Kate's Point of View

My Weeks in Books

March is National Reading Month, which means it’s basically the Month of Kate. I’m taking the theme as a reminder to kick it into gear with reading, but also to share out some of the books I’ve been reading recently.

Son by Lois Lowry

I finally finished Lois Lowery’s series that begins with The Giver. I’ve had Son sitting in my To Read pile for months but something just made me stall. I can’t quite explain it. But, I’m so happy I did delay! The main character undergoes what I think is a hysterectomy, though that’s not verified, and reading about that while recovering from a hysterectomy… Well, that would have just been too much. With a little time having passed since surgery, I was able to immerse myself in this book, which was a lovely ending to a great series.

The Magician King by Lev Grossman

The second in a trilogy about magic, The Magician King was about a quest, adventure and what is necessary to be a hero. While I wasn’t quite as fond of this as I was the first book, The Magicians, I still adore Grossman for making such blatant references to all of the important fiction novels that precede his about magic, wizards, other worlds, quests and heroes. It made me recall what it was like reading The Narnia Chronicles for the first time, and that memory alone made the book a worthwhile read.

The Snow Queen by Michael Cunningham

I feel like I should be gushing about The Snow Queen. And yet. Maybe I just wasn’t in the right mental space for this book. it felt so heavy and contemplative and ending each day by reading was sort of like ensuring my day ended poorly. What is the good in that?!

The Haven by Carol Lynch Williams

I learned about this book on some online list of Best YA Books of 2014. I can’t find the exact link, but here’s one to prove I’m not making it up. I wish I were! This is one of very few book that I gave only one star to in Goodreads. One star! If this is the best stuff out there for YA (and I know it’s not), then young adults are in a sorry state.

This post originally appeared on Kate’s Point of View. © Kate. All rights reserved.

My Weeks in Books

I set out in 2015 with the goal of reading more diverse books. I found a #DiversityReadingChallenge to keep me on track, but it’s only six weeks into the year and I feel a little thrown off of the structured challenge. Mainly, in month two I am supposed to read a book with a person of color on the cover, but it turns out I read very few books with people on the cover! I haven’t given up just yet, though, and have been reading a wider range of stories.

• This is the Story of a Happy Marriage by Ann Patchett is a book of essay by Patchett. I love her fiction but it turns out I like her essay writing only so-so.
• Frog Music by Emma Donoghue is about French immigrant circus performers in the United States and the relationship one woman forms with a woman who prefers wearing mens clothing and, sometimes, the romantic companionship of women. There’s way more to the book than that, but to be honest, I really, really struggled with Frog Music. About four-fifths of the way through I started to enjoy it, but that’s just not enough.
• I was such a fan of The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion so I was very excited for his follow-up, The Rosie Effect. Where the first book really stuck with me and is one I’ve referred to repeatedly for a compassionate representation of a person with Autism, I found the second book very entertaining but forgettable.
• What She Left Behind by Ellen Marie Wiseman was recommended to me by a friend and I loved it. In fact, I set aside all other activities and finished the book in only one day! Told through a lovely story, Wiseman explores asylums in the United States in the early to mid-1900s. Going to school in Athens, Ohio, I am very familiar with the lore surrounding The Ridges asylum there. The mere idea that people could be institutionalized at a whim is astounding. Although not exactly upbeat, I think stories like this one are important to educate people about the history of mental health treatment and the changing definition of mental illness in our country.
• Taking advantage of some of the alone time I bragged so much about, I listened to The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson on audio while taking a nice, long walk. I think it’s good I listened to this book because the language was a little hard to follow and I suspect I would have given up were I reading it. That said, so many of our present day plot lines in television, movies and book are based on the basic storyline of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde that I’m happy to be familiar with it.
• The first “assignment” in the #DiversityReadingChallenge was to read a book by an author of color. I chose The Bridegroom: Stories by Ha Jin, which is a book of short stories taking place in China just after the death of Chairman Mao Tse-tung. I’ve never really been keen on visiting China, but sheesh! Jin paints a very unappealing picture. The Bridegroom: Stories did give me a better understanding of what people experienced in China during that time period (late 1970s – early 1980s) and the writing was beautiful but I am content just reading about the place.
• My attraction to A Partial History of Lost Causes by Jennifer duBois was the beautiful title, but I also learned a lot about life in the Soviet Union and Russia. (I’ll be visiting there right after I check out China!) What I like about novels that take place in other countries is that I learn about the world without having to do much research. duBois taught me more about Putin and the experiences of people during different political regimes in the Soviet Union and Russia. I haven’t quite decided if I’ll be passing the book on to others or not (my sign of a book worth reading), but I’m pleased to have read it myself.

This post originally appeared on Kate’s Point of View. © Kate. All rights reserved.

I was very excited to read The Bear until I started it and then I couldn’t wait to just be done with it. The story is horrific but  you sort of can’t turn away. Except. Except that it’s written in this childlike voice that matches the young narrator well but is so, so, so distracting. I couldn’t hardly handle it.

I’m fascinated by the story in Island of the Blue Dolphins. A woman is left on an island after everyone else in her community leaves. She survives for nearly twenty years alone until she is picked up and taken to the mainland United States. She subsequently catches a disease and dies within a short period. That sounds like a total spoiler, but it’s all in the story’s introduction. The book itself is about those twenty years on the island. If I had read this as a child, I think I would have loved it. As an adult, I kept waiting to learn about the brief time she spent in the States, but those details never came. It’s still an excellent story and one I’ll be gifting to my young reader friends.

This post originally appeared on Kate’s Point of View. © Kate. All rights reserved.

In 2013 I read 55 books and I was all “Whoa! That was a lot of books.” Then last year I read 81 books and I was like, “Um, maybe you need to get out more?” This year I’ve read 91 books and I have to say that I’m left with equal parts pride and embarrassment. The embarrassment is because I feel like maybe I spend a little too much time with my nose between the pages of books. But the pride… It helps me overcome any shame.

NINETY-ONE BOOKS!

If you’re looking for some books to read, here are my top 10 books for the year:

1. An Untamed State by Roxane Gay
2. The Architect’s Apprentice by Elif Shafak
3. Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children and Hollow City by Ransom Riggs
4. The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion
5. The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton
6. A Constellation of Vital Phenomena by Anthony Marra
7. The Circle by Dave Eggers
8. Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell
9. This Is Where I Leave You by Jonathon Tropper
10. Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America by Gilbert King

My full list, in chronological order for the year, is:

1. Bones Are Forever by Kathy Reichs
2. Bones of the Lost by Kathy Reichs
3. The Death of Santini: The Story of a Father and His Son by Pat Conroy
4. The Bone Season by Samantha Shannon
5. The Circle by Dave Eggers
6. The Monuments Men: Allied Heroes, Nazi Thieves, and the Greatest Treasure Hunt in History by Robert M. Edsel
7. Maine by J. Courtney Sullivan
8. Ham: Slices of a Life: Essays and Stories by Sam Harris
9. Spirals of Song and Other Poems by Emily H. Sturgill
10. A Dangerous Fortune by Ken Follett
11. A Long Way Down by Nick Hornby
12. The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion
13. Jackdaws by Ken Follett
14. Mrs. Lincoln’s Dressmaker by Jennifer Chiaverini
15. Winter’s Tale by Mark Helprin
16. The Hundred-Foot Journey by Richard C. Morais
17. The Real Thing by Brenda Jackson
18. Astonish Me by Maggie Shipstead
19. Take This Man: A Memoir by Brando Skyhorse
20. Steal the North by Heather Brittain Bergstrom
21. Whiteout by Ken Follett
22. You Should Have Known by Jean Hanff Korelitz
23. Love by the Morning Star by Laura L. Sullivan
24. He Texted: The Ultimate Guide to Dating in the Digital Era by Lisa Winning
25. The Yellow Birds by Kevin Powers
26. Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell
27. Let’s Pretend This Never Happened: A Mostly True Memoir by Jenny Lawson
28. Orphan Train by Christina Baker Kline
29. Kings of Brighton Beach Episode #1: Part One: Gangsters with Guns D.B. Shuster
30. Life After Life by Jill McCorkle
31. Stella Bain by Anita Shreve
32. Sisterland by Curtis Sittenfeld
33. Modigliani Scandal by Ken Follett
34. Where’d You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple
35. The Fourth Player by Marie Chow
36. Darkness Plays Favorites by Casey Renee Kiser
37. Pirate Latitudes by Michael Crichton
38. Hit Woman by Susan Hamilton
39. The Prince of Tides by Pat Conroy
40. Hatchet by Gary Paulsen
41. The Giver by Lois Lowry
42. Little Sisters by Stuart Perrin
43. The Vacationers by Emma Straub
44. Landline by Rainbow Rowell
45. Little Princes: One Man’s Promise to Bring Home the Lost Children of Nepal by Conor Grennan
46. Montana in A Minor by Elaine Russell
47. The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin
48. Cocoa at Midnight: The true story of my life as a housekeeper by Tom Quinn
49. The Third Twin by Ken Follett
50. A Constellation of Vital Phenomena by Anthony Marra
51. The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P. by Adelle Waldman
52. Never Mind Miss Fox: A Novel by Olivia Glazebrook
53. The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton
54. Sleep in Peace Tonight by James MacManus
55. 2 A.M. at The Cat’s Pajamas by Marie-Helene Bertino
56. The Museum of Intangible Things by Wendy Wunder
57. Someone by Alice McDermott
58. Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell
59. The Pink Suit by N.M. Kelby
60. The Underground Girls of Kabul: In Search of a Hidden Resistance in Afghanistan by Jenny Nordberg
61. This is Where I Leave You by Jonathon Tropper
62. A Study in Scarlet by Arhur Conan Doyle
63. While the Gods Were Sleeping: A Journey Through Love and Rebellion in Nepal by Elizabeth Enslin
64. The Valley of Fear by Arthur Conan Doyle
65. Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri
66. The Tennis Partner by Abraham Verghese
67. The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle
68. Looking for Alaska by John Green
69. The Girl Who Fell from the Sky by Heidi W. Durrow
70. Reconstructing Amelia by Kimberly McCreight
71. A Woman of Substance by Barbara Taylor Bradford
72. An Abundance of Katherines by John Green
73. Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs
74. Hollow City by Ransom Riggs
75. A Letter to My Cat: Notes to Our Best Friends by Lisa Erspamer
76. Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America by Gilbert King
77. When Zachary Beaver Came to Town by Kimberly Willis Holt
78. Gathering Blue by Lois Lowry
79. The Magicians by Lev Grossman
80. The Mill River Redemption: A Novel by Darcie Chan
81. The Miniaturist by Jessie Burton
82. Messenger by Lois Lowry
83. Edge of Eternity by Ken Follett
84. An Untamed State by Roxane Gay
85. Behind the Music: A Selection of Short Stories by Karen J. Mossman
86. Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead by Sara Gran
87. The Architect’s Apprentice by Elif Shafak
88. Wait for Signs: Twelve Longmire Stories by Craig Johnson
89. Nora Webster by Collm Tóibín
90. Bones Never Lie by Kathy Reichs
91. If I Fall, If I Die by Michael Christie

This post originally appeared on Kate’s Point of View. © Kate. All rights reserved.