Tag: short stories

April Reading Wrap-Up

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Books read in April: 7 // Total books read in 2018 so far (as of the end of April): 35

Favorite books read in April:  You Think It, I’ll Say It by Curtis Sittenfeld and Difficult Women by Roxane Gay.

Enigma Variations by André Aciman (⭐⭐⭐⭐)
Remember how much I loved Call Me By Your Name? It was so beautiful and evocative and full of longing, I was excited to pick up and read André Aciman’s 2017 novel Enigma Variations. Like Elgar’s orchestral work of the same name, Aciman’s novel explores variations on a theme. It’s a novel broken up into 5 vignettes (as opposed to Elgar’s 17) that center on the love life of Paul and his forays into lust, infidelity, emotional longing, and all matters of the heart. Aciman writes desire so well, and he manages to capture the palpable ache of yearning with gorgeous prose.

Difficult Women by Roxane Gay (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐)
Difficult Women broke my heart. The women in these stories are not “difficult,” they are survivors. Of abuse. Of heartbreak. Of horrible men. Of the crap that life throws at them every single day. I loved this collection for the honesty and raw emotion found in each story, and am continually awed by Gay’s willingness and nerve to put her characters in difficult and necessary places. Bravo. trigger warning: kidnap, rape

Tangerine by Christine Mangan (⭐⭐⭐)
I picked up Christine Mangan’s debut novel, Tangerine, prior to my recent trip to Morocco. The book takes place in 1950’s Tangier, where a recently married couple is unexpectedly visited by the wife’s former college roommate. As roommates at Bennington College, Alice and Lucy formed a quick bond and parted ways after a mysterious accident. Now in Morocco, they begin to unravel the story of their past with alarming consequences. The book has flavors of a hard-boiled mystery with an obsessive female friendship at its core and a fairly predictable plot.

Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi (⭐⭐⭐⭐.5)
At 500+ pages, Tomi Adeyemi’s epic debut, the YA fantasy Children of Blood and Bone (#1 in the Legacy of Orïsha trilogy) is an entertaining and surprisingly fast read, with strong character development and world-building. Though the story is told from three different perspectives, the book centers on Zélie Adebola, a strong warrior/heroine who embarks on a journey of self-discovery with a mission to return magic to the people and land of Orïsha. So many fantasy books revolve around white boys, magicians/wizards who find their way to wizard school, are tested, and overcome adversity with magic.
I love that this fantasy features a cast of all-black characters and that the messaging throughout, about remembering those who came before, about finding the strength to fight, and about fighting a system of oppression and confronting police brutality, is so very relevant in our world today.

A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness (⭐⭐)
Magic? Witches? Vampires? Yep. I was expecting to be swept up and carried away by Deborah Harkness’s A Discovery of Witches. Unfortunately, I found the plot interminable and characters and dialogue tedious.

You Think It, I’ll Say It by Curtis Sittenfeld (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐)
Curtis Sittenfeld is a masterful writer of dialogue, character, and pacing, and these short stories are some of the best I’ve read. An excellent collection.

I Let You Go by Clare Mackintosh (⭐⭐⭐)
Clare Mackintosh’s breakout debut, I Let You Go, was recommended to me by a bookseller friend as a fast-paced thriller with a twist. While the book is skillfully plotted so you know that twist is coming, it doesn’t disappoint. A fun, quick read.

March Reading Wrap-up

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I’ve been so focused on reaching my reading goals these past few months that I have completely neglected blogging. So, in an attempt to catch up… here’s my reading wrap-up from March!

Books read in March: 8 // Total books read in 2018 so far (as of the end of March): 28

Favorite book from March: Maggie O’Farrell’s I Am, I Am, I Am

The Last Painting of Sara de Vos by Dominic Smith (⭐⭐⭐)
In Smith’s The Last Painting of Sara de Vos, three narratives are woven together to create a story that revolves around a painting, a landscape by Sara de Vos, a Dutch artist living in the 1600’s. The thread of de Vos’ art and life is interlaced with that of a man living in 1950’s Manhattan who has the painting hanging on his wall, and that of a young Australian forger living in Manhattan hired to replicate de Vos’ masterpiece. While the novel is rich in detail and description, the plot never fully captured my attention.

Blood, Bones & Butter by Gabrielle Hamilton (⭐⭐⭐)
I picked up Gabrielle Hamilton’s Blood, Bones & Butter prior to my trip to New York and visit to her restaurant, Prune, in March. Once a foodie hot spot, Prune is now a New York mainstay with overpriced dishes that are simply fine. Hamilton’s memoir about discovering her love of food and becoming a chef made my mouth water various times, but the narrative verged on tiresome when she repeatedly divulged details of her painfully awkward marriage to the father of her children, a man she seemingly fell into a relationship with and didn’t love.

White Houses by Amy Bloom (⭐⭐⭐)
White Houses frames the relationship between Eleanor Roosevelt and reporter-turned-friend and lover Lorena “Hick” Hickok with tenderness and insight. It’s an intimate portrait of two women looking for love and companionship, both in sync and at odds with the marriage between Franklin Roosevelt and his first lady, Eleanor. Throughout, we are offered a peripheral view, removed; we gaze in as if from a window, separate from the story and the characters. I was left wanting more.

I Am, I Am, I Am: Seventeen Brushes with Death by Maggie O’Farrell (⭐⭐⭐⭐)
In Maggie O’Farrell’s memoir I Am, I Am, I Am, the author offers up haunting glimpses of near-death experiences that have shaped the trajectory of her life. In prose that is as beautiful as it is raw, she exposes a dangerous encounter on a secluded path, instances of nearly drowning, complicated childbirth, heartbreaking miscarriage, and more. These seventeen “brushes with death” leave the reader thankful for every breath, every moment of being alive.

Winter Kept Us Warm by Anne Raeff (⭐️⭐️⭐️)
Winter Kept Us Warm, Raeff’s novel about family, war, desire, parenthood, and independence, follows three characters, Ulli, Isaac, and Leo from the moment they meet in post-war Berlin through the rest of their lives as their paths intersect and diverge again and again. While I wasn’t wowed by this book, there are nice bits of writing throughout and Raeff is a skillful storyteller.

Back Talk by Danielle Lazarin (⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️)
I picked up Danielle Lazarin’s Back Talk off the front table at McNally Jackson in New York, and I’m glad I did. Lazarin’s stories, which are refreshingly satisfying and smart, revolve mostly around middle-class white women in NYC in the process of wanting, desiring, becoming. A lovely, well-written collection.

How to Stop Time by Matt Haig (⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️)
While the cover of Matt Haig’s How to Stop Time did nothing to sell me on the book, the blurbs did. “Marvelous,” said Deborah Harkness. Jeanette Winterson: “Matt Haig uses words like a tin-opener. We are the tin.” Tom Hazard is a man who ages slowly, his body and his face hardly change year after year allowing him to live for centuries. Not aging soon becomes problematic as peers and love interests change and mature; those around Tom start to take notice. The plot is far-fetched, with Hazard placed at the right (or wrong) places at various points in history, and the end felt a bit messy, but the book is an entertaining page-turner that will keep you engaged and reading until the very last page.

Home Fire by Kamila Shamsie (⭐️⭐️⭐️)
Home Fire, shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2017, and my book club’s pick for March, is a modern telling of Sophocles’ play Antigone. Shamsie’s story follows three British Muslim siblings as they encounter prejudice and extremism in Britain, and explores how they negotiate family, politics, betrayal, and matters of the heart. I wanted to love this book but sadly found the characters bland and the writing mediocre. Though that cover is GORGEOUS.

2017 Favorites

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Top 10 Books of 2017 Brief Book Reviews(5)

I read so many really great books this year. Books that broke my heart, made me laugh and cry, books that terrified me, books that enchanted me and made me wonder, books that made me fear the future and books that carried me into the past, books that grounded me in the present and books that transported me to magical worlds.

Of the 104 books I read this year, these were my favorites:

Top 10 Books of 2017 Brief Book Reviews(1)

Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders
This book astonished me. Within the first few pages, I knew that it would be one of my favorites of the year. A favorite for always. It is just. that. GOOD. It’s hilarious and smart, touching and bizarre, and I fucking LOVED it. A truly remarkable read.

Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward
I had the great pleasure of hearing Jesmyn Ward read from Sing, Unburied, Sing with my friend Guinevere a few months back at East Bay Booksellers. As far as I am concerned, Jesmyn Ward can do no wrong. She does things with language and narrative that are magic. The characters in this book, their story, will amaze you and break your heart. Read it, it’s so worth the heartbreak.

The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley by Hannah Tinti
I loved this story of complicated father figure Samuel Hawley and his teenage daughter Loo navigating their way through the world. It’s a tale full of adventure, danger, suspense, and heart. Tinti keeps you hanging on every sentence, every word, up until the glorious end.

Idaho by Emily Ruskovich
Idaho is a gorgeously written debut novel about family, memory, and loss. The narrative pivots around the murder of a child and is both haunting and lovely, with a line of suspense that keeps the reader turning page after page. I was so moved by Idaho, by the characters and the writing, and I can’t wait to see what Emily Ruskovich comes out with next.

Autumn by Karl Ove Knausgaard
What amazes me, again and again, about Knausgaard’s writing is that there is a pedestrian everyday-ness about it. He catalogs and peels apart the world around him in seemingly ordinary prose. And then, in peeling back and exposing ugliness and the ritual of the mundane, he shows us such great beauty and insight. That beauty is, at times, simply breathtaking.

My Absolute Darling by Gabriel Tallent
This book stole my heart, broke it, and stitched it back together. It’s the story of an all-consuming tangled mess of love and violence, of growing up, of survival. It’s brutal and terrifying and beautiful and brave, and completely riveting. An absolutely stunning debut. Read it.  Trigger warning: rape, incest

Pachinko by Min Jin Lee
I can’t believe I waited so long to read Pachinko, my 104th book of the year. It’s a saga about multiple generations of a Korean family in Japan, about identity and duty and honor, about love and longing and loss, about the triumphs and hardships of life. It’s a great read, a page-turner, and Lee is a wonderful, seemingly effortless storyteller.

Hourglass by Dani Shapiro
Dani Shapiro’s Hourglass is a memoir peppered with old journal entries, and rich with memories, observations, and realizations. It is intimate and insightful and achingly beautiful and I loved it.

Hunger by Roxane Gay
Roxane Gay is a powerhouse. Hunger traces the before and after in Gay’s life. Before she was raped, and after; before she used food as a salve and after, when food filled the void of hurt and pain left by the boys who raped her when she was 12, when hunger built her body into a massive impenetrable fortress. Gay is consistently smart and insightful, and her look inward in Hunger is fastidious and unflinching. Her look outward, towards the way women in society can never escape the weight of their bodies, their worth constantly measured by their ability to disappear into thinness or reviled for their audacity to take up space, is dead-on.

Shades of Magic trilogy by V.E. Schwab
I sing the praises of V.E. Schwab’s Shades of Magic fantasy trilogy to anyone who will listen. As I mentioned in my review of the third book, A Conjuring of Light, “these books are the perfect escape.” And they are! They are a pleasure to read because they’re FUN and full of magic, and they make me happy. Start with book one, A Darker Shade of Magic, and you won’t be able to stop. I’ve been trying to find a magical series that replicates the feelings I was imbued with while reading this trilogy but I haven’t found another fantasy series that I’ve loved as much. Let me know if you do…

More great reads of 2017:
Silk Poems by Jen Bervin
The Queen’s Gambit by Walter Tevis
The Heart’s Invisible Furies by John Boyne
We Are Called to Rise by Laura McBride
Her Body and Other Parties stories by Carmen Maria Machado
The End We Start From by Megan Hunter
Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng
Anything is Possible by Elizabeth Strout
The Best We Could Do by Thi Bui
Wake of Vultures by Lila Bowen
Human Acts by Han Kang
The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden
Exit West by Mohsin Hamid
Look poems by Solmaz Sharif
300 Arguments by Sarah Manguso
Norwegian by Night by Derek B. Miller
Mothering Sunday by Graham Swift
Ways to Disappear by Idra Novey
History of Wolves by Emily Fridlund
A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman
We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler
News of the World by Paulette Jiles

What were your favorite books of 2017?

#68 The Bed Moved by Rebecca Schiff

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9781101910856When I was in Brooklyn a few weekends ago we made a pilgrimage to Books Are Magic, because in my family indie bookstores are destination spots, and I knew I’d finish the two books I’d brought with me and needed a book for the plane ride home. I found The Bed Moved, short stories by Rebecca Schiff, and was drawn in by that great cover and the “stellar collection” blurb from The New York Times Book Review.

At 38 I’m not young anymore, but this collection made me feel old. I so wanted to love the acerbically witty exchanges, the sexually adventurous/naive characters, and the emotional remove of the stories. There’s a smart, craft-driven quality to Schiff’s writing, a gem of something funny and sad and lonely inherent in each piece; reading story after story I expectantly hoped maybe this is the one I will love, but I didn’t find the one and ultimately failed to connect with the collection as a whole.

#66 Anything is Possible by Elizabeth Strout

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32080126Anything is Possible is just charming.

Elizabeth Strout, author of Olive Kitteridge and My Name is Lucy Barton, has crafted a beautiful collection of overlapping stories, rich with distinctive characters, alive with strikingly elegant prose. My Name is Lucy Barton was written at the same time and Lucy and the Barton family make appearances in a few of these stories.

Set in Amgash, a small town in Illinois, and beyond, each story acts as a character portrait, each paragraph shapes the identities of the townspeople, and, as the book progresses, the stories simultaneously forge and peel back those identities. Characters are drawn from various perspectives as they struggle to find meaning in life and to connect. Relationships are exposed. Personality strengths and flaws are actualized.

Strout writes with a quiet, assured power. As a reader, you can trust that wherever she takes you within a story, you are in good hands.

#57 Bad Dreams and Other Stories by Tessa Hadley

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31449412If you’re an avid reader of The New Yorker, a number of the short stories in Tessa Hadley’s recently-released Bad Dreams and Other Stories will be familiar to you. Personally, I can’t keep up with the stacks of New Yorker magazines that mock me around our house, so most of the stories were new to me.

Hadley’s stories are skillfully composed around a particular narrative tension. As if living in a bad dream, many of her characters face potential or inferred danger, with possibly shady characters in uncomfortable situations. A teenage girl in “An Abduction” is picked up by a car of boisterous drunk boys who want to take her for a ride. It seems only natural to think girl, that is just not a good idea. In “Under the Sign of the Moon,” an older woman with cancer, on the train to see her daughter, meets an overly friendly, albeit slightly off young man who won’t stop trying to engage her in conversation. Ugh, is he the pervert we suspect he might be? In “One Saturday Morning” a young girl, left at home to practice piano while her family goes grocery shopping, lets in a family friend, a man. They occupy the house together, moving quietly in separate rooms but deeply aware of each other, waiting for her family to return. Maybe I’ve been listening to too much My Favorite Murder, but something in that scenario sets off where’s he going to stash the body alarm bells. Within each story, however, is a measure of surprise; the possibility of danger doesn’t always signal a real threat, and Hadley’s characters luckily manage to walk away unscathed.

#46 All These Wonders: True Stories About Facing the Unknown

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30901606Do you listen to The Moth? It’s one of my favorite weekly podcasts. The true stories amuse, delight, and move me to tears every single time I listen.

There were a number of pieces in the new collection from The Moth, All These Wonders: True Stories About Facing the Unknown, which I’d heard and loved before. Reading these felt like visiting old friends, the voices of the storytellers ringing through clear and memorable.

What a treat to discover stories I’d somehow missed. Some new favorites included comedian Tig Notaro’s “R2, Where Are You” about finding understanding and acceptance with her step father, Kate Tellers’ brave look at her mother’s death in “But Also Bring Cheese,” Ishmael Beah’s “Unusual Normality” about his trajectory from child soldier in Sierra Leone to to playing paintball at a party in upstate New York, Carl Pillitteri’s harrowing end-times experience inside the Fukushima Nuclear generating station during the 2011 earthquake in Japan in “Fog of Disbelief,” and Cathy Olkin’s “On Approach to Pluto” about her decade of work on NASA’s New Horizons Mission to Pluto, among others.

In addition to all the excellent stories and a foreword by Neil Gaiman, the book itself is beautiful, a hardback with a midnight blue matte cover and gold foil. This would be a perfect graduation gift.

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#36 Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang

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28503870Ted Chiang’s Stories of Your Life and Others was highly recommended by a local bookseller I know, and the blurbs sing Chiang’s praises. Junot Diaz calls the stories “shining, haunting, mind-blowing.”

The thing that stood out about this collection was Chiang himself. He clearly put so much work into researching and crafting each story. Whether writing about problematic mathematical theory, or building the linguistic foundation of an alien language, or imagining the Tower of Babel winding up to the sky and cracking the realm of heaven, Chiang’s expansive mind is on display.  And it’s impressive.

I liked these stories. The way that Chiang pairs humanity with far-reaching ideas lends the ideas an accessibility, however there is a remove, an almost clinical coldness to the storytelling which left me emotionally disengaged from the stories themselves.

My favorite of the lot was “Story of Your Life,” in which a woman recounts to her child, “you,” how learning an alien language changes her understanding of life and time. Sound familiar? It was made into, with many changes, the movie Arrival.

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#34 Wait Till You See Me Dance by Deb Olin Unferth

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29939138Deb Olin Unferth’s stories read like the layers of an onion, with each sentence the narrative is built up and peeled back, meaning is revealed, the story is changed, keeps changing, until the reader gets to the funky, quirky core. A nugget of surprise lingers at the center, waiting to be discovered, embedded to shock.

Highlights of the collection: A struggling adjunct teacher longing to tell her sad breakup tale to students invites them to share the worst thing that’s happened to them with unexpected results in “Voltaire Night.” A perpetually wandering, confidentially clueless couple gets led into the jungle at gunpoint in “Stay Where You Are.” In “Wait Till You See Me Dance,” an unremarkable teacher with unremarkable students tries to find self worth and purpose.

Amid these standout stories were a number of shorter pieces. The back cover calls these “intoxicating,” but they didn’t resonate or have the same impact for me as the longer stories.

I love Graywolf Press. I discovered Wait Till You See Me Dance on their Instagram feed; and Graywolf just kills it, consistently publishing awesome books, including: Citizen, The Argonauts, LOOK, The Empathy Exams, and 300 Arguments and Ongoingness, to name a few.