, it had a romantic story arc that reminded me of something straight out of Jane Austen’s “Persuasion,” only modernized of course. There was a quote in there about how the word “nuance” is just code for making white people comfortable, ("Nuance means keep people comfortable so everyone is free to think of themselves as individuals and everyone got where they are because of their achievement.") but I felt this book was nuanced in the sense that it gave me more information about the subtleties between black people in a very clear way.

Here’s another quote from “Americanah" that I felt was really pointed:

“You can’t write an honest novel about race in this country. If you write about how people are really affected by race, it’ll be too obvious. Black writers who do literary fiction in this country, all three of them, not the ten thousand who write those bullshit ghetto books with the bright covers, have two choices: they can do precious or they can do pretentious. When you do neither, nobody knows what to do with you. So if you’re going to write about race, you have to make sure it’s so lyrical and subtle that the reader who doesn’t read between the lines won’t even know it’s about race. You know, a Proustian meditation, all watery and fuzzy, that at the end just leaves you feeling watery and fuzzy.” 

5.) Saga Vols. 7-9 by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples: Hazel’s monologue at the end of Vol. 7 got me right in the feels. I’m only a little disappointed that the series seems to have backed off the role of the romance novel in causing unrest. The end of Vol. 9 was a big surprise in the most tragic way, but I’m not necessarily buying it. I mean, if The Will is alive to mess things up for the good guys, this most recent development doesn’t really hold, does it? I have hope. And no, I won’t spoil it.

4.) The Vision (Two volumes: “Little Worse Than A Man” and “Little Better Than A Beast”) by Tom King: This story was heartbreaking, but I really loved how it married the superhuman and mundane. It’s difficult to describe, but watching Vision’s family, who are invincible, work through common domestic issues, was the most interesting. If I were a habitual re-reader, I’d probably read this again.

3.) How Long Til Black Future Month by N.K. Jemisin: I got some Black Mirror vibes, whiffs of fairy tales, and some sharp, calculated social commentary from these short stories. In one of the stories, a king eats the heart of a dragon and learns about the folly of taking and using power that isn’t his. Another one is a “proof of concept” story from the Broken Earth trilogy (my FAVORITE books.) One peculiar tale is called “L’Alchimista,” which is about a demon who plays “Chopped” with a chef. He gives her a sack of weird ingredients, and she makes him food. The way the food is described is the way I talk about books sometimes, which is why I found it charming. Some of these stories were perfect vignettes, but I hope Jemisin uses others as a foundation for a new trilogy because I wanted to know more.

2.) Jessica Jones: Alias Vols. 3 and 4 by Brian Michael Bendis: Jessica Jones is my favorite Marvel superhero because you don’t have to look too hard to find real life in her. I watched the Netflix series first, and I was instantly in love. I read Vol. 1 and 2 of Alias about a year ago, and just got 3 and 4 recently. There’s so much to like about this series: There are illustrative comedic bits where Jessica listens to her clients impassively. She’s dating Ant-Man, the Avengers make appearances and her best friend is a pre-redesign Carol Danvers (Captain Marvel swimsuit-ogglers, eat your heart out.) Her struggle with the Purple Man doesn’t happen until Vol. 4, and I was a little disappointed at how it was resolved compared to how Jessica "defeats" Kilgrave in the Netflix series. (It was still good! No spoilers here.) I’m still drawn to the way Jessica Jones perfectly illustrates how it feels to be in an emotionally abusive relationship (especially the self-blame, the struggle to get out, and people not believing/seeing what you’re seeing.)

1.) We Were Eight Years In Power by Ta-Nehisi Coates: A Facebook post about this book turned into a little mini book club and I was all about it. Good talk, friends. Anyway, this book deeply affected me. I’m not going to go on an anti-racism tirade here, but I have lots of feelings about Coates’ ideas and evaluating my own role in perpetuating white supremacy as a straight white lady, and then actually DOING SOMETHING about racism in America.

UNRANKED

Me and White Supremacy Workbook by Layla F. Saad: I’m not ranking this because it’s personal, and I'm not going to rank it on its literary merits. I'm only mentioning it because if you want to read it, it’s free and the author kindly sends emails about other resources you can use. I learned about this book in the midst of some racist things going on in the knitting community (and now the romance author community.) If you're a white person, you should read it to interrogate your own role in white supremacy privately.


YOU'LL SEE IT NEXT MONTH

Ash Princess by Laura Sebastian
Winter by Marissa Meyer
Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo
The Wise Man’s Fear by Patrick Rothfuss

Review: House of Salt and Sorrows by Erin A. Craig

“House of Salt and Sorrows” by Erin A. Craig is a grim retelling of a Grimm fairy tale, “The Twelve Dancing Princesses.” Set in the fictional coastal estate of Highmoor, tragedy befalls the Thaumas family when the mother and four of twelve daughters (Elizabeth, Ava, Eulalie and Octavia) die in quick succession. With a bleak mourning period ahead of them, Annaleigh, one of the remaining eight daughters, tries to investigate her sisters’ deaths as murders. But something haunts the remaining sisters’ dreams, and the youngest, Verity, begins to see visions.

If it weren’t for my intense curiosity for so many other genres and my new and persistent comic book habit, I’d read fairy tale retellings all day, every day. It’s probably a guilty pleasure at this point, since this book is clearly for people half my age. My favorites, and probably the most common, are retellings of "Cinderella" and "Beauty and the Beast." This retelling, shaped from a lesser-known fairy tale, is so unique in its execution, so haunting and emotional, that I couldn’t help but love it.

Authors can’t go wrong with a good fairy tale, especially in the Young Adult genre. I have a theory about why this is, so bear with me: Fairy tales normally target young children. Young Adult literature targets teens, usually with a focus on highly emotional content to help teens deal with all their own heady emotions. A fairy tale retelling bridges the gap between the books we reach for as children and the themes we want in our books as teenagers and adults. It’s why they work so well, I think, and partially why I reach for them so often. I always like to see what various authors do with the stories everyone knows.

“House of Salt and Sorrows” has a hefty helping of death and grief, and all the things people do to cope with it. After the sisters’ mother dies, their father remarries a mysterious woman named Morella who just seems to want to belong to the family. The book addresses Annaleigh’s feelings toward Morella, which are mostly civil-to-welcoming, but it also validates Camille’s emotions, which focus on hostility and the feeling of being replaced.

Whenever I read a book, I feel like a sommelier tasting wine: I caught hints of :: sip :: The Twelve Dancing Princesses, of course, but that was overshadowed by :: SLORP :: Jessica Cluess’ “Kingdom on Fire” trilogy, which I did not like at all and :: slurp :: a Goodreads reviewer said Guillermo del Toro’s “Crimson Peak” and I have to agree and :: sip :: possibly the parts of “A Song of Ice and Fire” that deal with what happens on Pyke, but not a lot, just the smallest hint. This book has an element of true horror, with enough decay and scary childbirth and bodies falling from vast heights to go around.

I was intrigued to see “House of Salt and Sorrows” was a standalone novel. It would be interesting to see other obscure Grimm fairy tales told in the same universe, especially since the author makes it clear there are other parts of the world to entertain, as well as a rich pantheon of supernatural beings to consider.

I received this book for free from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. “House of Salt and Sorrows” will be released in August.

Other fairy tales, retold 

One of my favorite retellings is the OG, “Ella Enchanted” by Gail Carson Levine.

I’ve enjoyed working my way through Marissa Meyer’s “Lunar Chronicles,” which include “Cinder,” “Scarlet,” “Cress,” and “Winter” in a sci-fi quasi-dystopian war between earth and the moon. It’s SO cool.

In January, I read “The Beast’s Heart” by Leif Shallcross.

I’ve heard good things about Anna-Marie McLemore’s “Blanca & Roja.”

Marlon James' Black Leopard, Red Wolf: The good, the bad and the ugly

In a nutshell, Marlon James' "Black Leopard, Red Wolf" is about an oddball group of characters that goes on a quest to find a boy in the African wilderness. The story is told from the point of view of Tracker, a nonbinary person who loves children, but whose softness for children is masked with anger and violence.

The story is structured nonlinearly, with Tracker telling an inquisitor what happened on the quest, and why the boy he sought was now dead. All of the press I've read on this book suggests that the other two books that have yet to be written will detail the same story from different points of view.

The good

I preordered "Black Leopard, Red Wolf" in January on Audible and listened to it in audiobook format. The guy who reads the book, Dion Graham, is a supremely talented reader. I could recommend this book on his talent alone, but I cannot recommend this book for any of its other components.

As someone who majored in English in college, and as someone who reads A LOT, I understand the literary merits of this book. The prose is almost stream-of-consciousness. The African mythology is pretty cool. The story is altogether solid, but ultimately, it's not about a whole lot. The experience of listening to this book was a dream-like jostling through fights and travels and stories on top of other stories.

The bad

Early on, "Black Leopard, Red Wolf" was touted as an "African Game of Thrones." Then, after all of the pre-release hype died down and books were sold, the author came out in subsequent interviews saying that comparison had been a joke.

The language, the time jumping and the literary elements point to this book being for an advanced niche reading audience. Aside from a thin storyline about a debate over a young boy being the rightful king, "Black Leopard, Red Wolf" has very little to do with "Game of Thrones." If you're looking for "African Game of Thrones" in this, you're not going to find it.

The ugly

"Black Leopard, Red Wolf" has its merits, but it is all overshadowed by an oozing, crusty scab of graphic violence. This book has everything you need to make you cringe and clutch your pearls: rape, gang rape, torture, pedophilia, bestiality, graphic murder, mutilation and incest. If you are not utterly put off by all of those things, you're in for a liberal sprinkling of casual and overt misogyny, racism, sexism, homophobia and transphobia. There are orgies, physical and emotional abuse and graphic sex scenes. I don't know that this book should have been advertised to such a vast audience in the way that it was, when it's clearly a tough book to get through.

James himself has spoken about how he writes violence in The Guardian:

One thing the new novel shares with its predecessors is a uniquely intense presentation of violence. I ask him whether he ever feels that his work strays close to gratuitousness, to a kind of willful lingering over scenes of pain.  

“You have to risk it or you won’t get close to the power or the horror of it,” he says. “You have to risk going too far. Man, I sound like Foucault. I actually think this kind of antiseptic, clipped, edited version of violence I see in literature sells it short. If you don’t read the scene of the murder of a child and find it unbearable, then that scene failed. I think people are used to violence, but they’re not used to suffering. In Hollywood films, we see violence, but we don’t see suffering. In my writing of violence I do not escape suffering and I think one of my violent scenes is equivalent to 30 of someone else’s. I get this rap of being too violent, but actually what I’m saying is that violence comes with consequences and suffering and I don’t blink at either. So it’s going to reverberate longer in my books.”

I would argue that the book's violence doesn't just stray close to gratuitousness, it is gratuitous. "Black Leopard, Red Wolf" was A LOT for me, someone who can tolerate violent content fairly well. It's the most disturbing book I've ever read. If you're sensitive to such things, I'm warning you away from them right now.

The way this book was marketed is much different from what it actually it is. I would not recommend reading it.

Quick! Thoughts about Anthony Doerr's "All The Light We Cannot See"

This won a Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2015. Has anyone read it? What did you think?

What's it about?

The book jumps around in time in various points during World War II in France and Germany. In one storyline, a blind girl named Marie-Laure flees with her father to Saint-Malo with a diamond from a museum. They are pursued by a Nazi sergeant who wants the diamond.

The other storyline is Werner Pfennig's a young, small boy who grows up an orphan in a mining town in Germany. He has an aptitude for radio, and is taken to evil Nazi school to join the Hitler youth, hone his interests and help invent a tool for finding rebels transmitting contraband radio broadcasts. He experiences doubts about what he is asked to do.

Pros: The writing was eloquent, the allusions to "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" were really cool, had strong scientific and math elements that clearly took some research and knowledge on the author's part. Did I mention the writing? It was so immersive. Since one of the main characters was blind, the author relied on other sensations to describe what was going on. It was an experience.

Cons: The nonlinear structure made the book spoil itself a few times, like, "Oh no, this character is in danger, but in a previous scene set in the future, they're alive, so I know they can't die here." Time jumping is fine, but you have to know it sucks the life out of scenes that are meant to be life-or-death tense and harrowing. It was a WWII book, so there were Nazis. So many Nazis painted humanely. This book was written in the halcyon days of 2015, when compassionate depictions of Nazis were mostly fine, but in today's political climate it wasn't great, especially today, with the terrorism in New Zealand occupying my thoughts.

Final thoughts: I don't normally gravitate toward historical fiction, but this book was really good. I can imagine WWII buffs possibly enjoying it. Afterward, I looked at pictures of Saint-Malo and read about some of the history behind it.

Quotes: 

"How do you fight a system? You try."

"God's truth? How long do these intolerable moments last for God? A trillionth of a second? The very life of any creature is a quick, fading spark in fathomless darkness. That's God's truth."

"Open your eyes and see what you can with them before they close forever."

The 20+ books I read in February, ranked

Help, I’ve fallen into comic books and I can’t get up.

Here’s the ranking of the 20+ books I read this month. Please enjoy my impassioned rambling.

17. A Simple Favor by Darcey Bell: I had a lot of feelings about this book, but ultimately it was straight trash. The characters had remarkably poor judgment and the scheme that unfolded felt contrived. I wrote more about it here, contrasting it with the best book on my list. This is one that was bad in a way you could make fun of.

16. A Crafter Knits A Clue by Holly Quinn: Anyone who knows me for two seconds will know that if I’m not reading, I’m knitting. One of my favorite things to do is knit while listening to audiobooks because I’m an unrepentant introvert and secretly a grandma in a 30-year-old woman’s body. This book’s premise appealed to me, but the execution was ridiculously disappointing. The book was centered around a woman who ran a craft store in a small town where there was a separate yarn store. The owner of the yarn store was murdered with a knitting needle. This lackluster story was simultaneously dull and scattered. I became preoccupied with the technical inaccuracies (you shouldn’t knit alpaca socks because the fabric alpaca creates is inelastic and they’d turn into stretched out bags and fall off your feet and that would be a waste of really nice yarn!) and I just kind of lost interest.

15. Mera: Queen of Atlantis by Dan Abnett: I bought this comic on a whim when it was 90 percent off in the Kindle store. I was depending on my pal Robert’s recommendations, and I tried to branch out into the brave new world of comic books on my own, but I flew too close to the sun with this one. I was disappointed at Mera’s portrayal in the Aquaman movie, where she was just a glorified door-opener. This was not much better, with Mera spending precious pages mooning over Aquaman, who was incapacitated, but I couldn’t know about that unless I read some other Aquaman book. Then, Mera waffled back and forth over whether she wanted to be a wife or a queen. (WHY? NOT? BOTH?????) On its own, the book isn’t terrible, as Mera finally begins kicking ass toward the end, and it was fine. Held up against the other books I’ve read this month, I can’t recommend it. After the great book slump of 2017, I’ve been apprehensive about attempting to finish books I start reading and then don’t like. A bad book that I force myself to read can kill my reading mojo for weeks, and with a bold goal of now 150 books to complete by the end of the year, I don’t want to risk it!

14. Monstress by Marjorie M. Liu: If you’ve gotten this far, you’ve reached the part of the list where I’m reserving judgment until I read more. I read the first volume of this, and while I liked it, it takes place in a complex, wide world that is difficult to grasp in a few dozen pages. I’d probably have been more into it if it were longer.

13. I’ll Be Gone In The Dark by Michelle McNamara: I do not read a lot of nonfiction or true crime because that’s what I do at my job all day, but this was short and I was curious about it. My biggest gripe was that it repeated a lot of facts in various parts in what seemed to be an effort to pad it out. The book was incomplete at the time of the author’s death, and it was completed by two other people and published posthumously. I really liked the way McNamara described the crimes in an engaging way without being lurid. I probably won’t seek out other true crime books, but this was fine.

12. Red Sonja by Mark Russell: I’m probably going to seek out more of this. It was witty and hilarious, but it was another book where I have to read more to determine if I like it.

11. Ember in the Ashes by Sabaa Tahir: This is about a girl in a fictional world who becomes a slave in the house of an imperial army general in order to deliver information to a resistance faction and rescue her brother from prison. The empire kills civilians indiscriminately, and is sooper evil, but we’re not quite sure why until most of the way through the book. The plot sifted through a lot of familiar YA fantasy tropes, the characters were a little flat, and I expected more, to be honest. I think pairing it with my listening of Marlon James’ “Black Leopard, Red Wolf” (which I haven’t finished yet) made it lose some of its impact. I’ll read more from this series before delivering a final judgment. 

10. A Man Called Ove by Frederik Backman: Here’s the part of the list where I read some things I really liked, and could split hairs over any of them depending on my mood. I enjoyed listening to this book, and I explained why in my little book questionnaire I did in early February.

9. Scarlet by Marissa Meyer: I’m going to read a fairy tale retelling every month at this rate, and that is just wonderful. This is one of those book series that I’m not interested in pulling the trigger to buy, but I’m still interested in reading it. I think my library’s population feels the same way I do, because Meyer’s books always seem to be checked out. It’s a futuristic fairy tale retelling where earth is at war with the lunar colony. Cinderella is a secret cyborg princess! The wolf in this (Named Wolf. Woo! Creativity!) is a genetically modified man! Scarlet (this book’s Little Red Riding Hood) is trying to find out who kidnapped her grandmother and why! I didn’t like this second installment as much as when I read “Cinder” years ago, but it was still pretty good. I'm working on the third book in the series, "Cress," right now. Rapunzel is a computer hacker stuck in a satellite!

8. Giant Days by John Allison: Another light, funny and enjoyable read about a group of different girls who become friends at college. It was relatable. More, please!

7. Battle Angel Alita Vols. 1-3 by Yukito Kishiro: I read my first manga because of a movie that looked cool. Spoiler: It was cool! Go see it! I kept paging the wrong way on my Kindle and reading the speech bubbles in the wrong order, but I got the hang of it eventually! I want to read the other six volumes of this story, too. The movie kind of mushed together the storylines from the manga. Yugo was introduced right away in the movie, but in the manga he doesn’t show up until vol. 2. In the movie, Ito is much less creepy. And all of the motorball stuff, which begins in vol. 3, is placed much sooner in the movie. I’d say the movie is a solid adaptation, but the source material is excellent.

6. Bingo Love by Tee Franklin: This comic was about two young black women who fall in love, but because of the extreme taboo of the time, they can’t be together. They grow old, and then when they meet again, they decide to be together and are willing to make sacrifices to do so. At the end, the story flashes forward to the future, where you can change your appearance so you’re still recognizable to your loved ones who have Alzheimer’s disease, but there’s still homophobia. I might have been crying while I read this, but it’s TOTALLY NOT because this book was endlessly endearing and unresolved love stories cause my heart to languish in a brittle pool of angst and yearning. Nope, definitely not.

5. Saga (Anthologies 1 and 2) by Brian K. Vaughan: I read the first 3 volumes of this ages ago, then the writers dropped off the face of the earth, then I bought the hardbound anthologies after realizing the series was back on and had been for years. The third big book comes out in June and I’ll probably get that too. The worldbuilding is a little easier to grasp than "Monstress," but it’s still expansive and interesting. I am in love with the role of the romance novel in the story. I think everyone who reads comics likes Saga. I don’t have a bad thing to say about it.

4. Captain America (#1-7) by Ta-Nehisi Coates: Was it a bad idea to read Captain America before reading Black Panther or any of Coates’ essays? I don’t think so. This was amazing on its own. It was peppered with delicious notes of toxic masculinity and warped American values. I loved it.

3. The Light Between Worlds by Laura E. Weymouth: This book is loosely based on the premise “What happens to the kids in Chronicles of Narnia after they come back from Narnia?” The place wasn’t Narnia and the kids were not Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy, but the ideas were the same. This story got DARK. After I was finished with this book, I couldn’t move. I couldn’t speak. I wondered if I would ever be happy again.

2. Mister Miracle by Tom King: This was recommended to me by my Goodreads pal and former sports editor Chris (Hi Chris!) This comic hits all of the old-school comicky notes, but with little riffs in the art and modern-day themes. Mister Miracle can escape from everything and everywhere, but can he escape from mental illness and childhood trauma? This book has everything: Tragedy! Romance! Action! It has the mundane goings-on of everyday life! I’m discovering that I find the comedic timing in most comics to be really great, but when it’s translated to a movie, it comes off as kind of cheesy. Anyway, on top of this book being spectacularly written and illustrated, there’s a whole page of Darkseid eating a carrot from a relish tray. He’s a double-dipper. So there’s that.

1. Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng: Almost everyone I know has read this book, meaning I actually have people I can talk to about a book I’ve read! It is invigorating! I talked about it more when I contrasted it with “A Simple Favor.” I just want to say that in my long time reading and reviewing books, there are books that offer a simple plot, and those are fine. But once in a while you discover a book that offers more to the conversation. So last month, when my best book was “The Stone Sky,” I liked it because it was an adventure/survival fantasy story, but it ALSO was about racism and the right oppressive societies have to exist. “Little Fires Everywhere” was about a group of teenagers coming of age, but it ALSO was a thorough examination of the mother-daughter relationship AND it was about classism. Books that go the extra mile tend to float to the top of my reading lists every time.

Last month's rankings.

Unranked 

I read these as part of City Book Review’s sponsored review program and can’t talk about them here.

Sourpuss by Merricat Mulwray
Gift of the Seer by KB Laugheed
Radical Revolution: The Fight For Animal Liberation by Stephen Saunders

Rich people do the darndest things: A tale of two tales

Two books I finished for fun, and in quick succession this month were Celeste Ng's "Little Fires Everywhere" and Darcy Bell's "A Simple Favor." I listened to them both in audiobook format, checked out from my library via the Libby app.

Classism and wealth serve as blinders in "Little Fires Everywhere" by Celeste Ng, but in this story, the wealthy aren't just cruel to each other because they're bored. Instead, those who challenge the status quo of a society are ostracized by those with resources. "Little Fires Everywhere" follows two Ohio families in the 1990s: The wealthy Richardsons, a married mother and father with four children, and the Warrens, a poor single mother, Mia, and her daughter Pearl. The story said a lot about parenting and race. The Richardsons lived a rooted life of law and order. Mia and Pearl were nomads, moving from city to city whenever Mia finished a photography project.

 Parts of "Little Fires Everywhere" get really uncomfortable in the best way. It was striking, but not surprising, how privilege and entitlement prevented the Richardson children from being empathetic. The story edged a little too far into "suburbs and rules bad," but I can forgive it that after it fully explored the many variations of the mother-daughter relationship. I loved how the book left open the question of whether the Richardsons actually learned anything from their time with the Warrens. I was leaning toward "no, they didn't." The most heartbreaking part for me was Moody Richardson’s descent into misogyny and entitlement toward the end. He seemed so nice!

 The two big questions reviewers on Goodreads asked about "A Simple Favor" was "Why was this ever made into a movie?" and also "DNF, because I feel like I'm reading trash???" Good questions, Goodreaders!

 The biggest selling point for "A Simple Favor" was its similarities with Gillian Flynn's "Gone Girl." Both seemed to explore the idea: "If a housewife was a psychopath, to what lengths would she go to lead the exact same life forever?" Emily, the *crazy* one in "A Simple Favor," just wants to commit a little insurance fraud, stay a few months in Europe with her husband and her son, and take a break from her demanding job covering up her boss’s indiscretions. She befriends widowed mommy blogger Stephanie to have an advocate and caretaker for her son while she fakes her own death.

Emily doesn't count on her husband, Sean, believing that she is dead, and he ends up sleeping with Stephanie because he wants to move on with his life and have a mother for his child.

The characters in "A Simple Favor" exercise poor judgment at almost every available opportunity. There's a weird incest subplot, which really adds nothing to the story other than a chance for Emily to blackmail Stephanie.

I could go on and on about this, but as I age, I'm not terribly interested in indiscriminately crapping on books I hate, just gently nudging others away from them. The bottom line is it seems Emily wants to have her cake and eat it too: She has a stressful job, and instead of finding another one that might be less stressful and pay less, or taking a sabbatical, she decides an elaborate insurance fraud scheme is the best way to let go of her old life because she's "bored." All of the things that would be obvious to us plebes are made infinitely more complicated and dramatic by tiresome rich characters with nothing better to do.

Both books featured wealthy people doing dumb stuff to each other, but one had broader statements to make about classism and racism, with a reasonable helping of subtlety, and the other was a weird hot mess.

TL;DR: I highly recommend “Little Fires Everywhere” by Celeste Ng. Do not waste your time on Darcey Bell’s “A Simple Favor.”

Coming soon: The end of February is approaching, and I read 25 books this month. I’m expecting to squeeze in another 1 or 2 in the next few days. It’s not as impressive as it sounds, since a lot of them were short and with pictures. I have a full-blown obsession with comic books right now, with no end in sight. #cantstopwontstop #sorrynotsorry