The Great Passage

The Great Passage by Shion Miura
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is an interesting read about putting together a dictionary. Miura attempts to make it more interesting/relatable by adding bits about the editors lives, which are sweet and cute and involve a lot of ramen. The translator should get as much credit as Miura, since she managed to take a book about Japanese dictionaries and make it work in English. There is also a lot of rumination on the power of words, how they come to be used, and how sometimes they can make us immortal and other times are not sufficient to relate the reality of feelings and life.

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All Majime could do with a word’s endless motion and vast energy was capture it as it was, in one fleeting moment, and convey that state in written form.

A fragrance or a flavor or a sound can summon up an old memory, but what’s really happening is that a memory that had been slumbering and nebulous becomes accessible in words.”

Words were necessary for creation. Kishibe imagined the primordial ocean that covered the surface of the earth long ago—a soupy, swirling liquid in a state of chaos. Inside every person there was a similar ocean. Only when that ocean was struck by the lightning of words could all come into being. Love, the human heart . . . Words gave things form so they could rise out of the dark sea.

The Middle Place

The Middle Place by Kelly Corrigan
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I hesitate to judge memoirs too harshly. After all it is someone's life, someone's truth, and who am I to say they should feel or behave differently? However, I would say that I don't think Kelly and I would be friends. She has gone through some some hard and remarkable struggles, certain ones that I haven't, but her certainty about her rightness in all things would definitely be a challenge to befriend. Her near worship of her father while being more critical of her mother did make me question why some of us women tend to do that to our parents--give our fathers more leeway than our mothers....I have been guilty of that a bit (hopefully not as bad as Kelly) and I see it in my own children, so I guess that was eye-opening. Still, it wasn't a memoir that I found particularly insightful, uplifting, or entertaining (sorry).

He defined me first, as parents do. Those early characterizations can become the shimmering self-image we embrace or the limited, stifling perception we rail against for a lifetime. In my case, he sees me as I would like to be seen. In fact, I’m not even sure what’s true about me, since I have always chosen to believe his version.

They(children)fabricate stories, Susan explains, because it’s easier to share space with something fiendish but defined than something shapeless, just there, in the dark

I started to think faith could hurt. Faith seemed okay for everyday, emotional stuff, like being more thoughtful or less irritable, but cancer? You can’t pray your way out of cancer. You need scanning technology, and a well-trained oncologist, and a skilled, conscientious surgeon. God’s not going to remind your local biopsy technician to check your tissue sample for HER2/ neu cells. Your priest can’t decide whether you should have your bladder removed surgically or try four months of radiation. Faith doesn’t go to the cellular level.

The way I see it, if you have four kids, you don’t really have to do anything else, ever. Three kids is a handful, but one that many people manage to hold. If you’re a mother of four, you definitely don’t have to have a career or volunteer for the school fund-raiser or even bring an appetizer to the dinner party. In fact, people give you a lot of credit for wearing both earrings and knowing how to spell chaos and antidepressant. Four kids gives you a pass for every forgotten birthday, overlooked appointment, and missing form. Plus, you can be late for everything the rest of your life and never return phone calls. Who’s gonna blame you? It’s like having nonthreatening cancer, forever.

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The Wife

The Wife by Alafair Burke
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is a quick mystery/ thriller. The ending was a little obvious about halfway through, but it was still an intriguing narrative with an unreliable narrator, and plays on our own tendencies to judge situations quickly, especially in sexual harassment situations. Would be good for an airplane ride or beach read.

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The Tiger's Wife

The Tiger's Wife by Téa Obreht
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a beautiful book with some flashes of genius in it. I have no doubt that Obreht will become one of the great authors of our time. This would be brilliant but it is almost as if Obreht is not confident that audiences will be happy with a simple modern myth (we would) and adds twists and surprises at the end of the story that frankly I don't think track. My personal opinion is that some circles should have been closed, even if that made the novel more predictable. To be clear, it is still immensely worth reading--imaginative, insightful, and intelligent--definitely worth a winter's afternoon or two.

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The World Doesn't Require You

The World Doesn't Require You: Stories by Rion Amilcar Scott
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

These aren't stories for everyone. They walk the fine line between reality and fantasy and lace it with plenty of things that could be offensive. But I feel like Scott's writing opens up a new landscape to talk about perspective, belief, race, academia, culture, love. None of these stories are throw-away stories, and they all build on each other. I didn't love all the stories but they did make me think.

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"Ugly words carelessly arranged can derange us just like beautiful words in a beautiful order."

This Life or the Next

This Life or the Next by Demian Vitanza
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Such a great insight into a culture I didn't understand as much as I thought I did. What a great way to give voice to people who are dismissed and shunned as terrorists, violent, intolerant. Instead I learned that some jihadists truly sacrifice for their beliefs and for love. This is what books should do--help us understand the world around us and challenge what we thought we knew.

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"which plants were friends and which were enemies, or you know, how you can put some plants next to each other and it works really well, but others don't"

"What's sick is how the violence creeps into you.  You know what you've seen is wrong, but you accept it because everyone around you accepts it.  Or at least on the surface they do.  Morals are a vulnerable thing.  Your sense of justice is influenced by how other people act."

The Female Persuasion

The Female Persuasion by Meg Wolitzer
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This mildly entertaining story about a shy girl who ends up becoming an active feminist not-so-subtly ticks off the major (and minor) arguments about feminism. What does it mean to be feminist? Should feminism be about seminars and education, or more bootstrap in the trenches? Feminists can be angels, but they can also be their own worst enemies-dragging each other down and betraying what they stand for. Feminists can be males, or they can be women who don't seem to have done much with their lives. Good works can be overdone at the expense of family and relationships. But it can also change the world for underprivileged or oppressed females. It's basically a primer about feminism with a story built around it. The story does get a bit better as you go on, but it's an issue-driven book, not a character- or plot-driven one.


"I think that's what the people who change our lives always do.  They give us permission to be the person we secretly really long to be bu maybe don't feel we're allowed to be."

"It was if her voice alone had quit her job, her voice had stepped up and made the executive decision and done all the speaking, while the rest of her had simply listened and watched."

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