I guess it shows what you'll do for freedom

For my birthday Tom got me a subscription to Just The Right Book. It's a book-of-the-month deal where you fill in a profile and then they send you books they think you'll enjoy. While I'm side-eyeing the latest selection they sent me (Still Life with Bread Crumbs) they've picked out books I liked for the first two rounds so they've earned some measure of trust.

The first book they sent me was Liane Moriarty's The Husband's Secret, which is a pretty clever first choice, considering it was a surprise gift. Except this secret and the secret(s) in the book are very different. And I've had Moriarty on my radar since hearing good things about her book Big Little Lies, so good first choice.

If it isn't clear from the title, there's a mystery involved here so I'll try not to say too much about the plot. It's a story of three women: Celia, a super type-A...type with the perfect hair and perfect family and perfect home and perfect Tupperware sales; Tess, who recently traveled back to her hometown after she finds out that her cousin/best friend and husband are in love; and Rachel, a secretary at the local school whose daughter Janie was killed years before.

One day Celia finds a letter addressed to her in her husband's handwriting with the instructions that it is to be read after his death. And when her (perfect) husband Jean-Paul finds out Celia found the letter he is very nervous. So that's suspicious. I'm sure the letter includes something more than a secret family recipe. (I'm also sure cos, you know, I've read the book. But that's besides the point.)

Not too much more I can say regarding what's in the letter and how the women are tied together, so I guess you'll have to trust me that it's entertaining. Sure, you can see some of the twists coming, but that doesn't ruin the fun. I guess "fun" might be the wrong word. For the characters. The twists bring up hard "what if" scenarios. I have no idea what I'd do or how I'd react if I were in the characters' shoes.

One nice thing, that it took me a minute or two to realize, was this is pretty much an all-female cast. There are a couple guys in it, secondary characters, but ultimately this is a story about these women. The husband might have a secret, but the story is about the way the women react.

I can't say I've found a new favorite author, but I liked this and I will be checking out her other stuff. Besides, she's a non-US author so win for my resolution dealy. Even if I did often forget that this took place in Australia and would get super confused when the characters would talk about Easter being in the fall.

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Title quote from page 217

Moriarty, Liane. The Husband's Secret. Berkley Books, 2013

She's gone, she's learned, and she's conquered

Twice I've gone to start this review and twice I've stopped because I feel like there is so much to say about this book and I know I'm not going to do it justice. While I won't say third time's the charm (because that would assume what I'm about to write is going to be good) I will say third time is the time I finally suck it up and just write this thing.

I finally, finally, FINALLY read Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.* I don't know why I was so worried. Well, no, I mean I do know why because this is an excellent book and it deserves the praise it got. It's also very accessible and I never felt like I was not smart enough to get this (though I'm sure I missed plenty). Odds are you've already read this, cos I feel like most people have, but I am always late to the game, but here goes my review anyway!

The story centers on Ifemelu (if someone would like to make a video teaching me how to correctly pronounce her name, that would be neat), a woman who has been living in the States for a while now but is planning to move back to Nigeria. She's at one point described as "a fine babe but she is too much trouble. She can argue. She can talk. She never agrees." Not an inaccurate description. Later in the book when she's talking about how graduate students speak just in academia and she's afraid they don't know what's happening in the real world she's told "That's a pretty strong opinion" and quickly responds with "I don't know how to have any other kind." She's pretty great.

At the beginning of the book Ifemelu travels from Princeton into Trenton to find a place to get her hair done and as she sits in the chair for 8 hours, she reminisces about her life before she came to America and all of the events that brought her to where she is now.

Part of her flashbacks include her first love, Obinze. They met as teenagers and it was assumed by everyone, including each other, that they would end up married. But life rarely goes as planned as Ifemelu goes to America while Obinze later makes his way to England. A number of chapters are from Obinze's point of view and his experience as an undocumented worker abroad, before getting deported and eventually becoming a wealthy property developer back home.

But the story is Ifemelu's and Adichie does a beautiful job depicting race and racism in the US, England, and Nigeria; how the experiences of African-Americans and those of American-Africans are very different; how she and Obinze weren't black until they left Nigeria. Ifemelu writes a successful blog "Raceteenth or Various Observations About American Blacks (Those Formerly Known as Negroes) by a Non-­American Black" that I wish was real cos I would follow. That's not all Adichie covers. There's much about leaving and returning home. There is an emphasis on education but also a criticism of the world of academia. There are experiences of the very poor and the very wealthy.

You should read this. It's an excellent book. Besides, your reading is probably too white (it can't be just me) so broaden those horizons.

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*Wanna know how to pronounce her name? You should check out Amanda's video of commonly mispronounced author's names.

Title quote from page 534

Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi. Americanah. Anchor Books, 2013.

I am the internet's token fat girl

It's been a long time since I accepted a book for review. I had been burned way too many times, so when I got an email asking me if I wanted to read this book called Fat Girl Walking I side-eyed it a bit. But then I saw it was from a publisher I recognize (HarperCollins) so I thought sure, I'll give this a try. Made the right choice. Good job, me! (Oh also, thanks Harper for being awesome and asking me if I wanted a copy of this in exchange for a review.)

Fat Girl Walking: Sex, Food, Love, and Being Comfortable in Your Skin...Every Inch of It by Brittany Gibbons aka Brittany Herself is a bit of a mouthful for a title. But I very much like what they did with the cover and the text. Reminds me a lot of Caitlin Moran's How To Be A Woman and Jenny Lawson's Let's Pretend This Never Happened covers. Good company to be in. It's a memoir where Brittany talks about her life growing up fat*, how her weight was a central part to how she developed, how she sees herself, and ultimately what she's doing now. She has a pretty successful blog. She was on Good Morning America wearing a bikini in Time Square. She gave a TED Talk that got a standing ovation. That's some pretty snazzy stuff.

I feel like I sort of made this sound like a feel-good type memoir and while yeah, I guess it DOES make you feel good and it encourages you to love you, it does it by being hilarious, which is what I need in my memoirs. There are a lot of embarrassing moments (sex-ed classes at a Christian school can cause some interesting/sad misunderstandings). The comparison to Jenny Lawson's book goes beyond just the cover; the two are very similar in terms of style and even content. Sure, Gibbon's book features way less taxidermy but if you like one, you're likely to enjoy the other. And her weight isn't the ONLY thing discussed. Her father is hit by a truck and suffers brain-damage when she's a kid. She has a bit of a breakdown in college that results in her never leaving the house. I realize those are dark things, but she handles them so well. Probably because she got some great advice from her grandmother:

You are going to fail at a lot of things, so when you do, do it on such a grand scale that half the room gives you a standing ovation, and the other half gives you the middle finger.

So yeah, good stuff.

As part of this review, they also gave me an excerpt to share so you can get a flavor of her style. And I can just copy and paste this instead of having to copy out a bunch of quotes, which is probably what I would have ended up doing instead.

NOW WHAT? 

My fitness and body aspirations at thirty are different from my aspirations at twenty. At twenty, I just assumed I’d work out until I was so tiny, people became concerned for my health and I’d roll my eyes at them from my Victoria’s Secret bras and Abercrombie jeans. Now I just want to maintain my current weight so I don’t need to buy new clothes. When you look at weight loss, it’s often clothing driven. Weddings, vacations, and high school reunions, all things you are supposed to be thin for. But what if you have a gorgeous wedding dress in your current size, loads of flattering bathing suits, and a killer pair of jeans? Starving myself has suddenly become a moot point. I have options; I’m no longer a fashion pariah. So where does that leave my weight? Well, unless I’m sitting atop you, what I weigh is really none of your business. 

I like to put good food in my mouth, and while I am aware of the calories I ingest, instead of cutting them I make them count. I have a full-on love affair with food, appreciating the different cultures and processes within it. In fact, I take entire vacations around eating. It’s how I remember where I’ve been; I’ve either eaten, thrown up, or started my period without the proper supplies there. 

Beignets with my best friend in New Orleans. Too much rum on the beaches of Playa del Carmen on our second honeymoon. Orlando, Florida, the city of emergency men’s tube sock maxi-pads. 

You see, these flabby parts aren’t problem areas; they’re parts of a scrapbook.

I can see this being a book I revisit, even if I haven't had the same issues with weight that Brittany tackles throughout. You don't need to be exactly like her for this book to be relatable and entertaining.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go check out her TED Talk.

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You also have an opportunity to win a copy of the book. So that's neat.
a Rafflecopter giveaway
Or you could buy it, either from your local bookstore, or here are a couple links:
HarperCollins, Barnes & Nobel, Amazon.

Title quote from page 2

Gibbons, Brittany. Fat Girl Walking: Sex, Food, Love, and Being Comfortable in Your Skin...Every Inch of It. Dey St, 2015.

*I honestly had trouble writing "fat" instead of "overweight" or some other word here, which is stupid because fat shouldn't be a bad word and IT'S RIGHT IN THE DAMN TITLE. Stupid society.

May reading wrap-up

May is over and I am ALL KINDS of ready for summer. Especially since it seems we bypassed spring. Even though I don't spend all that much time in the sun (cos, you know, PALE) I enjoy knowing it's out there. 

I did not do well this month in terms of my resolutions. Which I sort of knew would happen when I kicked so much ass with it last month. Next month perhaps. When things are unpacked (oh man, things better be unpacked...) and new things books are acquired. 

Let's see the stats

Number of books read

3

The Passage by Justin Cronin

Fat Girl Walking by Brittany Gibbons

Euphoria by Lily King

Number of pages read
1,282

Percentage of fiction read
67% - I feel like this is the first time in awhile non-fiction snuck in except...*checks list* well March. So really, not that long ago. Memory is hard.

Percentage of female authors
67%

Percentage of white authors
100% aaaaaand back to all white people

Percentage of US authors
100% and also back to all US people

Book formats
ebooks - 33%
paperback - 33%

hardback - 33%

Percentage of rereads
0%

Percentage of review books
33% - whoooa now this is the first review book of the year

Books written by decade
2010s - 100%

Books by genre
dystopia - 33%

memoir - 33%

historical fiction - 33%

Resolution books
0%

Ugh. All white people. From the US. Written in the last 5 years. These are not hard and yet I keep tripping.

Because survival is insufficient

We go from a book I did not care for to a book I liked very much. Thank you, Station Eleven, for coming to the rescue!

I hadn't heard of Emily St. John Mandel's Station Eleven until Kayleigh/Nylon Admiral's review, where she called it "a mix of dystopia and Shakespeare with just a smidge of Star Trek" and yes, she nails it with that description.

The story opens during a production of King Lear where Lear (the esteemed actor and tabloid regular Arthur Leander) suffers a fatal heart attack during the show. A former paparazzo/current EMT does his best to revive the actor but it's too late and the man sneaks off into the night to avoid the chaos that is about to come down. But he doesn't get very far before chaos comes at him from a different direction. A doctor friend of his tells him there's some sort of virus, far more deadly than what they'd encountered before, that seems to be hitting Toronto. Toronto isn't the only victim and within a very short span of time, something like 90% of the world's population has been wiped out.

The story jumps back and forth between the current day, and a traveling symphony that roams the new land performing shows (mostly Shakespeare!) for the various towns and settlements that are left, and flashbacks to the life of Arthur Leander. I t seems like a weird point to jump back to but between our main characters, Arthur seems to be a unifying force, even if they don't realize it.

The focus of the story isn't on survival. There's a lot about the place for art in this new world. There's much about the relationships between people and how those relationships change us.

There is a plot that sounds like it would be the main driver, but really feels secondary, about a Prophet that is wandering the same roads and visiting the same towns the Symphony has, but something is a bit culty about this guy and his followers. I was surprised there wasn't more to this storyline (I felt it was sort of rushed) but really, the rest is so so good, it feels like nitpicking at this point.

The writing is wonderful and I found myself highlighting a number of lines, so why don't I share some of those with you?

I've been taking art history classes on and off for years, and between projects. And of course art history is always pressed up close against non-art history, you see catastrophe after catastrophe, terrible things, all these moments when everyone must have thought the world was ending, but all those moments, they were all temporary. It always passes.

Jeevan's understanding of disaster preparedness was based entirely on action movies, but on the other hand, he'd seen a lot of action movies.

These are not her people. She is marooned on a strange planet. The best she can do is pretend to be unflappable when she isn't.

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Title quote page 58, location 885

St. John Mandel, Emily. Station Eleven. Vintage, 2014. Kindle

The harm was everyone and everywhere

I realized sometime last weekend that I had forgotten to write something to post during the week. Then, during the week, I tried to find some time to write but that, clearly, did not work. I used to write my posts whenever during the week but things have gotten busier so that doesn't work anymore. Now my goal is to write them during the weekend and technically even now I'm failing at that, as it is Monday. But it's a holiday weekend so, I'm sort of still on track.

Anyway, here's Wonderwall The House Girl.

There are a number of books out there that I get into my head that they're "very smart" books that deal with "important things" and I honestly have no idea where I come up with that. Because it seems like these books always turn out to be waaaaaaay less intimidating than I made out in my head and when I try to go back and find the reasons I thought the book was so fancy, I come up empty. The House Girl fits this, but instead of it being "Yay the book is not so intimidating!" it's more "Oh. I thought there'd be more to you. But no? K, I guess."

The story has 2 narratives: Josephine, the titular house girl on a plantation back 1800s Virginia, and Lina Sparrow, a young lawyer working a reparations case in the present day. Though I should probably put those in the other order because it feels like Lina's chapters feel like the main story, fleshed out by Josephine's.

Lina's law firm gets a case for a $6 trillion reparations lawsuit to sue the government and any business who could have benefitted from slavery in a reparations case. Another guy on the team has to do...lawyery things* and Lina is charged with finding a "face for the case" by finding a direct descendant of a slave to put on the stand.

Lina becomes obsessed with finding a descendant of the house girl Josephine, who is said to be the actual artists behind a number of famous paintings currently attributed to Lu Anne Bell, Josephine's mistress. Through a crazy random happenstance, Lina meets someone at her father's gallery opening that owns a couple as-yet-unknown Lu Anne Bell/Josephine pictures and could just be the descendant she's looking for. Also he's cute and in a band.

Meanwhile we see Josephine is the person behind the painting but more than that we see Josephine trying to escape. There's a little bit of her life on the plantation, taking care of Lu Anne who is sick and has no children of her own after 12 miscarriages. The chapters with Josephine are interesting and inspired less eye-rolls than the modern chapters. Which is too bad cos we spend so much time with Lina instead. There are even sections that are sort of Josephine's story, but told through the point of view of an abolitionist who was helping slaves along the underground railroad.

The book pretty much exactly how you assume it will. I didn't highlight many passages and by the end I started making snarky comments at the text, which typically means I'm bored with this now. Like I said in my minireview, the book wasn't bad. It just wasn't particularly good either. If you want to read a review that nails my feelings on this book (you know, other than mine, right here), check out the Washington Post piece. It says everything I wish I had thought to say.

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*Listen, I finished this a couple months ago. I know, it's a problem. Details are forgotten.

Title quote page 77, location 1120

Conklin, Tara. The House Girl. Harper Collins, 2013. Kindle.