Sophinisba Solis (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
sophinisba) wrote2021-01-27 10:24 pm
sophinisba) wrote2021-01-27 10:24 pm
Entry tags:
Books!
My last books post was, I guess, seven weeks ago! Today has not been a great day but I like posting about books on Wednesdays for old times' sake!
I did finish two books I was reading then, Roza, tumba, quema by Claudia Hernández and Leave the World Behind by Rumaan Alam, and another I mentioned, The Pull of the Stars by Emma Donoghue. I did not love any of these books. I was fascinated by Roza, tumba, quema at first but it got harder to follow as it went on and I had trouble keeping track of the characters. I love Rumaan Alam as a talker, having heard him a fair amount on podcasts and once at an author event where I saw him talk, but the writing in this book I did not love. It seemed kind of arch, as if he looked down on the characters a bit.
The narrative voice in The Pull of the Stars was also different and off-putting to me in a different way, it's narrated by the main character in first person, past tense, but with a lot of explaining for the reader that just felt unnatural and jarring to me. I got this out because I had really liked Donoghue's novel Room (and also the movie based on it) and because I thought a book about a nurse in the 1918 flu pandemic sounded interesting. I wasn't really prepared for a book about a nurse in a maternity ward in the flu pandemic. There were, like, A LOT of details about a lot of different ways a pregnancy or birth can go wrong. IDK I couldn't really look away though and I read it and I guess it was pretty good.
Then I read The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett! This book!! Was so good!!! I had read the first couple chapters a few months earlier and been really impressed with its beautiful sentences. It was (in the earlier chapters) about a family of light-skinned Black people in Louisiana including two twin sisters, one of whom decides to pass as white and leaves the rest of the family behind. So I was enjoying this but not reading a lot, not super into it. It reminded me a teeny bit of Toni Morrison and maybe that made me feel like I was doing homework, though I've read a bunch of Toni Morrison books and only one of them was actually for school! Anyway the library took it back and I waited for a bit.
Then I got it back and started this other chapter about another part of the family, in another part of the country, some years later, and in this part there was also a trans character, and then it moved around a lot, sometimes back and forth in time, with these different generations, but always with empathy for all the characters, and wow I enjoyed it so much. At this end I cried.
I have been trying to recommend this book to all my friends. I think! Wouldn't everybody love this book! One friend, who is a twin, said it has been recommended to her a lot and she intends to read it soon. Another said yes she loved it. My mom said yes she read it and hated it! So did my dad! WTF Mom and Dad?! Anyway it is great.
Now I am reading Pachinko by Min Jin Lee and I love it also! It is also about a family and takes place over a few generations, but it's told in a more straightforward way, moving forward in time. I mentioned in a previous post that this book reminded me a bit of Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi and that is still true, both for the historical scope and because of the simple but beautiful style, and the feeling that this narrator loves all these characters. I also love them!! I will still probably not finish it before the library takes it back in a week so I will wait a month or two for my next turn. My smart friend who loved The Vanishing Half also loved Pachinko and also so did my mom.
I am listening to an audiobook of Educated, a memoir by Tara Westover, who grew up in rural Idaho not going to school because her survivalist dad didn't trust the government, but then eventually left home to go to college and beyond. I had listened to a couple long interviews with the author when this came out a couple years ago so I had a general idea of the story, which helps because I sometimes have trouble following audiobooks –– that's why if I listen to them it's mostly either memoirs of people who's stories I know already, or fiction I've already read. This book is not read by the author but by a professional audiobook reader, and at first I found her use of different voices a little jarring but I came to like it all right. The book is tbh fascinating and very well written, though I'm a little impatient, it takes so long to listen to an audiobook.
Next on my list are Crooked Hallelujah by Kelli Jo Ford and an audiobook of Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison, which I've read twice, but both times were more than 20 years ago. o_0
Work just got busy again though so we'll see how that goes. It was nice to have a little more time to read this last month plus, even though my ability to concentrate is still garbage.
I did finish two books I was reading then, Roza, tumba, quema by Claudia Hernández and Leave the World Behind by Rumaan Alam, and another I mentioned, The Pull of the Stars by Emma Donoghue. I did not love any of these books. I was fascinated by Roza, tumba, quema at first but it got harder to follow as it went on and I had trouble keeping track of the characters. I love Rumaan Alam as a talker, having heard him a fair amount on podcasts and once at an author event where I saw him talk, but the writing in this book I did not love. It seemed kind of arch, as if he looked down on the characters a bit.
The narrative voice in The Pull of the Stars was also different and off-putting to me in a different way, it's narrated by the main character in first person, past tense, but with a lot of explaining for the reader that just felt unnatural and jarring to me. I got this out because I had really liked Donoghue's novel Room (and also the movie based on it) and because I thought a book about a nurse in the 1918 flu pandemic sounded interesting. I wasn't really prepared for a book about a nurse in a maternity ward in the flu pandemic. There were, like, A LOT of details about a lot of different ways a pregnancy or birth can go wrong. IDK I couldn't really look away though and I read it and I guess it was pretty good.
Then I read The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett! This book!! Was so good!!! I had read the first couple chapters a few months earlier and been really impressed with its beautiful sentences. It was (in the earlier chapters) about a family of light-skinned Black people in Louisiana including two twin sisters, one of whom decides to pass as white and leaves the rest of the family behind. So I was enjoying this but not reading a lot, not super into it. It reminded me a teeny bit of Toni Morrison and maybe that made me feel like I was doing homework, though I've read a bunch of Toni Morrison books and only one of them was actually for school! Anyway the library took it back and I waited for a bit.
Then I got it back and started this other chapter about another part of the family, in another part of the country, some years later, and in this part there was also a trans character, and then it moved around a lot, sometimes back and forth in time, with these different generations, but always with empathy for all the characters, and wow I enjoyed it so much. At this end I cried.
I have been trying to recommend this book to all my friends. I think! Wouldn't everybody love this book! One friend, who is a twin, said it has been recommended to her a lot and she intends to read it soon. Another said yes she loved it. My mom said yes she read it and hated it! So did my dad! WTF Mom and Dad?! Anyway it is great.
Now I am reading Pachinko by Min Jin Lee and I love it also! It is also about a family and takes place over a few generations, but it's told in a more straightforward way, moving forward in time. I mentioned in a previous post that this book reminded me a bit of Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi and that is still true, both for the historical scope and because of the simple but beautiful style, and the feeling that this narrator loves all these characters. I also love them!! I will still probably not finish it before the library takes it back in a week so I will wait a month or two for my next turn. My smart friend who loved The Vanishing Half also loved Pachinko and also so did my mom.
I am listening to an audiobook of Educated, a memoir by Tara Westover, who grew up in rural Idaho not going to school because her survivalist dad didn't trust the government, but then eventually left home to go to college and beyond. I had listened to a couple long interviews with the author when this came out a couple years ago so I had a general idea of the story, which helps because I sometimes have trouble following audiobooks –– that's why if I listen to them it's mostly either memoirs of people who's stories I know already, or fiction I've already read. This book is not read by the author but by a professional audiobook reader, and at first I found her use of different voices a little jarring but I came to like it all right. The book is tbh fascinating and very well written, though I'm a little impatient, it takes so long to listen to an audiobook.
Next on my list are Crooked Hallelujah by Kelli Jo Ford and an audiobook of Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison, which I've read twice, but both times were more than 20 years ago. o_0
Work just got busy again though so we'll see how that goes. It was nice to have a little more time to read this last month plus, even though my ability to concentrate is still garbage.