Gabi, the amazing girl you wish you knew in high school

I am not sure how I first heard about Isabel Quintero's novel, Gabi, A Girl in Pieces.  But whatever serendipitous circumstances finally worked to bring me and this book together, I'm grateful for them.  Gabi, A Girl in Pieces, is funny and heart-breaking and marvelous.

The book is written as a series of diary entries over Gabi's senior year of high school.  Gabi is an overweight Mexican-American girl in southern California.  Her father is a meth addict, her mom is a very traditional Mexican mother, her brother is angry, one of her best friends just came out and her other best friend is pregnant.  Through all this, Gabi applies to college, discovers a deep love for poetry, finds her own considerable creative genius, and deals with the complications of many boy problems.

I really loved reading this book.  Gabi is such a wonderful narrator.  She's smart, she's sassy, she's confident, she's loyal, and she's a great person with whom to spend a few hundred pages of teenage drama.  To give you a sense of her personality and why I would have loved to be her best friend in high school, here are a few quotes:

That's the magic of poetry - some gay Jewish poet wrote about people wasting away around him because of drugs, and I, a straight Mexican-American girl. know how he felt because I am seeing the same waste he witnessed over fifty years ago.  Ginsberg is talking about my dad in those first lines.  He didn't know it then, but he was. 

I feel bad about that, like I'm supposed to be lying in bed, distraught, eating an entire container of Chunky Monkey.  But I already did that last night.  And I think one night of crying for a guy I-think-I -really-like-but-am-not-so-sure-about-anymore is enough.

And my absolute favorite:

Then I looked myself straight in the eyes and said, "Gabi, get over it.  You look spectacular.  You look amazing, so stop your bitching or do something that makes you feel better."  I took a deep breath and took off my shorts and shirt and stepped out on that beach like I owned that shit and didn't give a fuck about all the skinny girls around me.  After a while, I didn't feel like an outsider and nobody made comments or even cared about what I looked like.  The other thing about being fat is that you spend too much damn time worrying about being fat and that takes time away from having fun.  But I decided today would be different.  And it was.

Gabi was such a breath of fresh air, and I loved her.  Quintero makes clear that Gabi is overweight and loves to eat, but she also makes clear that Gabi is extremely attractive to people.  She has no less than three guys after her over the course of this book, showing that even teenage guys are drawn to smart, confident women.  Gabi also is very secure in herself and her talent.  She has no issues with writing poetry and reciting it in front of other people.  You won't find long, angsty paragraphs here about not wanting other people to know about her family drama, or not wanting to attend an open mic night at a coffee shop because people won't think it's cool.  You'll find a girl who just STEALS THE SHOW.

It's because Gabi is such a fantastic narrator that this book doesn't ever get weighed down by all of the serious issues it confronts.  In some ways, it felt like Quintero tackled a bit too much in this book to give any one issue enough attention on its own.  But in other ways... maybe that's just what teenagers these days deal with all the time.

Quintero deftly juxtaposes Gabi's traditional upbringing and the expectations of her family against her newly-awakened feminism.  She does this with glorious references to feminist poetry, such as Sandra Cisneros' Loose Woman and Tracie Morris' Project Princess.  As someone who doesn't read a lot of poetry, all the references to poems in this book had me Googling all over the place, trying to find the poems that Gabi mentions so that I, too, can experience what she feels when she reads poetry.

There is so much more that is covered in this book; if I were to talk about all of it here, I'd be gushing on and on.  To me, Gabi's confidence and her budding feminism butting heads against her upbringing were the most memorable.  But there's something for everyone here, something that will resonate with you and remind you of your own childhood and your own insecurities and how you can face them.  Personally, I haven't owned a swimsuit in I don't know how many years.  (Mostly because I really don't like beaches, but also because, well, swimsuits are a pretty stressful piece of clothing to buy.)  But after reading Gabi's comments that I quoted above, I realize that, damnit, I can wear a swimsuit if I want to, and there's no reason to deny myself an enjoyable experience on the off-chance that someone else who probably sucks, anyway, will judge the way I look.  So there!

Seriously, read this book.

Even witches go through an awkward stage

Jillian Tamaki is an author whose work I really enjoy, and her newest book, SuperMutant Magic Academy, is no exception.

I didn't know a lot about this book heading into it except that it was about mutant humans going through high school.  I was under the impression it would be one story with many characters involved in a big plot.  That's not at all how the book is set up, though.  SuperMutant Magic Academy started as a web comic, so it's written in vignettes that are usually only one page long, much like a comic strip.  Through these, Tamaki provides funny, sweet, and realistic snapshots of high school life.  The characters interact with each other in the classroom, at lunch, in their dorms, and elsewhere.  So many lovely moments in so little space.

What is great about this book is that you can enjoy it just as much by reading one or two pages at a time or by reading it in much bigger chunks.  I would love a copy for my bookshelf; I imagine myself strolling over, picking the book up, choosing a page at random, and then smiling at the humor, poignancy and all-around wonderfulness that comes through on that page.  And then I'd probably read the next page, and then the next, and continue standing there, smiling, until my legs began to complain.

This book is nothing like other fantasy books set in boarding schools.  In fact, it's nothing like fantasy books.  It's more like Calvin & Hobbes.  The characters happen to be magical, but the magic is in zero ways important to the stories that are told (except sometimes to add a dose of situational humor).  Instead, what's important is a group of teenagers nearing the end of their time at high school, making and keeping friendships, understanding truths about themselves and others, learning about what is important to them, and dealing with the normal trials and tribulations of being a high schooler.  The characters are usually very fun and kind to each other; I especially liked how very popular, beautiful, and good-at-everything Wendy always chastised her friends for being unkind to anyone else.  She is the sort of person we all want to be friends with.  And the casual acceptance the characters have for their gay classmates is quite heartening as well.  It's not a big deal.  It doesn't define them.

But even kind people make mistakes sometimes or can be cruel without meaning to, especially at an age when we are all so insecure and worried about our looks and what other people think of us.  That comes through a lot, too, particularly with the character of Frances, the artsy girl that no one quite "gets" (even though she is dating the biggest jock at school).

It's just a really lovely book.  I highly recommend it!

It's been a long time, I shouldn't have left you without a dope beat to step to

Well, hello again.

It's been a few months.  Sorry about that.  I basically just got through Diversiverse and then disappeared.

I don't know why 2015 has been such a difficult reading year for me, but it has been an upward battle.  The whole year, I have struggled to finish books.  I have marked more books as DNF this year than ever before.  Often, I don't even bother marking books as DNF.  I start a book and enjoy it for 50 pages or so, and then then never get back to it.  Other books, I just don't even start.  I now have a long walk to work instead of a long car ride, and for some reason, this has severely impacted my ability to concentrate on audiobooks.

All of which goes to say - it's not that I dropped blogging after Diversiverse, it's that I haven't finished a book for a really long time.  Or at least, not a book that I feel the need to talk about.

But I am trying to be more disciplined now.  As Care and Maree know from our Twitter conversations, classical music helps me concentrate while reading.  So now my reading is accompanied by Spotify's classical music selection.  (And, as you may see on my Twitter feed, I have a growing and uncontrollable love for puns that feature classical music composers and opera titles.  Who knows where I will go next?)

I finished reading Terry Pratchett's last book, The Shepherd's Crown.  This was difficult for all of the reasons (or lack of reasons) I stated above, with the addition of being a particularly poignant and  emotional read for me as a huge Terry Pratchett fan.  Actually, I started reading The Shepherd's Crown quite some time ago, but the first chapter had me weeping so much, I had to step away from the book. I mean, it's an AMAZING chapter, but goodness.  It was rough.

I'm not going to lie, it's basically impossible for me to objectively review The Shepherd's Crown.  I absolutely adore Tiffany Aching, I love her loyalty and her Beyonce-level Sasha Fierce-ness, I adore the Nac Mac Feegles, and pretty much everything about this series.  I may be putting things into my reading of this book that Pratchett never meant to be there, but the whole story felt so much like goodbye to me that it was almost too much.  Tiffany's absolute passion for her home and her people felt to me like Pratchett was writing a love letter to England and all he feels for his country.  The absolutely beautiful section where DEATH makes his appearance after so long was like a goodbye to all Discworld fans.  And the battle scene at the end and all that happens there - it was almost like Terry Pratchett for a minute took off his mask and showed us just how terrible he thinks the world is.  And then he reminded us that, even if the world really is terrible, some people work so hard to make it better.  I don't know if I can think of any author who has had as much of an impact on me as Terry Pratchett has.  I said as much in my post about his death.

I have seriously considered giving up blogging and putting up the "CLOSED" sign on this little piece of the internet.  It's a lot of work, and I don't know that I have much to say that is particularly new or relevant.  But then I read something like Terry Pratchett's last book, and it's not as though The Shepherd's Crown was the greatest book ever written, or even the greatest book Terry Pratchett has ever written, or even the best book in the Tiffany Aching series.  But, reading it, I wanted so much to talk to all of you about it, and ALL THE FEELS it gave me.

I am not being very coherent.  I am out of practice.  But.  Well.  I miss you.  I miss talking to you, and I miss discussing books, and I miss chatting on Twitter, and I miss emailing back and forth about plot developments and events and quotes that we don't share on our blogs because they cold be spoiler-y, but that we want to share with each other because we read the same book and we were affected by that book, and we want to share that experience with each other.  That's what blogging is for me!  No matter how sporadically I may do it.  

The consequences of swiping left

I waited (im)patiently for weeks to get Aziz Ansari's book Modern Romance on audiobook from the library.  Rather than going the route most comedians take, of writing about how they got their start, or basically writing a stand-up routine down on paper and selling it as a book, Ansari decided to do some research on modern dating.  And, luckily for us, he shared his research and findings with us in a really entertaining book.

I specifically wanted the audiobook version of this one because Ansari narrates it himself.  While he engages in some good-natured ribbing at the beginning and the end of the book about how lazy people are if they listen to audiobooks rather than actually reading books, I would say that it's absolutely worth it to go for the audio here.  Ansari is a great narrator, and he also hilariously gives everyone quoted in this book a really strong southern accent, which made the book even more entertaining to me.  That said, there are a lot of photos and graphs that I missed out on in the audiobook version, so just keep that in mind.  I didn't really feel like I missed much, but then I don't know how amazing those graphs were, so I could be wrong.

Ansari teamed up with a sociologist and conducted a lot of focus groups and online discussions around the world to populate this book, and the result is really interesting.  As a single woman in my early 30s, I'm right around the same age of Ansari and I found a lot of the insights he shared to be very relevant to my life and my experiences.  He did make sure to talk with people who are older and younger than me, though, so I think that you would find the book beneficial regardless of your age or relationship status.

Ansari discusses how Tinder has moved from a hook-up app to one that people use for legitimate dating purposes, the rise and prevalence of sexting (particularly among younger people, who apparently do it ALL THE TIME), the way people use their phones and text conversations as crutches vs actually talking to someone, how complicated it is nowadays to actually schedule a date, and mostly, how people feel so spoiled for choice in dating that they really never want to get to know anyone.

One thing that stood out most to me was that most people these days will go on a date or two with a person, decide that person is boring or weird or awkward, and then end it.  (I myself am very guilty of this behavior.)  However, you can't really tell what a person is really like or how much of an outlier a particular comment was until you know a person a bit better.  So he said rather than go on a lot of first and second dates, maybe we should stick it out to the fifth or sixth date with a person and we'd probably like them a lot more.  I found this a very refreshing take on dating (though I admit it's hard to get excited about someone that you already think is boring after date 2), so I think I may try it.

Ansari also shared his own dating experiences, and how he has moved from casual dating to now living with his girlfriend.  It was really nice to hear from a guy just how excited he was to find someone he wanted to commit to, and all the steps along the way it took for him to get there.  It added a lot to the book, and I'm glad he included his personal stories here.

If you're single now or have ever been single, I highly recommend this book as a fun and insightful look at dating now and in the past.  It's a great way to put your experience into perspective and realize that it's really hard out there for everyone, not just you!

OMG, Asian-themed fantasy is so, so good!

About a month ago on Twitter, a bunch of us were talking about this amazing-sounding new book that comes out later this year, Sorcerer to the Crown.  It's by Zen Cho, and the quote about the book that got me salivating is from Naomi Novik, who says:

An enchanting cross between Georgette Heyer and Susanna Clarke, full of delights and surprises. Zen Cho unpins the edges of the canvas and throws them wide.

Sign.  Me.  Up!  This book is pretty much guaranteed to be on my #Diversiverse reading list this year, once I get around to promoting #Diversiverse.  (It will coincide with Banned Books Week, since so many books by POC are banned, so it's the last week of September, if you want to plan ahead.)

Anyway, after learning about Sorcerer to the Crown, I pretty much wanted to read everything else Zen Cho has written, and so I bought her short story collection, Spirits Abroad.  And while I think some of the cultural references went over my head, I AM SO EXCITED to read Sorceror to the Crown because I loved so much about this collection of stories!  What Aliette de Bodard did for me in science fiction - feminizing, globalizing it - Zen Cho is doing for me in fantasy.

The stories in Spirits Abroad cover a wide range of topics, from a vampire's first love to an old woman's remembrances of lost love, from an immigrant's desperation to fit in at school to a sister sprouting into a house, each and every one is fresh, original, and so full of wonderful depth.

I loved the way Cho infused every story with Malaysian folklore and history, and then helpfully provided author's notes for every story in which she explained the basis for the magical beings and events that took place.  And it's not like all of her stories were set in Malaysia or some small village, either.  Some of them revolve around a lion dance troupe-slash-ghost buster unit in the UK (and those stories are GREAT), and one is set on the moon.  But the way Cho brings her culture into each story, even if it's just a bunch of kids who traveled to English boarding school with sriracha in their suitcases (YES, I totally have done that before myself!), is great.  The dialect, the characters, the magical realism, it's all so different than anything I've read before, and I just loved everything about it.  It truly is one of those instances where you get a peek behind the curtain at everything that a more diverse publishing world can provide to us, and it's such an exhilarating, exciting peek.

I don't think I have a favorite story.  I would say that almost every story had truly funny bits - like the dragon who falls in love with a very practical woman in London, or the text messages two bystanders exchange while an old woman confronts her former lover in a very public space.  Some of them were heartbreaking, like the story about a girl and her sister and the home they have made for themselves, and the one about a lonely girl who is willing to sacrifice everything for a wish.  All of them speak to Cho's originality and depth of talent, and I am so excited to read more from her.  I cannot wait for Sorceror to the Crown to come out (September 1st!).  But until it's available, I highly encourage you to check this short story collection out.  It's so fun and so great, and I hope you'll enjoy it as much as I did.

Review-itas: Books for which I'm late to the party

Based on everyone 2014 Best Of lists, I am on the second half of the bell curve on reading these books.  Therefore, I'll just give you a quick recap of my thoughts, and maybe these will serve as reminder to you about them, in case you were thinking of checking one or the other or both of them out!

The Martian, by Andy Weir.  Thanks so much to Trisha at eclectic/eccentric for lending me her copy of this audiobook!  As she promised, the audiobook is really good!

The book is about Mark, an astronaut who accidentally gets left behind on Mars after a wind storm (Home Alone x bazillion, right?).  He is really quite upbeat about the whole situation, and when NASA understands what happened, the whole world works together to try and bring Mark home.

My favorite part of this book was the gallows humor that Mark displays through its entirety.  We get to know him through his log entries, and you can just tell that he has many frustrating, painful, weeping moments, but he does not share any of that on the log.  He's upbeat and positive and really, really funny, and it's just so heart-warming to hear.  And then all the people working to save him, too - also very heart-warming.

Sometimes, I felt like the language was a little too technical for my tastes, but at the same time, I thought that the technical aspects were really fascinating.  I don't think I fully comprehended just how inhospitable a place Mars is.  Mark went around wearing his space suit pretty much everywhere.  And I can't imagine that was very comfortable.

One thing really annoyed me about this audiobook (and I admit that it annoyed me a lot).  Pretty much everyone with a non-Anglo name got a foreign accent.  There was one German astronaut, so I understood giving him a German accent.  But there was a main character who was ethnically Indian and a side character who was ethnically Asian, and both of them had very stereotypical accents.  Even though there was nothing in the story that implied that they hadn't been born in America.  And, in fact, their phrasing and language made it pretty clear (to me, at least) that they were American and therefore would have had American accents.

To be fair, there were also stereotypical Texan accents for people from Houston.  But that's just as annoying!  Just because someone lives in Texas now doesn't mean they have a Texas accent!  And the Indian guy lives in Houston, too - why didn't he have a Texan accent?

So, yes, that frustrated me.  But truly, the narrator did a great job of capturing Mark's voice.  And the story is really fun and enjoyable to read.  So don't let that turn you off!

Bad Feminist, by Roxane Gay.  This collection of essays was very entertaining to read via audiobook.  My only problem with books like this one, in which strong feminist women speak their mind about the world-at-large and women's rights specifically is that I often think they are preaching to the choir.  Actually, calling that a problem with the books is wrong.  There's nothing wrong with the books.  It's more that I get so riled up and very, "Amen, sistah!"

But then I realize that probably the people whose minds I want to change and whose minds the author wants to change are not reading this book, and I feel quite sad.

Maybe I'm wrong, though!  In which case, I think Gay's collection is a good addition to any bookshelf.  I liked some essays more than others, which is only to be expected.  My favorite was about how people today expect to find characters in the books they read "likable," especially female characters, and how flawed that approach to reading is.  I took this essay to heart because I'll often finish a book and think - great writing, but GOSH, those characters were horrible!  And my enjoyment will be less than if I liked the characters.  But as Gay points out, the point of a story isn't only to write about you and your friends, it's to take you outside of your realm of experience.  And so we should not look only for likable characters, we should look for great characters and stories that move us.  I really took this advice to heart, and I plan to be much more aware of my reaction to stories and characters in future.

There were many other wonderful essays in this collection, and I'm sure if you read it, you might go home with very different takeaways than me.  But that's much more a positive than a negative!  If you've read this collection, what do you remember most vividly about it?

Review-itas: Life through the 20th century

Bud, Not Buddy, by Christopher Paul Curtis, is about a 10-year-old orphan boy living through the Great Depression in Michigan.  Bud's mother passed away when he was six and he never knew his father.  But in his suitcase filled with his most prized possessions, he has fliers that his mother saved over the years.  The fliers show a jazz band, and Bud's sure that his father is in that band, so he sets off to go find him.

I read Curtis' The Mighty Miss Malone earlier this year and quickly decided that I should read all of his other books, on audiobook if possible.  Bud, Not Buddy is my second Curtis book and Deza Malone even has a cameo!

I like the way Curtis writes about a black child's experience of the Great Depression.  While the Great Depression was difficult for everyone, it was particularly hard on people of color who were passed over for jobs, often couldn't own property, and were discriminated against in many ways.  I think Curtis does really well in bringing these important facts to life in ways that would make children curious to learn more and have a discussion with their parents or a teacher about how people experience the same world differently.

As with The Mighty Miss Malone, I liked how Curtis showed examples of different family structures.  Bud is an orphan but has many happy memories of growing up with a single mom.  He meets a stranger who is a proud father of a growing (and very fun) family, and a jazz band that acts as a family.  While I didn't love Bud, Not Buddy as much as I did The Mighty Miss Malone, I did enjoy learning even more about the Great Depression and am looking forward to Curtis' perspective on other important historical events in American history.

Jacqueline Woodson's memoir in free verse, Brown Girl Dreaming, is set in the 1960s and moves from Ohio to South Carolina to New York.  I did this book on audio.  I do better with poetry in audio since I don't worry so much about whether I am getting the pacing and the rhythm right.  Like pretty much everyone else, I loved it.

Woodson's stories tell of her early childhood growing up during a tumultuous time in American history, struggling with school, and falling in love with words and the art of story-telling.  I wish I had read this in physical form because the poetry is stunning.  I love the way Woodson confused facts and stories - she would hear something and then immediately incorporate that fact into a story about herself.  It wasn't lying, it was learning the art of the story, and she excelled at it.  This excerpt sums up very well the way I felt reading this book - I didn't want it to end, either:

“I am not my sister. 
Words from the books curl around each other
make little sense
until
I read them again
and again, the story
settling into memory. Too slow my teacher says.
Read Faster.
Too babyish, the teacher says.
Read older.
But I don't want to read faster or older or
any way else that might
make the story disappear too quickly from where
it's settling
inside my brain,
slowly becoming a part of me. 
A story I will remember 
long after I've read it for the second, third, 
tenth, hundredth time.” 

Aya:  Life in Yop City, by Marguerite Abouet and Clement Oubrerie is about 3 teenaged girls growing up in boom-time 1970s and 1980s Ivory Coast.  Aya is dedicated to going to medical school and doesn't let anything distract her from that goal.  Her friends Adjoua and Bintou, however, are more easily distracted.  The three of them deal with a lot of family drama (seriously - everything from paternity drama to secret second family drama to homosexuality and everything in between).

I am a little torn about this book.  On the surface, it's like a soap opera, with twists and turns on every level.  I don't know much at all about what life is like in a polygamous society, but it seems very complicated!  It was so interesting to learn about such a foreign culture, from the funeral parties to beauty pageant, from polygamy to witch doctors.  Everything was new to me!

On another level, though, the book touches on some really important themes.  For example, Aya wants to be a doctor, but her father just wants her to get married to some rich guy.  Aya's girlfriends seem sexually liberated and like they just want to have fun in life, but they both deal with very real consequences of their promiscuity while the men seem to get off pretty easily.  Aya's mother wrestles with the knowledge that her husband sleeps with many other women but gets very little sympathy because every man does that.  And the two gay men in the book struggle with their homosexuality and what to do, knowing that they will never be accepted.  And there are more examples of this - the beauty pageant, Aya's friend's impending marriage to a much older man, the catcalls every woman faces each time she walks down the street...

This is why I think perhaps the translation was a little lacking.  The translator did a great job of getting the humor and wit across in each panel, but it was harder for me to understand the deeper issues and social commentary that were under the current here.  Was Abouet just writing a fun drama?  Or did she have more meaningful messages that she wanted to share?  My opinion is that the latter is true (but I also probably look for feminism everywhere).  In any case, this book is worth reading just for the immersion in another culture and the fantastic, vivid art.  And, PS, it was made into an animated movie!  I'll have to try and find it (with subtitles).

Tina Fey. Like a Boss.

It seems like all comedians who just happen to be women are writing books these days, and I think it began with Tina Fey's Bossypants.  I enjoyed Mindy Kaling's Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? and have plans to read books by Lena Dunham, Amy Poehler, and maybe Caitlin Moran.

I anticipate all these books being hilarious and heartwarming, and I am sure I will finish all of them with, "Ohmigosh, if I knew [insert funny and awesome celeb name here] in real life, I just know we would be BFF!"

But, after reading Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? and Bossypants, I also wonder if all of them will kind of sound the same.  With Kaling and Fey, it was a general arc of - I am funny, I worked hard, and then I got my own sitcom!  Granted, this is simplifying a lot.  And the journey for both of them to get there was really fun to read, and they made some truly excellent points about being funny, being a woman who is funny, and working really hard to get what you want in life.  (Fey added in more about being married and having a kid, too.  Kaling wrote a bit about not fitting the prevailing tropes of beauty and becoming a style icon, anyway.)

It's possible I read Bossypants too soon after I read Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?  And therefore they felt pretty similar.  I think I was just hoping for a little more depth.  It's not like I think Fey should have to confront the fact that she's a comedian who happens to be female all the time, but she really DID break a ton of glass ceilings and stereotypes and so much more at Second City and Saturday Night Live and 30 Rock, and I wish she spent a little more time talking about that.  She basically says - if there's a jerk in your way, work around him or above him.  Which is good advice, I suppose, but how?  People like examples!  Points to follow.  And I feel like those were missing.  Especially since the name of the book is Bossypants, I excepted more about how Fey dealt with bosses and then her own style as a boss.

But I also don't think Tina Fey set out to write an inspirational memoir, or a how-to manual to women on how to succeed in business (by working really, really hard to supplement a natural talent).  I think she just wanted to share her story with us.  And I think she does really well there.  She's great when she talks about her sense of style, she's so approachable when she talks about her parenting style and how she deals with being a working mom, and she's really honest about her experiences as a young person coming to terms with her own prejudices.  And the whole way through, she's very, very funny.  (Especially when she responds to "fan mail" and internet comments.)

Also, the scenes Tina Fey describes between herself and Amy Poehler, and between Am Poehler and everyone else, are just fantastic.  I now plan to watch a whole lot of Parks & Rec.  And, obviously, read Amy Poehler's book.  Funny feminists #ftw!

Bringing South Asians into the American spotlight with humor, fashion, and awesome

Mindy Kaling's book Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?  (And Other Concerns) was not really on my radar.  I am not sure why, because I really love Mindy Kaling.  But I generally don't like memoirs, especially when they are written by people around my age - seriously, how much life experience do you really have to talk about?  But everyone told me Kaling's book was fun, and I like to support normal-sized, funny Indian women, so I went for it.  And I really enjoyed it!

Kaling basically points out in the introduction that there's no reason not to read this book - it's not a huge time investment, she's a fun person, and so the experience is likely to be positive on the whole.  This was pretty much rock-solid reasoning to me, so I was hers for the rest of the audiobook.  Kaling also narrates the audiobook, and sometimes addresses the audiobook readers directly about the audio version vs the physical version, which was also a lot of fun.

I really, really like Mindy Kaling for several reasons, and this book just gave me even more reasons to be a fan:

• As mentioned above, she is a woman who is happy with her weight and happens to be hilarious and Indian and famous, and this is rare and applause-worthy.
• There was a wonderful story in this book about how Mindy went to a 50 Most Beautiful People shoot of some sort, but all the dresses there were size 0s, and she is a size 8, and she went into the bathroom and cried a bit, and then realized that she is awesome, and then she went back out, made the tailor take her favorite dress and alter it by adding canvas to the back, and then she wore it for her photo shoot and OWNED it:

Source:  Time Inc.

• She is really smart, and she tells people who read her book that it is normal to want to be smart and that going to college will get you far in life.
• She embraces the fact that she had an awkward, dorky stage.  She was very quiet in high school, and she says that just because you are quiet and introverted in high school doesn't meant that you won't be witty and awesome later in life.
• She just seems like a really nice person who is close to her family and forms friendships for life.
• In the Q&A section at the back of the book, one of the questions she addresses is why she doesn't talk that much about the debate around how women aren't that funny.  She says that there isn't a debate because women are funny, and it's not worth giving that "debate" any credence whatsoever.

Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? didn't change my life or make me think very deeply about most things, but perhaps if you are a teenager, it will change yours.  I just find it so refreshing that Kaling is so honest and upfront about things in her life and in her past so that teenagers today don't have to think that life is supposed to be like Sweet Valley High for everyone, and that if it isn't, then you've failed.

Kaling also is super-fun to follow on Instagram.

Also, she is the new spokesperson for Google's Made With Code to get more girls into coding.  Read all about it here.  Apparently, she really is super-popular with the teenage girl set.

Seriously, I wish we had overlapping Indian social circles, but alas...  Really great book!  If you want something fun and motivating and girly and feminist, read it!

Review-itas: Spring Cleaning

It's that time again!  I've read a couple of audiobooks that I enjoyed but that I don't really want to write long reviews for.  So instead, here are a couple of short (well, short for me - I remain unrepentant about my verbosity) blurbs on them in case they rouse your interest.

Terry Pratchett's Raising Steam is the fortieth book in his Discworld series.  40th!!  It's hard to keep things fresh forty books into any series, but having a huge and varied cast of characters generally helps.  That said, even with a huge and varied cast, it's really hard to keep things fresh.  Raising Steam is about bringing trains to Ankh-Morpork and all of the drama this causes.

While I enjoyed some of the jokes and the fun of Raising Steam, I don't think it was a fantastic Discworld novel.  This could be because I read it on audiobook and I get the feeling that perhaps Discworld is not a world to visit via audio only as you miss a lot of the play on words that makes Pratchett so delightful.  Also, I don't much care for Moist Von Lipwig, the book's main character. I don't love the goblins, either, and they were also key characters.  But Vimes!  A very brief appearance by Angua!  A cameo by Death!  It was worth reading for those little bursts of fun alone.  And of course, Lord Vetinari, who still reigns supreme after many years on my list of Characters I Would Marry if They Actually Existed and Asked Me to Marry Them.  (I don't even remember one of the characters on that list, and I don't think I really would marry one of the other ones if it came right down to it, but Vetinari.  Yup.)

It's possible that Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita wins the contest for best covers world-wide through time.  They are almost all amazing and so evocative of the story.

Lolita is a very well-known story, so I won't spend much time going over the plot here.  Suffice it to say that it's about a man, Humbert Humbert, who realizes quite early on in life that he is attracted exclusively to pre-pubescent girls ("nymphets").  One day in a small New England town, he meets The One, a  12-year-old named Dolores, whom he nicknames Lolita, and he becomes obsessed with her, going to great lengths to keep her attached to him.

Nabokov was a fantastic writer and Lolita makes me want to read more of his novels.  Yes, the storyline is pretty off-putting.  But the language!  It's amazing.  Nabokov had SERIOUS skills, with a true ability to make you want to spend time with and get to know better some truly disturbing people.  (Also, Jeremy Irons narrated the audiobook I read, which only made Humbert Humbert more real.)

There is also so much in this novel about the fine line between love and obsession, the way we change from innocents to manipulators, the way so much about desire is linked to control, the way we can make memories reflect what we want them to.  There was much more about psychology and human interaction in this book than it gets credit for due to its notorious plot.  Defnitely plan to read more Nabokov in the future - what should I try next?

A frothy, fun romance for the landed gentry

I read my first book by Angela Thirkell, High Rising, about four years ago and thoroughly enjoyed it.  I had a lot of trouble finding any other books by her, though, so didn't get to any further in her series.  Luckily, though, I am now part of a large library system and I was able to find the second book in the series, Wild Strawberries.

As far as I know, Wild Strawberries does not have any of the same characters as High Rising, but it has been four years since I read the previous book, so it's possible that I just don't know.  This story is set in a Barsetshire country house, where the Leslies make their home.  The eldest son in the family was killed in World War I, and Lady Emily and her husband have not quite recovered.  But it's the Roaring 20s and the younger set is happy, optimistic and bright, as many wealthy young people often are.  Mary Preston comes to stay as a companion for Lady Emily, and we hear most of the story from her point of view.

Much like High Rising, this book was high on wit and humor, and pretty light on character development and plot.  Mary was naive and silly, though her elaborate imaginings about saving her love from a fire or nobly stepping aside so that another woman could be happy were fun to read.  We didn't get to know the hero very well at all, though we were assured throughout the novel that he was a very kind, intelligent, and thoughtful man.  I think I was turned against John fairly early, though, because he said a horribly racist thing in a quite off-hand manner.  And YES, I get the whole "Oh, Aarti, everyone was racist in the 20s!  Don't hold it against them!" thing (a comment that I find extremely offensive, so please don't say it to me).  But it's hard to give your heart and soul to a character in a book when he makes it so plain that he considers you beneath him.

What Thirkell excels at is in pointing out the foibles and inconsistencies of the British upper class with gentle irony.  One of the characters decides that he is a French royalist, but we find out a bit later that in previous years, he thought himself a Bolshevik, a Communist and all sorts of other things, so we know not to take him too seriously.  Another character, David, kind of wants a job, but he just can't take himself seriously enough to find one.  And then there are the women, all so vague and unaware of their surroundings that you can't help but think they must be addicted to laudanum or something.

This was a fun and light read (except for the racist bit), and while I don't think the characters were as realistic as I'd like, and the plot was pretty shaky, it was a good way to unwind after a tough day at work.  Recommended for fans of Wodehouse.

Oscar Wilde, Feminist

I think Oscar Wilde was a feminist!  Who knew?  Well, probably a lot of people, especially Jenny, but not me.

After reading a string of very depressing audiobooks, I really needed a pick-me-up.  Oscar Wilde was it!  I picked A Woman of No Importance because it was short and funny and witty and had an interesting title.  And it was a winner!

Apparently, this is not considered Wilde's best work.  I suppose that is reasonable as An Ideal Husband and The Importance of Being Earnest are quite good, but I really enjoyed A Woman of No Importance, too.  It hit on so many important themes and never once stopped being fun.  The audiobook I listened to was also excellent.  Honestly, I feel like a well-acted play on audio is a window to the golden age of radio, because the sound effects and the big casts and all that are just SO FUN to listen to.  I want to listen to more like this.

So, the play.  It is set in an English country house, and an up-and-coming young man from a middle-class background has just been offered a fantastic job as secretary to an aristocrat who is quite rich but also not a very good person.  People are pleased!  Except for the young man's mother, who does not want him to work for such a scoundrel.  And then there is the young man's lady love, who is a Puritan and just wants to make sure that if women suffer for their sins, men suffer, too.  But to be clear, everyone should suffer for wrong-doing.

You are likely to understand exactly what is going on in this book within about ten minutes (which is probably required, as the book was only about 1.5 hours long), and who cares?  It is so much fun to read and the one-liners are so excellent and the cast is so spot-on with their droll aristocratic ways and their earnest middle-class ways and their sincere American ways you can't help but love everything.

What was the BEST, though, was the way that Wilde pointed out the double standards that existed at the time.  There is, of course, the point that a man can be a complete screw-up and horrible person but people think he's da bomb diggity, anyway.  But if you're a woman and do the same thing, you are a social pariah and have to give up going out to parties and having fun and being a person.  I followed up A Woman of No Importance with Sheryl Sandberg's Lean In, and I must say, the two books have many parallels.  Basically, we all have different standards for men than women, and women suffer for that.  Men do, too, but to a lesser extent.  Certainly, the white male aristocrats suffer the least.

What I also loved about this book was the ending, though I suppose telling you why would be a spoiler  Just know, though, that it is a good one and not sappy and stupid and moralizing like many Victorian endings are.

So!  Read this!  Or better yet, watch it live or listen to it on audiobook, because that would be way better than reading stage directions, I assume.

Tolerance is more fun when packaged in a humorous book

I realized after reading The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry that I enjoy books with older protagonists.  They have a different perspective on life and what's important, and it's quite difficult in life to really get to know someone who is of a different generation (besides your parents and their friends), so reading about them is a good way to do so.

Major Pettigrew's Last Stand, by Helen Simonson, also features older protagonists.  There's Major Pettigrew himself, of course, a man probably in his late 60s/early 70s, and then all of his friends and acquaintance, most of whom are middle-aged or older, too.

Major Pettigrew's Last Stand is a very popular book, so I am not sure that I have much to add to the discussion that hasn't already been said.  Therefore, I'll focus on one aspect of the book in particular in this review - the portrayal of the kind, bumbling but narrow-minded villagers.

Major Pettigrew's Last Stand is set in what I assume is a not particularly diverse English village, where the Major has lived for much of his life.  There is a Muslim widow, Mrs. Ali, who works in the shop (she is of Pakistani descent, but was born and raised in England) with her nephew.  Major Pettigrew gets to know Mrs. Ali after his brother passes away, and the two become fast friends. 

Bridget is back, and exactly the same

When I heard that there was a new Bridget Jones book coming out, I was surprised but quite excited.  Then I found out that Mark Darcy was not in the book, and I was really upset.  Really upset.  Seriously, when a story is supposed to end in Happily Ever After, why can't people just leave well enough alone and let those characters actually live as they are supposed to?!

Alas.

Anyway, so going into Bridget Jones:  Mad about the Boy, I probably was not in the best state of mind.  I wanted to have read the book, but I wasn't particularly excited about actually reading it.  And the whole way through, I found it completely disappointing.

Bridget is now 51 years old, a single mom with two young children.  She is independently wealthy and she has no job, though sometimes she spends time working on screenplays.  Apparently, because of this screen play "work," she requires the services of a full-time nanny who is good at everything.  Her friends tell her it's time she starts dating again, so she goes on a self-improvement plan that involves losing 40 pounds in less time than it takes me to lose 4, joining Twitter, dating a man 20 years younger than her, and going out on the town wearing a short dress and thigh boots.  Also, she's still the mess that she was when she was 30.

I don't know many 50-year-old women except for those that I work with, and none of them are anything like Bridget.  The character has in zero ways developed, maturity-wise or organization-wise or any-wise, since the last book, even though she has two children and has gone through quite a bit.  Also her 30-year-old "toyboy" says things like, "I heart you" with true sincerity  which is completely ridiculous and hard not to laugh at and I know many 30-year-old men and none of them would ever use the phrase "I heart you" ever.

In reading reviews all over the internet, I see this book is very polarizing.  People either seem to love it or hate it.  I definitely fall into the latter camp.  I really missed Mark Darcy, and I know that life isn't always rainbows and unicorns and that we need to be more realistic about the fact that horrible things happen, but... well, Bridget doesn't have a very realistic life at all, so if you're going to be realistic about some things, then you should be realistic about the others, too.

It's unfortunate because there are some good nuggets here.  Bridget trying to re-enter the dating world at 50 years old with two young children is a situation that I think many women deal with, and to see her laugh and cry her way through can be quite fun at times.  And there are some really beautiful moments of being a single mom struggling through the holidays and trying to be brave for her children when she just wants to curl up and die.  There is heart in this book, but just not enough of it.

The idyllic life of rural Malaysia

Kampung Boy is a graphic novel I found while browsing the shelves of the library one day.  It caught my eye as it's about growing up in very small village in Malaysia and the author, Lat, is apparently one of Malaysia's best-loved comic artists.  This was enough to pull me in - I know nothing about life in Malaysia - and I settled in to a very happy hour reading about Lat's life.

The artwork in this book really matches the tone of the story.  It's light, episodic, and sweet, and the black and white images really lend themselves to bringing this to life.

Lat tells readers about everything from going fishing in the river to getting circumcised.  And his descriptions of his family members, while only telling us what is necessary for that particular story, make those characters come to life.  Helped, of course, by the illustrations.

There are hints of developments that reminded me of a very different book, 1493, as Lat described how much of the land around his kampung was being developed into rubber tree plantations.  There is also a large tin factory nearby, so life probably isn't as quiet as Lat's pictures make it out to be.

It's a very quick read, but no less enjoyable because of it, and I hope that I can find the sequel, in which Lat goes off to school in a bigger city.  I can see why this artist is so popular in his home country, and I'm glad that the book version of his comics is available for us in the West now, as he really is great fun.

Comments on identity from a Non-American Black

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Americanah was one of the best books I have read this year.  As usual with books like this, I have no idea how to review it in a manner that will do justice to the book.  I considered just doing a bunch of big !!!!!!!! and huge starburst graphics, but I don't know if that would make you guys go buy the book or think that it was a 1950s comic book about superheroes (WAM!!  POW!!).

So instead, I will try to tell you why you will want to read this book.  I will also refer you to Ana, as she is always far more articulate than I will ever be.

Americanah is about two young Nigerians.  Ifemelu is smart, driven and beautiful.  She has big plans for herself that include completing college, and she cannot do that in a Nigeria that is run by a military dictatorship.  So when she has the chance to go to America to study, she takes it, even though she is not quite sure how she will pay for it.  Obinze is her true love, and he's always been enthralled by America.  He, too, wants more from his life than Nigeria can offer, but when he is rejected time and again from study in the US, he goes illegally to the UK instead.  Years later, Obinze and Ifemelu are both back in Lagos, and reunite.

There were so many things to love about this book.  The writing style is at the top of my list of reasons.  Adichie is funny and irreverent.  She talks about Big Important Ideas, but does so in a way that doesn't push people away or isolate them. When she says something polarizing, she embeds it in a situation where you can quite understand where she is coming from.  I think this is very important.  You can never get inside someone else's head, and when the topic of conversation is something like race, you really can misconstrue everything, so having access to Ifemelu and Obinze's heads and the thought processes that lead to their statements is very valuable.  It helps that both of them are just genuinely good people, ones that you are happy to spend your time with.

Calliope --> Callie --> Cal, a gender journey

I finally read Jeffrey Eugenides' Middlesex!  I've had this book since 2007.  I'm quite proud of myself :-)  I didn't read the physical copy, though, but read the audiobook.  And the audiobook is fantastic!  I think that this is really an excellent method for me to get books that have been on my TBR list read more quickly, especially those that have been on it for years and years.  It's hard to find most of the old, more obscure ones on audiobook, but for books like Middlesex, which is quite popular, you're almost guaranteed to get a great narrator.

And that's exactly what happened here!  I really enjoyed this book.  It's just the sort of multi-generational saga that can be so grand and epic when done well.  I am so glad that I already own a copy of it so that I can hug it to my chest and sigh in satisfaction.

If there is an updated list of books with amazing opening lines, I would put Middlesex up there:

"I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day of January 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of 1974."

A gently satirical fairy tale

The Adventures of Gremlin, by DuPre Jones, is a fairy tale for adults.  Sort of.  It's quite short, with fantastic illustrations by Edward Gorey (who also did the cover of The Wolves of Willoughby Chase, another book I just recently finished reading).  It was written back in the 1960s, before the wave of alternate interpretations of fairy tales really came into vogue in the 1980s and 1990s (i.e., The Three Little Pigs from the Big Bad Wolf's point of view, Goldilocks from the side of the Three Bears, etc).  It's also very referential - if you catch them, there are tons of puns, lots of wordplay and all sorts of literary allusions.  It's kind of like Shrek, before Shrek was a twinkle in someone's eye.

It's about Gremlin, a woodcutter's daughter (of course), who decides to leave home with her brother, Zeppelin, to explore the world around them.  They promptly find a gingerbread house, are kidnapped by a giant, spend some time with a horrible (but hilarious) limerick writer, and then learn that Gremlin is actually the long-lost princess of the royal despots.  And of course, there's a little bit of (thoroughly unconventional) romance thrown in.

While this book won't make my list of favorites, it was a lot of fun to read.  It's exactly what I needed after a tough day of work.  I read it in one sitting (it's very short) while drinking some wine, and I can't say there is anything else I'd rather have been doing instead.  I loved how subversive the story was.  Instead of being a child of wonderful or evil parents, Gremlin's parents are just not even there.  And rather than the king and queen being kind and just, they are much as you'd expect absolute rulers to be.  And the knight in shining armor who is questing after the Holy Grail realizes that there are better things to seek out in life.  It's great fun!


I don't want to give too much away, but here's a limerick example:


A mariner bound for Good Hope
Found a shrimp at the end of a rope.
     Or was it the hemp
     At the end of the shrimp?
Is the question worth pondering?  Nope.


And some of the wordplay:

"Then I have no recourse but to have your head cut off."  The king turned to Gremlin.  "I hope you consider that sufficient punishment."
"Oh, yes," Gremlin said.  "That's capital."

Note:  I received a complimentary copy of this book to review from the publisher.

Gardening in Germany, interrupted by annoying house guests

Elizabeth and Her German Garden, by Elizabeth Von Arnim, is one of those books that so many people in blogosphere seem to have on their TBR lists.  Those that do not have already read it and hold it close to their hearts.  I got it on Project Gutenberg and read it while on vacation in Wyoming - not an area with many cultivated gardens, but one that is riotous with wildflowers during the summer.  And this seemed a fitting book to read there, as I often wandered (solitary) among the mountains and streams and flowers.

Elizabeth and Her German Garden is a semi-autobiographical story of von Arnim's time at her country home in Pomerania.  After living in the city for years and popping out three daughters in three years, von Armin comes across one of her husband's homes and falls in love with it.  She promptly moves there.  (It is unclear to me whether her husband moves there, too.)  And sets out on the tall task of creating a lovely garden for herself to enjoy.

Murphy's Law Applied to the Life of a NYC Busboy

Poor Johnny Hiro.  He's just trying to make ends meet, living with his gorgeous girlfriend in a tiny Brooklyn apartment, working as a busboy at a sushi restaurant, and genuinely trying to stay out of trouble.  But trouble just seems to find Johnny.  First a giant lizard snatches his girlfriend up from their apartment (causing extensive property damage while doing so).  Then he's chased by crazed fishmongers.  And barely escapes from angry warriors that are after an acquaintance.  Really, anything that can go wrong does go wrong for Johnny HIro.  Luckily, his girlfriend seems to have an uncanny ability to get Mayor Bloomberg to show up and save the day whenever things seem at their bleakest.

Johnny Hiro:  Half-Asian, All Hero, by Fred Chao, is a really fun book.  It's just what I needed, really, to help me realize that my reading rut was possibly due more to my choice of reading material than to any serious lack of concentration on my part.  I just needed something a little more upbeat to read than the epic fantasy novel that I have been attempting to slog through for the past few weeks.

Johnny Hiro does not, on the surface, appear to be a book that will change your life.  It's not about a moment of epiphany in which Johnny realizes that with great power comes great responsibility.  It's about the mundane activities that make up your world (except, of course, for the giant lizard) and how you just have to keep plugging and get through the hard parts.  The narrator more than once detaches himself from the action to explain someone's motivations or to show how some small action can have unforeseen consequences or how someone who really does do his best in life can still fail so spectacularly.  The third party, indifferent observer opposes very nicely with the quick action terror that Hiro faces: