Four Stars

Best for: Anyone looking for a quick read that is linear but written in a slightly different style.

In a nutshell: Claire has quit her job without another lined up, in an effort to find something she wants to do.

Worth quoting:
“When I had a job, I used to fantasize about what I’d do if I didn’t have to work anymore. Go to the gym every day, get really fit, train for a marathon perhaps. Finish Ulysses, and read Moby Dick and one of the big Russian guys. Get to grips with the economy, also modern art.”
“You know, not everyone can be a hero, or live the dream — we just need to contribute what we can. Pull our weight, earn a living. There’s no shame in that.”

Why I chose it: The paperback cover (in the UK at least) is striking and made me pick it up. Then I read the back and knew I had to read it.

Review:
Have you ever read the first chapter or so of a book and seriously wonder if it’s your own memoir? That is to say, have you ever related so hard to the circumstances in a novel that you’re slightly bummed because now you can’t turn your own story into a novel because you’ll be sued for copywrite? That’s kind of how I feel about this book.

Claire has quit her job. She doesn’t enjoy her work, and wants to take time to actually sort out what she wants to do. She has savings, and has a mortgage on a flat with her boyfriend (a doctor trainee), so she’s obviously in a position to do this. But she doesn’t know where to start. She doesn’t have an obvious passion, or any real sense of what she wants to be doing with her life. She has some skeptical friends (most of them seem unsupportive – something I couldn’t relate to), and a mother who isn’t speaking to her.

The story is presented across a few chapters, but nearly every few paragraphs has a little sub-heading. It’s an interesting device making the book read more like a diary. It’s a convention that I think is challenging to do well, but Ms. Owens pulls it off well.

I enjoyed Claire’s comments and attitude and flaws because I could see myself in much of her. I, too, quit my job earlier this year. It was a necessity — we moved across the world — but I wanted to do it because it isn’t a field I wanted to be in. And I’m still sort-of working in that field (less than full-time), and still haven’t been able to sort out what I’m going to do long-term. I’m lucky enough that we can afford me not working full-time at my previous salary, and it does feel a bit indulgent to be able to go to the gym at 10 AM on a Monday because I don’t have to have my butt in an office chair at 8 AM. So reading someone who is in a somewhat similar position to me was almost cathartic.

But even if I couldn’t relate so hard, I still think I would have highly enjoyed it. If you’re looking for a fairly quick read that still has some heft in terms of the relationships explored within, I think you’ll enjoy this one.

Four Stars

(Joint review with Austin as part of the Cannonball Read 10 BINGO)

Best for: Those who enjoy deeply personal memoirs.

In a nutshell: Black Lives Matter founder Patrisse Khan-Cullors shares the story of her life so far, including her work as an activist, artist, and founder of the Black Lives Matter movement.

Worth quoting:
“For us, law enforcement had nothing to do with protecting and serving, but controlling and containing the movement of children.”
“My father attended schools that did little more than train him to serve another man’s dreams, ensure another man’s wealth, produce another man’s vision.”
“What is the impact of not being valued?”
“No isolated acts of decency could wholly change an organization that became an institution that was created not to protect but to catch, control and kill us.”

Why I chose it: I enjoy memoirs, and I feel like I don’t know enough about the woman who started the Black Lives Matter movement.

Why Austin chose it: I picked this book because Black Lives Matter is a huge cultural touchstone in our nation’s history and I wanted to learn more about one of the founders of the movement.

My Review:
At times over the past five years, it can seem that Black Lives Matter spontaneously erupted out of the anger at police violence against Black men, women and children. But BLM didn’t just appear from the ether; it was created by three Black women: Alicia Garza, Patrisse Khan-Cullors, and Opal Tometi. These women have stories that deserve to be shared, and this book provides insight into the lives of one of these women.

The subheading “A Black Lives Matter Memoir” might suggest that there will be a heavy emphasis on the time in 2013 when the movement began. And that definitely gets coverage, but this book is more about Ms. Khan-Cullors’s life and how that leads to the movement. She shares so much of herself — her pain, her joy, her love, her anger. Some memoirs scratch the surface and present something that feels a bit false. Not here. Ms. Khan-Cullors is vulnerable, and poetic, and unapologetic. She describes experiences that no one should have to go through, making it clear that these experiences are not unique to her.

This book contains so much more than its 250 pages suggest. The writing is fantastic, in a style I am not used to. I’d almost call it flowery, but that implies the words are superfluous. It’s not that. It’s almost lyrical, poetic and times. Ms. Khan-Cullors (with co-author bandele) covers interactions with the police (her own interactions, and interactions her families and friends have), what it is like to have a parent in prison, what it is like to have a sibling with mental illness who is tortured by the prison system. What it is like to not be heard, and what it is like to find a way to fight back.

Austin’s Review:
What struck me most about this book was how open she was about her entire life. She talked about her sexuality, her difficulties with her family, and the ongoing issues with police. Khan-Cullors has had a more difficult life than most, yet she was able to come together with friends to build the most recognizable social justice movement in decades.

Reading this book made me re-evaluate my own life and choices in a deep and serious way. What are my values and how much am I willing to dedicate my life to them? I thank Ms Khan-Cullors for what she’s done and what she’s been willing to share with everyone about the way it’s all come about. I highly recommend this book if you’re at all interested in social justice movements.

Three Stars

Best for: People who enjoy her style of writing, I’m guessing.

In a nutshell: Istina is mentally ill and being ‘treated’ at an in-patient facility. For nine years.

Worth quoting:
“Later, the same nurses will become impatient with their charges; but at first they are full of sympathy.”
“Few of the people who roamed the dayroom would have qualified as acceptable heroines, in popular taste; few were charmingly uninhibited eccentrics.”

Why I chose it: I’ve been having a hell of a time finding a book for the “Birthday” BINGO square. I kind of wish I’d kept looking.

Review:
I’d not heard of Ms. Frame prior to picking up this novel, but she is a much-celebrated author from New Zealand. If this book is representative of her work, then I can definitely not count myself as a fan. The book follows Istina from one in-patient facility to another and back again, seeing it through her eyes as she deals with hallucinations, being moved to different wards without understanding why, being given ECT, and being scheduled for a lobotomy.

There are moment in this book that are so frustrating, such as when Istina describes the nurses ‘caring’ for patients who are in an especially challenging situation, as instigating fights just to see what the patients will do. Treating them as zoo animals or, perhaps more aptly, fighting dogs. It’s also so sad, but unsurprising, to read of the doctors who make only the occasional appearance in the lives of the patients. No one is really getting therapy or treatment — they are just housed like cattle, kept away from the rest of society without getting much beyond food and shelter.

This is a novel, but it is likely pulled from Ms. Frame’s own life, as she entered in-patient treatment multiple times over nearly a decade, even publishing her first book while a patient. So I cannot speak to whether this is an amazing example of writing about what it is like as a patient with mental illness, but I can say that it was challenging to read. Ms. Frame (or perhaps Istina?) seems to abhor the comma, so sentences at times wander. Again, I couldn’t tell if this was an affect of the main character or if this is just how Ms. Frame writes. If it’s the former, I’m sure it serves a literary function; if it’s the later, it just seems pretentious.

Obviously Ms. Frame was a celebrated author, so I can’t say that this is a BAD book. It is just not one I enjoyed, nor is it one I would recommend.

Five Stars

Best for: Anyone looking for both a philosophical and a reality-based discussion about the decision to consume meat.

In a nutshell: When he realizes he is going to be a father, Mr. Foer decides to examine the food he eats and the morality of it.

Worth quoting:
I underlined and starred so many lines that I could put here, but I think this one sums the entire question up for me:

“Whether we’re talking about fish species, pigs, or some other eaten animal, is such suffering the most important thing in the world? Obviously not. But that’s not the question. Is it more important than sushi, bacon, or chicken nuggets? That’s the question.”

Why I chose it:
I’ve been vegetarian (and even vegan) at a few points in my life. I pretty much never cook meat at home. Lately I’ve been wondering if I can justify my decision to even intermittently eat meat, so when I saw this book at Shakespeare and Co in Paris, I decided it was time to jump in again.

Review:
What does it mean to choose to consume meat in the US (or UK) these days? What has it meant for the last 50 years? Realistically, unless you are raising your own meat or purchasing it from one of an infinitesimally small number of family farmers, your meat is coming from a factory farm. And even if you do purchase it from a ‘humane’ farmer, that animal is still being killed in an unimaginably cruel slaughterhouse. We know this, and yet we (unless the person reading this is vegetarian or vegan) still consume meat. And eggs. And dairy.

Why? This book explores the reasons we give, in beautifully written prose. Seriously, I’ve read many a book in my day about vegetarianism and veganism, but none have affected me in this way. They all have some variation on the same statistics, the same horror stories. The same glimpses into slaughterhouses, the same reminder that the workers in these facilities are often paid poorly and treated horribly. They tell us how pigs are much more like dogs than we’d probably feel comfortable knowing as we bite into our BLTs. How fish are much more intelligent than we’d probably imagined, and how both farmed and wild-caught seafood are just utterly horrible for the environment. How ALL of this factory farming — on land and sea — is destroy our world.

The book doesn’t provide an easy out, and I love that. Mr. Foer opens and closes his book with anecdotes about family meals. He describes the best (and only) meal his grandmother — a holocaust survivor — makes: chicken with carrots. He recognizes, and explores deeply, how food matters to us all culturally. How so many of our memories involve meals. And he asks if that is enough to justify consuming meat? What about if we are 100% certain that the meat was raised humanely (which is nearly impossibly to do)?

I’ve gone back and forth on this. I’ve read many an article about how pushing a vegetarian — or vegan — life on everyone can be culturally and economically insensitive. When vegetarians and vegans point out how poorly factory farm (e.g. all farm) animals are treated, they’re often responded to with the fact that people who pick our fruits and vegetables are treated poorly, so why don’t we care about them. Which is a completely insincere comment, given the shit labor standards that cover slaughterhouse workers.

Here’s where I’ve landed, once again, and after reading this book: I cannot justify consuming meat. Me. A woman with no medical issues, who has access to sufficient money and time to prepare an all-vegetarian diet. I do care about the welfare of animals. And I do care about their rights. I care about the environment. I care about public health (side note: Mr. Foer’s section on antibiotics and flu pandemics is one area that other similar books don’t cover nearly enough). And by choosing to not eat meat, I can be closer to living my values. I just had become complacent, and this book helped push me back on the right path.

As I write this review, my cat Tigger keeps jumping in my lap. My partner and I adopted him and his brother Jameson 6 1/2 years ago. They’re our buddies, our friends. We love them dearly, and even brought them with us when we moved to London. I can’t imagine life without them, and I certainly can’t imagine eating them. So how can I justify eating their animal friends? And why do I keep trying to? Because burgers are tasty? Sure. But, as Mr. Foer asks, is that taste more important than the life of another animal? Of course, this raises the question of how to feed them humanely. Cats are obligate carnivores, so chances are that the meat I need to feed them was procured in an inhumane fashion. I don’t know how to square that circle, but I’m going to try.

Three Stars

Best for: Young adults who want a love story that isn’t as absurd as Romeo and Juliet but that doesn’t discount their feelings.

In a nutshell: Eleanor comes from a fucked-up home. Park does not. Both are a bit outcast-y. Events transpire.

Worth quoting: “When Eleanor was around girls like that — like Park’s mom, like Tina, like most of the girls in the neighborhood — she wondered where they put their organs. Like, how could you have a stomach and intestines and kidneys, and still wear such tiny jeans?”

Why I chose it: I didn’t realize how many of the most popular CBR books I’d already read. I was sort of avoiding this one as it wasn’t appealing to me, but ultimately I’m glad I read it.

Review: This is a very quick read. I got it from the library on Wednesday and finished it Thursday night. Given its popularity, I think there probably isn’t that much more for me to say. But I’ll try…

The writing is good, but even though this is such a thoroughly character-driven book, I felt that the characters weren’t that well developed. Am I alone on this? Probably. We seemed to get some more interesting information about these two people prior to them meeting, but it mostly came in the last 10% of the book. I suppose the author was going for just a slice of life, but still, I wanted to know more about Eleanor especially, beyond just not liking how she looks.

I also appreciate that Ms. Rowell treated young relationships with such care — she doesn’t condescend, she doesn’t doubt their feelings. She explores them. And that’s pretty awesome.

I also like the very, very end. I know it is controversial for some people, but I like it. My copy has an author note where Ms. Rowell addresses this controversy, and I totally got her reasoning. I thought it was pretty cool.

Four Stars

Best for: Folks who claim the feminist title; folks who thought there was something off about Sheryl Sandberg’s “Lean In.”

In a nutshell: Foster picks apart the main themes of Sandberg’s best seller and points out all the ways that it is harmful to feminism; namely, that it doesn’t acknowledge the bigger issues at play, such as patriarchy and capitalism.

Worth quoting:
“A woman may be as ambitious as she wants, but the people hiring and firing have their own preconceptions, in a society that maintains that women are less decisive, logical and driven.”
“Lean In points all the blame inward, and ignores structural inequality.”
“The benefit of having women in the cabinet remains to be seen for migrant, low-paid, or abused women.”

Why I chose it:
I care about women succeeding but was turned off by Sandberg’s premise.

Review:
Dawn Foster packs a lot of useful, depressing, and motivating information into 81 pages. While the overarching premise is a response to Sandberg’s Lean In, the book’s focus is on the failings of corporate and white feminism as a whole. How feminism isn’t about the number of women at the board table (in fact, despite our hopes, women and POC apparently don’t tend to hire people who look like them once they’re in that position); it’s about uprooting and overturning a system that punishes women for being women by denying them access to quality jobs, quality housing, and basic respect for work.

Foster covers a lot of ground across the eight chapters. In the Hiring and Firing chapter, Foster discusses zero-contract jobs and jobs that require heavy emotional labor. Regarding zero-contract jobs (basically, hourly wage jobs where you aren’t ever guaranteed any work), she points out that your livelihood is essentially based not on how well you do your job, but on how well you get along with your manager. And sure, that can be the case in salaried positions, but in those, the feedback and punishment for not doing the emotional labor happens over time – individuals in zero-contract jobs may find themselves with no hours a week after a clash with the manager. She also looks at PR jobs, with are 80% women, even though fewer than 40% of the journalists they interact with are women, and how that, too, is a field dependent on doing a ton of emotional labor, including while off the clock.

The chapter on choice feminism was, I think, the best as a way to introduce to others who claim the feminist title that perhaps there’s more to it than arguing about taking a spouse’s last name upon marriage. Yes, we can manage multiple concerns at once, but she put it in a way I hadn’t thought about when she said:

“Time and attention within life are finite, and “wins” that seem more achievable are more likely to spur the column inches which are then denied to issues that hit the invisible, the poorer, and the more marginalised.”

Honestly, I’ve always been a big proponent of the easy wins. I sign petitions against corporations who have absurd ads. But I hadn’t though about how this anger — which is usually justified — takes away time and space from other, more pressing, less easily digested challenges.

I never read Lean In, and I never will, because I don’t think Sandberg is doing any of us any favors. It’s not up to women to lean into the way things are; it’s up to women to change the things that don’t work for the most marginalized among us.

Three Stars

Best for: People who like stories from clinicians but don’t mind a mildly obnoxious storyteller.

In a nutshell: Henry Marsh has been a brain surgeon for 40 years. So, y’know, he’s got some stories.

Worth quoting:
“She would be added to the list of my disasters — another headstone in that cemetery with the French surgeon Leriche once said all surgeons carry within themselves.”
“Informed consent sounds so easy in principle … The reality is very different. Patients are both terrified and ignorant. How are they to know whether the surgeon is competent or not? They will try to overcome their fear by investing the surgeon with superhuman abilities.”

Why I chose it:
I love medical stories. Don’t know why. But I do.

Review:
This was not my favorite. It’s not a bad book – and obviously many people think it is fantastic. In fact, the people sitting next to me on my flight home yesterday had read it and loved it. The stories are interesting for sure – and I like that each chapter is headed with a quick definition of the condition we’ll be learning about via a patient story in the pages to follow. But it’s not organized in any real way, there’s not much of a through-line or theme, and I was not impressed with some of the things the author shared.

Specifically, Marsh seems to hate fat people, hate administrators and any policy that means he doesn’t get to do things the exact way he wants, and generally seems to view himself as a bit of a martyr.

Regarding the fat hate: I saw this a little bit in “This is Going to Hurt,” which I read earlier this summer. But Marsh at one point refers to bariatric patients as small whales. Like, what the fuck, dude? I appreciate wanting to tell a story where you aren’t always the hero, and to be honest to who you are, but when that honesty involves being hateful to a group of people — some of whom have been under your care in the past — you’re being pretty shitty.

Marsh also rails against administrative changes in the NHS. He screams at non-neurosurgeons who have the nerve to come into what they’ve been told would be a shared lounge space. He completely disregards and disrespects the idea that doctors maybe shouldn’t work a million hours a week. And he apparently doesn’t give a fuck about patient confidentiality — and is proud of that.

Some of the stories he tells are interesting, but as I got to know the version of the author that he chose to reveal to his reader, I found myself less and less interested in what he had to say. I know that arrogance and ego are often hallmarks of (good!) surgeons; I’m just not sold on the idea that they are hallmarks of good writers.

Four Stars

Best for: Those who enjoy Liane Moriarty’s work; those who like stories told from multiple perspectives and that jump back and forth in time.

In a nutshell: Maggie is 14 weeks pregnant and getting married in four days. She is hit by a car and falls into a coma. When she wakes up, she thinks she’s been out for seven weeks. It’s been … a bit longer.

Worth quoting:
“ ‘Aren’t you fed up with books after working here all day?’ Her question was so alien she might as well have asked if I was fed up with breathing. I lived for books.

Why I chose it:
I think the name caught my eye (I am a big fan of “While You Were Sleeping”), and then once I read the first few pages, I was like “yup.”

Review:
I don’t know about you, but when I fly, I bring a bunch of books but often get so antsy that I end up watching a movie. Not this time. I started reading this book on a flight to Iceland last week, and ended up finishing it up a couple of days later, despite the fact that it is 560 pages long. It was just that compelling. As I said above, if you like the Liane Moriarty-style books, I think you’ll like this (though it doesn’t have any murdery bits). My review requires revealing some things that you’ll find out in the first quarter of the book, but because I loved discovering them, I’ll leave them to the bigger review below.

*Minor Spoilers Below*

Maggie has been in a coma for six years. SIX YEARS. Yikes. Her fiance is married to someone else, and he has a kid.

Correction: THEY have a kid.

I KNOW.

The story follows how Maggie, Chloe (the new wife) and … the husband, whose name I’ve forgotten (I left the book at my hotel in Iceland so others could enjoy it). The entire first bit is from Maggie’s perspective. So you really get to be on her side. You understand how her fiance (I want to say … Rick? Richard?) would eventually move on, but still, you also know that for her, she is not at all removed from the days when she was about to marry the love of her life.

But then, we get things from Chloe’s perspective. We learn how she came into Maggie and … Ryan’s? … lives, and eventually fell in love with Maggie’s fiance. And it becomes harder to root for or against anyone. Everyone is sympathetic, everyone is doing their best.

I enjoyed this one a lot, and will be seeking out more by Ms. Atkins.

Four Stars

Best for: Those who enjoy literary non-fiction and are not deterred by fairly grim subject matters.

In a nutshell: Author Maggie O’Farrell examines, with lovely prose, moments in her life that could have led to her imminent death.

Worth quoting:
“Crossing time zones in this way can bring upon you an unsettling, distorted clarity. Is it the altitude, the unaccustomed inactivity, the physical confinement, the lack of sleep, or a collision of all four?”
“To be so unheard, so disregarded, so disbelieved: I was unprepared for this. I also felt helpless, blocked in.”
“When you are a child, no one tells you that you’re going to die. You have to work it out for yourself.”

Why I chose it:
I was in a bookshop connected to a museum that focuses on health, and they were having a “Three for the price of two” sale. This one looked like an interesting third book.

Review:
I find books about health, illness, and death fascinating. Part of it is I’m sure, because of what I do for a living (even though I’ve moved, I’m still doing contract work related to mass fatality incidents), although I’d wager that perhaps that’s more of a correlation; the same thing in me that finds it interesting to think about how to handle a mass shooting is probably the same thing that makes me seek out books like this.

Although, to be fair to the author, I’m not sure I’ve ever read a book quite like this one. Ms. O’Farrell is an amazing writer; she’s able to write in a way that walks right up to flowery without ever getting there. She chooses words that at times might be slightly more obscure than necessary, but not so often that it feels affected: it’s just how she writes, and it’s lovely to behold.

It’s also a great juxtaposition to such potentially dark subject matter: nearly dying.

Don’t be confused: this isn’t a book about seeing the light, floating above one’s body during surgery, or anything so mystical. Instead it’s the story of a woman who, at age eight, has encephalitis and nearly dies. After that, she has many other near-death experiences, and only a couple are related to the lasting affects of that illness.

She starts with an essay about the time she managed to avoid being murdered. But not all essays are as dramatic or dire – one involves a flight that goes awry but ultimately is fine (there are likely thousands of people who have had similar experiences), another, a juvenile mistake that any of us could see ourselves making. In fact, save for a couple of instances, I think some of the power in this collection of essays is how mundane some of her brushes with death are. Any of us may have experienced one or two of them; but seventeen? Holy shit.

The last two essays are the longest and most dramatic. The sixteenth brush with death is the story of O’Farrell’s childhood illness; the seventeenth is of her daughters severe chronic illness. See the perspective of an ill child from the child herself, and then as a mother witnessing it in her own child is extraordinarily powerful.