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Books Read From Ohio to Halfway Around the World And Back

On October 20, 2014

My Weeks in BooksIf nothing else, vacation offers a wonderful time to catch up on reading. I’ve been growing my To Read list for a while now, without making much progress at actually reading the books. For a recent two week trip, I packed eleven books (it’s always better to have too many than not enough!) and read eight.

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Several of my books for this trip were selected based on previous reads from the same authors. That was the case with my first book, Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri. The Lowland was one of my favorite books from last year and I find just about everything Lahiri writes to be perfection. Unaccustomed Earth did not let me down.

This book of short stories looks at the differences between expatriate Bengali parents and their American-born or American-raised children. The stories overlap some, but the merging of story lines isn’t really necessary. Each stands alone just fine. One regret I do have is reading these stories all in one go during a plane flight. They would have been better spread out over a period of days or weeks. That just didn’t fit with my make-more-room-in-my-luggage-by-reading-and-giving-away-books plan.

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If someone I don’t know well asks for a book recommendation, I always suggest Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese. The book has appeal for people of such a wide variety of interests and it’s just so good. I’m not sure why, but I had never explored Verghese’s other books and just happened upon The Tennis Partner while at the used bookstore. I can’t say enough how happy I am that I read Cutting for Stone first. It’s a much better novel and the one I’m choosing to associate with Verghese.

The Tennis Partner is about a relationship between a doctor and a medical student. The two bond over tennis and find themselves looking forward to their scheduled matches as a release from the stresses of life – both at work and at home. Through the character of David Smith, Verghese offers an interesting exploration into addiction and the practice of medicine. Beyond that, the book simply wasn’t memorable for me.

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I listened to The Hound of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle as an audio book. In this mystery, Sherlock Holmes must help Henry Baskerville after the mysterious death of his uncle, Sir Charles. Family lore has it that an enormous hound resides on the moors in Devon, threatening the Baskerville family. Henry doesn’t want to meet his end on his newly inherited estate.

I enjoyed the rural setting for The Hound of the Baskervilles. The story itself dragged on a bit in the middle but was, in the end, really quite good.

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I have no shame in admitting how much I loved The Fault in Our Stars by John Green – both the book and the movie. That book was my only basis for comparison when I started Looking for Alaska, but it might have been the perfect measuring stick.

Looking for Alaska takes place at a boarding school and involves the relationships between a group of students. Like any group of friends, one person is really the glue holding everyone together and in this instance it’s a girl names Alaska. Like any good teen story, the characters in Looking for Alaska all carry their own baggage. And drama ensues.

Green excels at young adult novels. They might not be the deepest reading, but they’re thoroughly enjoyable. I have more reaction to share on this book, but I’ll do that in a later post.

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Here’s my confession. The book Gone Girl? I hated it. And I know it’s this whole phenomenon now and the movie is supposed to be so good, but I can’t get past the fact that I just didn’t get into the book. I say all that so you understand what I mean when I say that fans of Gone Girl will love Reconstructing Amelia by Kimberly McCreight. I mean, if I’m going to give a back-handed compliment, I want you to be aware that I’m aware of what I’m doing, right?

In Reconstructing Amelia, Kate Baron learns that her daughter has committed suicide. What is a seemingly simple case of teen taking her own life becomes much more complicated when Kate gets an anonymous text: “Amelia didn’t jump.” That leads Kate and readers down a path to solving the real story behind Amelia’s death.

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I learned about The Girl Who Fell from the Sky by Heidi W. Durrow from Kat Chow on an episode of Pop Culture Happy Hour. I knew very little about the book except that it might be heavier reading offering an exploration of race. It was that, but so much more.

Durrow is the daughter of an African-American enlisted Air Force man and a white Danish woman. It is from this background that she draws as she writes about Rachel, who shares the same racial background. After a family tragedy of epic proportions, Rachel moves out West with her grandmother. There her racial identity moves from unimportant or undefined to very clearly, according to Rachel’s grandmother, African American. Her peers see Rachel’s hair and eye color and have their own thoughts about her race.

Durrow offers a great exploration of race when it isn’t so clearly defined as well as mixed race relationships and how they play out in families, society and self-identification. The Girl Who Feel From the Sky is definitely a worthwhile read.

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A Woman of Substance by Barbara Taylor Bradford is an epic romance novel that’s pretty predictable. I feel guilty writing this knowing that I passed on the book to my sister (but I really think she might like it!) but about 2/3 of the way through A Woman of Substance I sort of wondering if I’d read it before. Clocking in at 906 pages, I feel certain I could have halved the length by editing down lengthy descriptions and the tiresome number of times people commented on the beauty, wit and cunning of the main character.

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Remember when just a little while ago I said about John Green, he “excels at young adult novels”? That opinion is diminished a bit by my reading of An Abundance of Katherines, also by John Green. I love a good Young Adult novel and don’t normally mind that I’m not the target audience. Maybe this book had a little too much Young in the Young Adult?

If nothing else, vacation offers a wonderful time to catch up on reading. These were the books that accompanied from Ohio to Nepal and back.

Is Hearing a Book the Same as Reading a Book?

By Kate

On October 6, 2014

In books

A woman I work with “reads” while she works. She does this by listening to audio books while she does her work. I have a number of questions about this.(How good is her work? Is that even doable? What???) but the main one I get stuck on is, Is that really reading?My brother listens to a lot of audio books and he usually qualifies it. “I’m reading… Well, listening to it…” That clarification he feels like he needs make – I get it. But I’m not sure it’s necessary.

I’ve recently started listening to audio books for the first time since I used to get books on cassette at the library. I’m qualifying the books as having been read. By me. But I’m not sure if that’s true. Since no actual reading is occurring. That seems like an essential element, you know?

What’s great about an audio book, particularly one read aloud by the right person, is that the tone and inflection of voice helps explain the words I might not understand. There are descriptive passages I typically get bored with in books and skim. With an audio book, I hear it all. For period pieces or novels with unique dialects, the audio helps add context to what’s being said.

What I love about paper books is the tactile nature of it. If you ask me about part of a book, I can usually remember if that part was in the first or second half of the book and if the text was on a right or left page in the book. Touching, holding and smelling the book gives me other senses by which to take in the story.

I’ve listened to hundreds of hours of podcasts on my iPod and iPhone and while I don’t remember all of them, I think most of it sticks. I read 50-80 (paper) books a year and a lot of those are so forgettable that I’m not sure I could tell you about them a week later. (This mostly applies to the chic lit and beach reads.) I’m curious to see how this audio experiment goes. Will it stick?

What do you think? Does listening to an audio book count as a reading a book?

BOOK IT is Back!

By Kate

On October 1, 2014

In books

Do you remember BOOK IT? I think I started the program in the third grade. For every certain number of books I read, I earned a free pizza. I ended up earning a LOT of free pizza. So much pizza that my teacher brought my mom in for a meeting and said I couldn’t actually be reading all of the books I was claiming.I proved her wrong by being able to discuss the plot-lines. Non-competitive in gym class, I was a competitive reader. And I loved pizza.

So imagine my joy upon hearing that BOOK IT is coming back!!!

I know I can participate in it (right?) but I am so happy to know that my nephews might get to. Books plus free pizza is a winning combination!

Defining and Representing Gender | The Underground Girls of Kabul: In Search of a Hidden Resistance In Afghanistan by Jenny Nordberg

By Kate

On September 15, 2014

In books, reviews

When my mother was pregnant with me, if I was a girl I would be named Kate and if a boy I would be named Jake. My next sibling would have been named Jake if she had been a boy. The sibling after that also would have been Jake had she been born a boy. It wasn’t until child number four that my parents finally got their Jake.For my parents, Jake was a name they liked. They wanted kids and I am sure were excited when they had a son, but they were also excited about their three daughters. Had they been living in Afghanistan, things might have been different.

In Afghanistan, not having a Jake earlier would have been a sign of weakness in my mom. A defect. And, what I’m learning from The Underground Girls of Kabul: In Search of a Hidden Resistance In Afghanistan by Jenny Nordberg is that me or one of my sisters might have been assigned the role of a bacha posh, or a girl who lives as a boy until reaching the age of puberty. This gender swap is thought to bring luck to the mother, making it more likely that she will later give birth to a son. It makes it easier for females in the household to have a male to act as chaperone when going out in public, because even a small boy is a suitable chaperone. It saves the mother the shame of being thought to be defective and unable to birth males. For the girl-turned-boy, it gives her freedoms she might not otherwise know. She can come and go freely from her house, wear pants, continue in school, work outside of the home. Once puberty hits, the girl-turned-boy turns back into a girl.

As I’m reading this book, I’m struck by how arbitrary our definitions of gender are. Sure, some of the biological functions are pretty clear. But other ways we express out gender identity are purely made up. The ways we define and treat gender so often leads to inequalities, although perhaps not always as dramatic as Nordberg describes in The Underground Girls of Kabul. My immediate reaction during my reading is to be angry at how little freedom women in that country are experiencing. But I also make a conscious effort not to immediately condemn another culture, even if that’s my initial reaction.

When I stop and think about women in this country, I’m reminded of when my friend Delicious shared an article about calling girls “pretty” and suggesting that people might compliment his daughter instead by commenting on how clever she is. I think of the six-week-old baby I got to hold last week that was a pile of squishy cheeks and thighs, wearing a dress made of layers and layers of tulle and sporting an anklet. I look outside at the college boys and girls going out on dates, or whatever the equivalent is of a date in college-going culture now, where the boys are in casual shorts, tees and sneakers and the girls are strapped into skirts that barely cover their butt crack and heels that are an accident in the making ands boob hoisted up as high as they will reach.

And so I am still reading about these women in Afghanistan, living as boys. Sometimes living as men. Usually transitioning back to being women and going on to be mothers and leading successful, feminine lives. And I’m reminding myself, sometimes every page, that the definitions I’m reading of gender are different. Not better and not worse. But different. (I don’t curtail my opinions about the freedoms the women are experiencing.)

And I’m trying to be a little more critical of how I’m choosing to define and represent my own gender. How I’m seeing it represented in pop culture. How I’m helping to instill it into nieces and nephews. That bit about a bacha posh helping give a prospective mom better luck in giving birth to a boy aside – because I can’t really speak to that, the gender definitions we assign shouldn’t cause so dramatic a difference in the life of a person as what Nordberg details in The Underground Girls of Kabul.

I read The Underground Girls of Kabul by Jenny Nordberg as part of the From Left to Write book club.

I read The Underground Girls of Kabul: In Search of a Hidden Resistance In Afghanistan by Jenny Nordberg as part of the From Left to Write book Club. Nordberg discovers a secret Afghani practice where girls are dressed and raised as boys. Join From Left to Write on September 16th as we discuss The Underground Girls of Kabul. As a member, I received a copy of the book for review purposes.

History in the Details: Looking at Jackie O’s Famous Pink Suit

By Kate

On September 8, 2014

In books, reviews

My Week In BooksSo many jobs take patience and concentration that I just don’t have. I like detail-oriented work and I actually weirdly enjoy repetitive tasks, but moving slowly and paying attention to tiny details… Forget about it. In The Pink Suit by Nicole Mary Kelby, a seamstress named Kate spends hours upon hours crafting clothing for the First Lady. In this fictional story about the romance between John F. Kennedy and Jackie, readers learn about the effort that went into being one of history’s most stylish first ladies.

While Kate works to create fine clothing for the president to give as a gift to his wife, she finds herself unexpectedly in a romance with a long-time friend, Patrick. Through their relationship, Kelby is able to share the nuances of being working class in America and having a family in the White House who is anything but working class. Unions expect Jackie to wear American-made clothing and hats made by American milliners, and she goes to great lengths to do just that, technically.

I am, of course, familiar with the famous pink suit that is the focus of this book. I love the idea of telling history with one artifact at the center of the tale. This book didn’t do it for me, though. While I enjoyed learning about the suit itself and how much painstaking work went into it, I was bored by the romance between Kate and Patrick. I’m glad I read The Pink Suit and know it will inform how I view couture clothing and how those designs make their way to the US, but I’m not sure that knowledge was worth the time investment.