Sophinisba Solis (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
sophinisba) wrote2021-03-17 07:59 pm
sophinisba) wrote2021-03-17 07:59 pm
Entry tags:
Books on a Wednesday!
I have again gone seven weeks since my last book post but am managing to post on a Wednesday! I have finished just three books since then, one I won't talk about and also Educated by Tara Westover which was good and Pachinko by Min Jin Lee which was GREAT.
Books I have read parts of but may not finish include Crooked Hallelujah by Kelli Jo Ford, The Mothers by Brit Bennett, and an audiobook of Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison.
And now, a cut tag:
Like I mentioned before, I listened to an audiobook of Educated, and this took a long time. I enjoyed the beginning about her extremely unusual childhood a lot, and also the middle about her first years at college, the huge difficulties she had in getting along with other students and keeping up with classes when her background and frame of reference were so different from everyone else's. For example, she had never heard of the Holocaust, and didn't know that some classes were aimed at seniors and others at first-year students. I teach at an elite university but have many first-generation students and always appreciate learning about what things are like for them.
Around this time the audiobook came due at the library so I returned it, and then a while later I got it out and listened to the rest. In the last third or so the narrator was in grad school and I got somewhat frustrated about how she wrote about her professors being blown away by her brilliance. A lot of the story was also about confronting men in her family about abuse, and these parts were less relatable to me, and I felt very impatient, but I did finish it.
A week or two ago B told me she had started reading this book and then a couple days ago she said she'd finished it, and I was confused and vaguely annoyed that she'd gone through it so quickly. :P
I had to wait a while to get Pachinko back from the library but I did and I continued it and I loved all the characters and I cried when I read the last chapter last night. It was great.
I was also impressed to read the acknowledgements at the end of the book. Min Jin Lee said she'd first had the idea for the novel in college when she went to a talk about Koreans in Japan, and she'd written versions of fiction about it that no one wanted to read, and she'd basically given up on it all, become a lawyer, become a mom, done other things with her life but then got back into fiction writing again and one a grant that allowed her to hire a babysitter so she could do more research again, and later her husband got a job in Japan so she was able to go live there also and interview people about their experiences and history. I think this all surprised me a bit in my head I'd associated her with the Ghanaian American author Yaa Gyasi, who'd started researching and writing the amazing novel Homegoing when she was in college, and then published it a short time later. But Min Jin Lee took like thirty years to write Pachinko and the result is similarly amazing. It makes me think that a lot more fellowships and money in general should be given to like, people who are currently busy with childcare and other responsibilities, so that they could create more great art.
I read some of Crooked Hallelujah by the Cherokee writer Kelli Jo Ford. The first part was about a teenage girl who gets pregnant, and it's an especially difficult situation because her mom is a religious fanatic. This story was pretty interesting but I couldn't really connect with the teenness of it all. Then there was a jump forward in time and I was sort of confused and the library took it back and I probably won't request it again.
I read like maybe a third of The Mothers by Brit Bennett, whose more recent book The Vanishing Half I recently read and adored. The first part of The Mothers is also about a teenager with a religious parent who gets pregnant. I like the writing a lot, am not as into the story as I was with The Vanishing Half, but will probably check it out again soon.
I had this audiobook of Song of Solomon out from the library in between my two periods of listening to Educated. I couldn't believe how short it was compared to Educated (or the other audiobook I've listened to in the last year, Michelle Obama's Becoming); I'd read this book twice when I was a teenager and didn't remember it being unusually short. I was surprised and excited to realize it was Morrison herself doing the reading, as I'd expected she'd be too fancy for that. I'd seen her speak once when I was in college and some other times on TV and it was really kind of neat to hear her voice, I felt like I was listening to something especially precious now that she's gone. She didn't sound like the professional narrator of that other book, like she read rather quickly and breathed in some unexpected places, and the recording just sounded sort of old-timey and physical, like besides hearing her breaths I sometimes thought I could hear a brush of her arm or her clothes. It was also weird though, I'm not sure if parts of this recording somehow got damaged or what, but at a few random places she'd cut out and it would switch to this other voice that sounded like a white dude! The real reason I couldn't finish it though was that there were no chapter breaks. This was something else I didn't remember from when I had read it before. But like, her sentences are complicated, and listening to it takes a lot of concentration, and when I had no idea how long I'd be listening before getting to a good stopping place I just couldn't handle it. Maybe I will get the written book out soon and try finishing it that way.
My library hold on Yaa Gyasi's new book Transcendent Kingdom is coming up soon and I will probably like that though I expect not as much as Homegoing because it's again about very religious Christians and that's just not really my interest. But what a good writer!
And I'm reading some things for work, but otherwise I don't know what I will read next.
Books I have read parts of but may not finish include Crooked Hallelujah by Kelli Jo Ford, The Mothers by Brit Bennett, and an audiobook of Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison.
And now, a cut tag:
Like I mentioned before, I listened to an audiobook of Educated, and this took a long time. I enjoyed the beginning about her extremely unusual childhood a lot, and also the middle about her first years at college, the huge difficulties she had in getting along with other students and keeping up with classes when her background and frame of reference were so different from everyone else's. For example, she had never heard of the Holocaust, and didn't know that some classes were aimed at seniors and others at first-year students. I teach at an elite university but have many first-generation students and always appreciate learning about what things are like for them.
Around this time the audiobook came due at the library so I returned it, and then a while later I got it out and listened to the rest. In the last third or so the narrator was in grad school and I got somewhat frustrated about how she wrote about her professors being blown away by her brilliance. A lot of the story was also about confronting men in her family about abuse, and these parts were less relatable to me, and I felt very impatient, but I did finish it.
A week or two ago B told me she had started reading this book and then a couple days ago she said she'd finished it, and I was confused and vaguely annoyed that she'd gone through it so quickly. :P
I had to wait a while to get Pachinko back from the library but I did and I continued it and I loved all the characters and I cried when I read the last chapter last night. It was great.
I was also impressed to read the acknowledgements at the end of the book. Min Jin Lee said she'd first had the idea for the novel in college when she went to a talk about Koreans in Japan, and she'd written versions of fiction about it that no one wanted to read, and she'd basically given up on it all, become a lawyer, become a mom, done other things with her life but then got back into fiction writing again and one a grant that allowed her to hire a babysitter so she could do more research again, and later her husband got a job in Japan so she was able to go live there also and interview people about their experiences and history. I think this all surprised me a bit in my head I'd associated her with the Ghanaian American author Yaa Gyasi, who'd started researching and writing the amazing novel Homegoing when she was in college, and then published it a short time later. But Min Jin Lee took like thirty years to write Pachinko and the result is similarly amazing. It makes me think that a lot more fellowships and money in general should be given to like, people who are currently busy with childcare and other responsibilities, so that they could create more great art.
I read some of Crooked Hallelujah by the Cherokee writer Kelli Jo Ford. The first part was about a teenage girl who gets pregnant, and it's an especially difficult situation because her mom is a religious fanatic. This story was pretty interesting but I couldn't really connect with the teenness of it all. Then there was a jump forward in time and I was sort of confused and the library took it back and I probably won't request it again.
I read like maybe a third of The Mothers by Brit Bennett, whose more recent book The Vanishing Half I recently read and adored. The first part of The Mothers is also about a teenager with a religious parent who gets pregnant. I like the writing a lot, am not as into the story as I was with The Vanishing Half, but will probably check it out again soon.
I had this audiobook of Song of Solomon out from the library in between my two periods of listening to Educated. I couldn't believe how short it was compared to Educated (or the other audiobook I've listened to in the last year, Michelle Obama's Becoming); I'd read this book twice when I was a teenager and didn't remember it being unusually short. I was surprised and excited to realize it was Morrison herself doing the reading, as I'd expected she'd be too fancy for that. I'd seen her speak once when I was in college and some other times on TV and it was really kind of neat to hear her voice, I felt like I was listening to something especially precious now that she's gone. She didn't sound like the professional narrator of that other book, like she read rather quickly and breathed in some unexpected places, and the recording just sounded sort of old-timey and physical, like besides hearing her breaths I sometimes thought I could hear a brush of her arm or her clothes. It was also weird though, I'm not sure if parts of this recording somehow got damaged or what, but at a few random places she'd cut out and it would switch to this other voice that sounded like a white dude! The real reason I couldn't finish it though was that there were no chapter breaks. This was something else I didn't remember from when I had read it before. But like, her sentences are complicated, and listening to it takes a lot of concentration, and when I had no idea how long I'd be listening before getting to a good stopping place I just couldn't handle it. Maybe I will get the written book out soon and try finishing it that way.
My library hold on Yaa Gyasi's new book Transcendent Kingdom is coming up soon and I will probably like that though I expect not as much as Homegoing because it's again about very religious Christians and that's just not really my interest. But what a good writer!
And I'm reading some things for work, but otherwise I don't know what I will read next.