Three Stars

Best for:
People looking for a gentle, sweet, memoir with some nice little life lessons and a few chuckles.

In a nutshell:
Actress and comedian Hart shares stories and lessons of her life through the mechanism of talking to her younger self.

Worth quoting:
N/A (Audiobook)

Why I chose it:
Hart always struck me as a kind and fun woman. Plus, as a fellow very tall woman, I appreciate that she’s been able to make a career in film and television.

Review:
I first became aware of Hart when she played in Spy with Melissa McCarthy. She made me laugh a lot, and I was surprised when she showed up in Call the Midwife, which I started watching from the beginning after I moved to the UK. When this book showed up as a suggestion in Audible, I figured I’d check it out.

I listened to this in two parts, with a two month break in between, so I’m afraid my recall of the first half is a bit limited. However I can speak to the overall feel of this book, and it’s that of drinking a hot chocolate while cuddled up on the couch on a Sunday afternoon. It’s not offensive (save for some outdated language that I’d imagine she would have revised were she writing this today) – it’s just sweet. It’s encouraging and supportive, and also self-deprecating in a way that feels authentic.

The rhetorical device Hart employs (which works quite well in audio form) is that she’s sharing tips and stories with her 18-year-old self, while talking to us, the reader. She is 38 at the time of writing this, and has some suggestions. It’s a simple concept, but at times it’s a bit deep, as she captures well the assumptions our younger selves make and how that doesn’t often match reality. And that isn’t sad or anything, it’s just … different. It’s most stark when ‘Little M’ (e.g. 18-year-old Miranda) make some assumptions that author Miranda is married and has children. Which she isn’t and doesn’t. And that’s not a bad thing for older Miranda, but it doesn’t fit what Little M expects.

It got me thinking about what those of us who are creeping closer to middle age would say to our younger selves. What expectations did we have? What dreams did we let go of because it made sense to, or our interests changes? Conversely, which dreams did we let go of that we could perhaps pick up again? What’s changed? What mortifying or hilarious events in our youth do we view differently now, with some time, space, and a bit more wisdom? I’m not sure Hart imagined her book would invoke such thoughts, but maybe she did. If so, job well done!

Recommend to a Friend / Keep / Donate it / Toss it:
N/A (Audiobook)

Four Stars

Best for:
Anyone with some interest in world history, or Icelandic history.

In a nutshell:
Author Bjarnason provides a condensed (and at times humorous) history of Iceland.

Worth quoting:
“…claim, respectively, that Icelander live for up to 150 to 300 years — because of the pure climate, or course. Which I’d say is fair reasoning: the human body is organic, and we all know that vegetables and other organic things last longer in the fridge.”

“Few countries are as vulnerable to global warming as Iceland. Glaciers have retreated by about 850 square miles since the end of the nineteenth century…”

Why I chose it:
I have a goal of spending one year living in Iceland. I visited in summer 2018 for four days and absolutely loved it, and have been trying to sort out how to return ever since.

Review:
Aside from transiting through the airport a handful of times, I didn’t get to properly visit Iceland until about four years ago. We stayed outside of Reykjavik, and visited a few of the amazing natural wonders, such as Gullfoss and where the continental plates meet. I’m pretty desperate to visit in the winter and see the Northern Lights. If you read my book reviews, you also know that I’m a fan of the crime novels that the nation has produced. So naturally when I saw this book I figured I would need to read it, and I’m so glad I did.

This is not a book of anecdotes or cute facts to share at parties. But it contains many of them. It’s a chronology that follows many hundreds of years of life on that very small island at the top of Europe, known to many outside of it as the place with the volcano that stopped air travel in 2010, or the place with the men’s football team that knocked England out of the Euros in 2016 (despite having a very tiny pool to draw players from). Maybe it’s known to you as the place where that Will Farrell / Rachel McAdams Eurovision movie was set, or where they filmed parts of Game of Thrones?

However you might know about Iceland, this book will likely teach you things you didn’t know. For example, did you know that a woman from Iceland reached North America about 500 years before that genocidal asshole Columbus? Or that Iceland played a role in the creation of Israel? That it featured in the space race and the Cold War?

Bjarnason is a great writer, making history interesting. I was able to picture every era and place he described, and I chuckled quite a few times as he wove his factual accounts with a little bit of humor. Books like this can be tricky to pull off, but he does it and does it well.

Recommend to a Friend / Keep / Donate it / Toss it:
Recommend and Keep

Rating: 3 Stars

Best for:
Fans of Constance Wu. People interested in learning about the impact of different aspects of Hollywood on actors.

In a nutshell:
Actress Wu shares stories from her life, mostly focusing on her non-famous time.

Worth quoting:
N/A (Audiobook)

Why I chose it:
I only know Wu from her starring role in Crazy Rich Asians, but this sounded interesting.

Review:
This is a book I find hard to review. I want to commend Wu for how open and honest she is, and how she confronts challenges she’s faced as well as times when she hasn’t acted in the way one would want. Basically, I don’t think she’s sugar-coated anything here. She’s vulnerable, and doesn’t make herself the ‘good guy’ all the time, but she has enough self-awareness where she doesn’t come across as oblivious to any damage her actions may have caused.

That said, I generally wasn’t that interesting in the stories she was telling. That isn’t to say the pieces of herself she chose to share were uninteresting or bad – they just weren’t quite for me. Hence the middling rating.

I do think this is a well-written book. I think I actually might have enjoyed it better had I read it instead of hearing the author read it, because at times it felt like she was acting the stories (intentionally at times), which was leading me to a specific feeling. With a written book, I think there’s a bit more opportunity for the reader to make their own interpretations and conclusions. Though, thinking more on it – is that appropriate for a memoir? Does my opinion of things really matter? It’s not my life, after all.

The aspect that most reviews have focused on was the harassment she faced from a producer while working on Fresh Off the Boat, and her suicidal period after being harassed off Twitter for expressing disappointment at the series being renewed. And those bits are infuriating for sure. But I think her vulnerability around her relationships is also interesting – her romantic relationships, her relationship with her mother, and her relationship with her younger sister. They are complex and complicated situations, and she navigates them without always making herself sound like a victim – she has agency, and sometimes makes good decisions and sometimes doesn’t.

I’m not sure if I would recommend this book, but if it’s on your TBR list, I’d imagine you’ll probably find it a worthwhile read.

Recommend to a Friend / Keep / Donate it / Toss it:
N/A (Audiobook)

Three Stars

Best for:
People with pretty serious anxiety

In a nutshell:
The authors, who I gather have created a support community for people with anxiety, offer their take on a variety of aspects of anxiety, including causes, treatments, management, and medications.

Worth quoting:
“What can happen is very different from what probably will happen.”

Why I chose it:
I am a catastrophizing worrier, and I’d rather not be? Or at least, not be to the point that it doesn’t, like, interfere with my life. Which it doesn’t dramatically, but enough to be noticeable and obnoxious.

Review:
I’m not sure exactly what to write about this book. First off, I’m not clear how much of the background of the authors means I should trust the chapters where they talk about causes of anxiety. Like, I have no reason to doubt them, but they are unknown entities to me, so no idea. There are, at least, lots of references, so I could dive into them to see if they support the statements the authors are making, which is more than some books provide.

There are loads of different suggestions which I could see being very helpful to a lot of people. Nothing was brand new to me, but it was good to be reminded of some tools out there that exist. For that reason, part of me wants to hold onto the book, but mostly I think that I just am going to take a couple of photos / notes and then move on.

I’m not sure what I wanted this book to be, so that’s why I’ve rated it smack in the middle. It might be a great book if its what the reader wants. It might be not great if the information isn’t all thoroughly fact-checked. I don’t think it’s harmful, and is on balance probably helpful to some people, so that’s a good thing. Just not for me.

Recommend to a Friend / Keep / Donate it / Toss it:
Donate it

3 Stars

Best for:
People who like a real good revenge story, but also something a little different.

In a nutshell:
Bella Mackie is picking off her family, one by one. The twist? Most of them don’t even know she’s related to them.

Worth quoting:
“Tell me if the person I’ve fallen in love with seems like a monster. List the ways. Do a deep dive into it, make graphs. I want all the information.”

“The only thing worse than someone who enthusiastically devours all pop culture and spews it up … is someone who takes pride in not understanding new trends. You’re not better than that. You don’t get points for deliberately trying to avoid learning about what’s happening around you.”

Why I chose it:
I’ve seen it a few times in bookshops and finally decided to pick it up.

Review:
The book drew me in from the first page, because it starts unexpectedly. I’m going to gloss over that part and provide a bit about the high-level plot and discuss the narrator Grace. Grace is the one who is killing her ‘family.’ Her dad cheated on his wife with her mother, and then denied Grace’s existence while Grace and her mother Marie lived in a studio.

Grace is pissed about it, and I get that. So she spend time planning to basically wipe out the family. Which is made a bit easier because her dad is very well-known, and thus his family is easy to track.

Grace is not a good person. She doesn’t pretend to be, and she knows that killing a bunch of people puts her on the wrong side of moral. But she’s also a bit insufferable, which makes it both easy to root for her to try to right some wrongs, but also makes it easy to remember that, um, killing is also super wrong. Grace is the worst kind of judgmental – she thinks pretty much everyone is less intelligent than her, and really any choice any person could make is ripe for the mocking. Not outwardly – she’s very good at blending into the scenery when she wants to. But her inner monologue is snarky and her social commentary at times feels a bit like someone trying to sound cool on Reddit.

The book itself is well-written – I kept reading it and wanting to read it, and had to force myself not to pick it up before bed last night because I knew I’d just stay up too late reading it. As it was, I finished it in three days, and one of those days I was working.

Recommend to a Friend / Keep / Donate it / Toss it:
Donate it (I don’t tend to keep fiction books around, but I hope whoever picks this up at the free library at my Tube station enjoys it as much as I did)